"They would not earn a crown in a month," he answered. "There must be
something more than that at the bottom of it."
Beginning to share his curiosity, I was about to propose that we should
sally out and see if the boy would repeat his overture to us, when I
caught the sound of footsteps coming along the street. "Is it Maignan?"
the King whispered, looking out cautiously.
"No, sire," I said. "He is in yonder doorway."
Before Henry could answer, the appearance of two strangers coming along
the roadway confirmed my statement. They paused opposite the boy, and
he advanced to them. Too far off to hear precisely what passed, we
were near enough to be sure that the dialogue was in the main the same
as that in which we had taken part. The men were cloaked, too, as were
we, and presently they went in, as we had gone in. All, in fact,
happened as it had happened to us, and after the necessary interval we
saw and heard the shutter closed.
"Well," the King said, "what do you make of that?"
"The shutter is the catch-word, sire."
"Ay, but what is going on up there?" he asked. And he rubbed his
hands.
I had no explanation to give, however, and shook my head; and we stood
awhile, watching silently. At the end of five minutes the two men came
out again and walked off the way they had come, but more briskly.
Henry moreover, whose observation was all his life most acute, remarked
that whatever they had been doing they carried away lighter hearts than
they had brought. And I thought the same.
Indeed, I was beginning to take my full share of interest in the
adventure; and in place of wondering, as before, at Henry's
persistence, found it more natural to admire the keenness which he had
displayed in scenting a mystery. I was not surprised, therefore, when
he gripped my arm to gain my attention, and, a the window fell slowly
open again, drew me quickly into the street, and hurried me across it
and through the doorway of the house.
"Up!" he muttered in my ear. "Quickly and quietly, man! If there are
to be other visitors, we will play the spy. But softly, softly; here
is the boy!"
We stood aside against the wall, scarcely daring to breathe; and the
child, guiding himself by the handrail, passed us in the dark without
suspicion, and pattered on down the staircase. We remained as we were
until we heard him cross the threshold, and then we crept up; not to
the uppermost landing, where the light, when the door was opened, must
betray us, but to that immediately below it. There we took our stand
in the angle of the stairs and waited, the King, between amusement at
the absurdity of our position and anxiety lest we should betray
ourselves, going off now and again into stifled laughter, from which he
vainly strove to restrain himself by pinching me.
I was not in so gay a mood myself, however, the responsibility of his
safety lying heavy upon me; while the possibility that the adventure
might prove no less tragical in the sequel than it now appeared
comical, did not fail to present itself to my eyes in the darkest
colours. When we had watched, therefore, five minutes more--which
seemed to me an hour--I began to lose faith; and I was on the point of
undertaking to persuade Henry to withdraw, when the voices of men
speaking at the door below reached us, and told me that it was too
late. The next moment their steps crossed the threshold, and they
began to ascend, the boy saying continually, "This way, messieurs, this
way!" and preceding them as he had preceded us. We heard them
approach, breathing heavily, and but for the balustrade, by which I
felt sure that they would guide themselves, and which stood some feet
from our corner, I should have been in a panic lest they should blunder
against us. But they passed safely, and a moment later the boy opened
the door of the room above. We heard them go in, and without a
second's hesitation we crept up after them, following them so closely
that the door was scarcely shut before we were at it. We heard,
therefore, what passed from the first: the child's request that they
would close the shutter, their hasty compliance, and the silence,
strange and pregnant, which followed, and which was broken at last by a
solemn voice. "We have closed one shutter," it said, "but the shutter
of God's mercy Is never closed."
"Amen," a second person answered in a tone so distant and muffled that
it needed no great wit to guess whence it came, or that the speaker was
behind the curtains of the alcove. "Who are you?"
"The cure of St. Marceau," the first speaker replied.
"And whom do you bring to me?"
"A sinner."
"What has he done?"
"He will tell you."
"I am listening."
There was a pause on this, a long pause; which was broken at length by
a third speaker, in a tone half sullen, half miserable. "I have robbed
my master," he said.
"Of how much?"
"Fifty livres."
"Why?"
"I lost it at play."
"And you are sorry."
"I must be sorry," the man panted with sudden fierceness, "or hang!"
Hidden though he was from us, there was a tremor in his voice that told
a tale of pallid cheeks and shaking knees, and a terror fast rising to
madness.
"He makes up his accounts to-morrow?"
"Yes."
Someone in the room groaned; it should have been the culprit, but
unless I was mistaken the sound came through the curtains. A long
pause followed. Then, "And if I help you," the muffled voice resumed,
"will you swear to lead an honest life?"
But the answer may be guessed. I need not repeat the assurances, the
protestations and vows of repentance, the cries and tears of gratitude
which ensue; and to which the poor wretch, stripped of his sullen
indifference, completely abandoned himself. Suffice it that we
presently heard the clinking of coins, a word or two of solemn advice
from the cure, and a man's painful sobbing; then the King touched my
arm, and we crept down the stairs. I was for stopping on the landing
where we had hidden ourselves before; but Henry drew me on to the foot
of the stairs and into the street.
He turned towards home, and for some time did not speak. At length he
asked me what I thought of it.
"In what way, sire?"
"Do you not think," he said in a voice of much emotion, "that if we
could do what he does, and save a man instead of hanging him, it would
be better?"
"For the man, sire, doubtless," I answered drily; "but for the State it
might not be so well. If mercy became the rule and justice the
exception--there would be fewer bodies at Montfaucon and more in the
streets at daylight. I feel much greater doubt on another point."
Shaking off the moodiness that had for a moment overcome him, Henry
asked with vivacity what that was.
"Who he is, and what is his motive?"
"Why?" the King replied in some surprise--he was ever of so kind a
nature that an appeal to his feelings displaced his judgment. "What
should he be but what he seems?"
"Benevolence itself?"
"Yes."
"Well, sire, I grant that he may be M. de Joyeuse, who has spent his
life in passing in and out of monasteries, and has performed so many
tricks of the kind that I could believe anything of him. But if it be
not he--"
"It was not his voice," Henry said, positively.
"Then there is something here," I answered, "still unexplained.
Consider the oddity of the conception, sire, the secrecy of the
performance, the hour, the mode, all the surrounding circumstances! I
can imagine a man currying favour with the basest and most dangerous
class by such means. I can imagine a conspiracy recruited by such
means. I can imagine this shibboleth of the shutter grown to a
watchword as deadly as the 'TUEZ!' of '72. I can imagine all that, but
I cannot imagine a man acting thus out of pure benevolence."
"No?" Henry said, thoughtfully. "Well, I think that I agree with
you." and far from being displeased with my warmth (as is the manner
of some sovereigns when their best friends differ from them), he came
over to my opinion so completely as to halt and express his intention
of returning and probing the matter to the bottom. Midnight had gone,
however; it would take some little time to retrace our steps; and with
some difficulty I succeeded in dissuading him, promising instead to
make inquiries on the morrow, and having learned who lived in the
house, to turn the whole affair into a report, which should be
submitted to him.
This amused and satisfied him, and, expressing himself well content
with the evening's diversion--though we had done nothing unworthy
either of a King or a Minister--he parted from me at the Arsenal, and
went home with his suite.
It did not occur to me at the time that I had promised to do anything
difficult; but the news which my agents brought me next day--that the
uppermost floor of the house in the Rue Pourpointerie was empty--put
another face upon the matter. The landlord declared that he knew
nothing of the tenant, who had rented the rooms, ready furnished, by
the week; and as I had not seen the man's face, there remained only two
sources whence I could get the information I needed--the child, and the
cure of St. Marceau.
I did not know where to look for the former, however; and I had to
depend on the cure. But here I carne to an obstacle I might easily
have foreseen. I found him, though an honest man, obdurate in
upholding his priest's privileges; to all my inquiries he replied that
the matter touched the confessional, and was within his vows; and that
he neither could, nor dared--to please anyone, or for any cause,
however plausible--divulge the slightest detail of the affair. I had
him summoned to the arsenal, and questioned him myself, and closely;
but of all armour that of the Roman priesthood is the most difficult to
penetrate, and I quickly gave up the attempt.
Baffled in the only direction in which I could hope for success, I had
to confess my defeat to the King, whose curiosity was only piqued the
more by the rebuff. He adjured me not to let the matter drop, and,
suggesting a number of persons among whom I might possibly find the
unknown, proposed also some theories. Of these, one that the
benevolent was a disguised lady, who contrived in this way to give the
rein at once to gallantry and charity, pleased him most; while I
favoured that which had first occurred to me on the night of our sally,
and held the unknown to be a clever rascal, who, to serve his ends,
political or criminal, was corrupting the commonalty, and drawing
people into his power.
Things remained in this state some weeks, and, growing no wiser, I was
beginning to think less of the affair--which, of itself, and apart from
a whimsical interest which the King took in it, was unimportant--when
one day, stopping in the Quartier du Marais to view the works at the
new Place Royale, I saw the boy. He was in charge of a decent-looking
servant, whose hand he was holding, and the two were gazing at a horse
that, alarmed by the heaps of stone and mortar, was rearing and trying
to unseat its rider. The child did not see me, and I bade Maignan
follow him home, and learn where he lived and who he was.
In an hour my equerry returned with the information I desired. The
child was the only son of Fauchet, one of the Receivers-General of the
Revenue; a man who kept great state in the largest of the old-fashioned
houses in the Rue de Bethisy, where he, had lately entertained the
King. I could not imagine anyone less likely to be concerned in
treasonable practices; and, certain that I had made no mistake in the
boy, I was driven for a while to believe that some servant had,
perverted the child to this use. Presently, however, second thoughts,
and the position of the father, taken, perhaps, with suspicions that I
had for a long time entertained of Fauchet--in common with most of his
kind--suggested an explanation, hitherto unconsidered. It was not an
explanation very probable at first sight, nor one that would have
commended itself to those who divide all men by hard and fast rules and
assort them like sheep. But I had seen too much of the world to fall
into this mistake, and it satisfied me. I began by weighing it
carefully; I procured evidence, I had Fauchet watched; and, at length,
one evening in August, I went to the Louvre.
The King was dicing with Fernandez, the Portuguese banker; but I
ventured to interrupt the game and draw him aside. He might not have
taken this well, but that my first word caught his attention.
"Sire," I said, "the shutter is open."
He understood in a moment. "St. Gris!" He exclaimed with animation.
"Where? At the same house?"
"No, sire; in the Rue Cloitre Notre Dame."
"You have got him, then?"
"I know who he is, and why he is doing this."
"Why?" the King cried eagerly.
"Well, I was going to ask for your Majesty's company to the place," I
answered smiling. "I will undertake that you shall be amused at least
as well as here, and at a cheaper rate."
He shrugged his shoulders. "That may very well be," he said with a
grimace. "That rogue Pimentel has stripped me of two thousand crowns
since supper. He is plucking Bassompierre now."
Remembering that only that morning I had had to stop some necessary
works through lack of means, I could scarcely restrain my indignation.
But it was not the time to speak, and I contented myself with repeating
my request. Ashamed of himself, he consented with a good grace, and
bidding me go to his: closet, followed a few minutes later. He found
me cloaked to the eyes, and with a soutane and priest's hat; on my arm.
"Are those for me?" he said.
"Yes, sire."
"Who am I, then?"
"The cure of St. Germain."
He made a wry face. "Come, Grand Master," he said; "he died yesterday.
Is not the jest rather grim?"
"In a good cause," I said equably.
He flashed a roguish look at me. "Ah!" he said, "I thought that that
was a wicked rule which only we Romanists avowed. But, there; don't be
angry. I am ready."
Coquet, the Master of the Household, let us out by one of the river
gates, and we went by the new bridge and the Pont St. Michel. By the
way I taught the King the role I wished him to play, but without
explaining the mystery; the opportune appearance of one of my agents
who was watching the end of the street bringing Henry's remonstrances
to a close.
"It is still open?" I said.
"Yes, your excellency."
"Then come, sire," I said, "I see the boy yonder. Let us ascend, and I
will undertake that before you reach the street again you shall be not
only a wiser but a richer sovereign."
"St. Gris!" he answered with alacrity. "Why did you not say that
before, and I should have asked no questions. On, on, in God's name,
and the devil take Pimentel!"
I restrained the caustic jest that rose to my lips, and we proceeded in
silence down the street. The boy, whom I had espied loitering in a
doorway a little way ahead, as if the great bell above us which had
just tolled eleven had drawn him out, peered at us a moment askance;
and then, coming forward, accosted us. But I need not detail the
particulars of a conversation which was almost word for word the same
as that which had passed in the Rue de la Pourpointerie; suffice it
that he made the same request with the same frank audacity, and that,
granting it, we were in a moment following hint up a similar staircase.
"This way, messieurs, this way!" he said; as he had on that other
night, while we groped our way upwards in the dark. He opened a door,
and a light shone out; and we entered a room that seemed, with its bare
walls and rafters, its scanty stool and table and lamp, the very
counterpart of that other room. In one wall appeared the dingy
curtains of an alcove, closely drawn; and the shutter stood open,
until, at the child's request, expressed in the same words, I went to
it and closed it.
We were both so well muffled up and disguised, and the light of the
lamp shining upwards so completely distorted the features, that I had
no fear of recognition, unless the King's voice betrayed him. But when
he spoke, breaking the oppressive silence of the room, his tone was as
strange and hollow as I could wish.
"The shutter is closed," he said; "but the shutter of God's mercy is
never closed!"
Still, knowing that this was the crucial moment, and that we should be
detected now if at all, I found it; an age before the voice behind the
curtains answered "Amen!" and yet another age before the hidden
speaker continued "Who are you?"
"The cure of St. Germain," Henry responded.
The man behind the curtains gasped, and they were for a moment
violently agitated, as if a hand seized them and let them go again.
But I had reckoned that the unknown, after a pause of horror, would
suppose that he had heard amiss and continue his usual catechism. And
so it proved. In a voice that shook a little, he asked, "Whom do you
bring to me?"
"A sinner," the King answered.
"What has he done?"
"He will tell you."
"I am listening," the unknown said.
The light in the basin flared up a little, casting dark shadows on the
ceiling, and at the same moment the shutter, which I had failed to
fasten securely, fell open with a grinding sound. One of the curtains
swayed a little in the breeze, "I have robbed my master," I said,
slowly.
"Of how much?"
"A hundred and twenty thousand crowns."
The bed shook until the boards creaked under it; but this time no hand
grasped the curtains. Instead, a strained voice--thick and coarse, yet
differing from that muffled tone which we had heard before--asked, "Who
are you?"
"Jules Fauchet."
I waited. The King, who understood nothing but had listened to my
answers with eager attention, and marked no less closely the agitation
which they caused in the unknown, leant forward to listen. But the bed
creaked no more; the curtain hung still; even the voice, which at last
issued from the curtains, was no more like the ordinary accents of a
man than are those which he utters in the paroxysms of epilepsy. "Are
you--sorry?" the unknown muttered--involuntarily, I think; hoping
against hope; not daring to depart from a formula which had become
second nature. But I could fancy him clawing, as he spoke, at his
choking throat.
France, however, had suffered too long at the hands of that race of
men, and I had been too lately vilified by them to feel much pity; and
for answer I lifted a voice that to the quailing wretch must have been
the voice of doom. "Sorry?" I said grimly. "I must be--or hang! For
to-morrow the King examines his books, and the next day I--hang!"
The King's hand was on mine, to stop me before the last word was out;
but his touch came too late. As it rang through the room one of the
curtains before us was twitched aside, and a face glared out, so
ghastly and drawn and horror-stricken, that few would have known it for
that of the wealthy fermier, who had grown sleek and fat on the King's
revenues. I do not know whether he knew us, or whether, on the
contrary, he found this accusation, so precise, so accurate, coming
from an unknown source, still more terrible than if he had known us;
but on the instant he fell forward in a swoon.
"St. Gris!" Henry cried, looking on the body with a shudder, "you have
killed him, Grand Master! It was true, was it?"
"Yes, sire," I answered. "But he is not dead, I think." And going to
the window I whistled for Maignan, who in a minute came to us. He was
not very willing to touch the man, but I bade him lay him on the bed
and loosen his clothes and throw water on his face; and presently M.
Fauchet began to recover.
I stepped a little aside that he might not see me, and accordingly the
first person on whom his eyes lighted was the King, who had laid aside
his hat and cloak, and taken the terrified and weeping child on his
lap. M. Fauchet stared at him awhile before he recognised him; but at
last the trembling man knew him, and tottering to his feet, threw
himself on his knees, looking years older than when I had last seen him
in the street.
"Sire," he said faintly, "I will make restitution."
Henry looked at him gravely, and nodded. "It is well," he said. "You
are fortunate, M. Fauchet; for had this come to my ears in any other
way I could not have spared you. You will render your accounts and
papers to M. de Sully to-morrow, and according as you are frank with
him you will be treated."
Fauchet thanked him with abject tears, and the King rose and prepared
to leave. But at the door a thought struck him, and he turned. "How
long have you done this?" he said, indicating the room by a gesture,
and speaking in a gentler tone.
"Three years, sire," the wretched man answered.
"And how much have you distributed?"
"Fifteen hundred crowns, sire."
The King cast an indescribable look at me, wherein amusement, scorn,
and astonishment were all blended. "St. Gris! man!" he said,
shrugging his shoulders and drawing in his breath sharply, "you think
God is as easily duped as the King! I wish I could think so."
He did not speak again until we were half-way back to the Louvre; when
he opened his mouth to announce his intention of rewarding me with a
tithe of the money recovered. It was duly paid to me, and I bought
with it part of the outlying lands of Villebon--those, I mean, which
extend towards Chartres. The rest of the money, notwithstanding all my
efforts, was wasted here and there, Pimentel winning thirty crowns of
the King that year. But the discovery led to others of a similar
character, and eventually set me on the track of a greater offender, M.
l'Argentier, whom I brought to justice a few months later.