of decisive importance to him, the small door on Rue du
Faubourg-Saint-Honoré, through which visitors on foot were admitted,
opened in response to an impatient ring, and Pierre appeared. His
arrival thus on his father's heels, in view of the circumstances under
which the two men had parted, was a threat well calculated to check the
flow of blood in the unfaithful steward's veins. He had hastened thither
to implore a compassion which his son's presence would render
unavailing. That implacable Fate, of which Landri had been the
craftsman, unwitting at first, then terrified by its working out,
continued its work. But what is this Fate if not the internal logic of
life, so well summed up, in the words of the poet: "We are the masters
of our first step. We are the slaves of the second." This force which
thus compels all the consequences of crime is not distinguishable from
it. We could not help committing a crime. Once committed it holds us
fast. Our very precautions serve only to hasten our punishment. It
overtakes us alike through our prudences and our imprudences, through
those who love us and those who hate us and those even to whom we are
indifferent, so inevitably do our sins unfold their results according to
a mathematical ratio.
Landri's visit to Pierre Chaffin was a perfectly natural result of the
peculations committed by the steward of the Claviers estate, and that
visit had produced this other no less natural result: the doctor had
questioned his father. When Chaffin returned to the house on Quai de
Béthune on the preceding day, his son opened the door, anticipating his
ring, a sign that he had been at the window watching for his return.
"I was waiting for you," he said. "Let us go into my study. I have
something to say to you, at once."
"What's going on?" queried Chaffin. As he asked the question his glance
expressed more terror than surprise. This singular fact did not escape
Pierre. He was conscious of the false ring in the newcomer's laughter as
he added, with an impertinent allusion to the very advanced opinions
professed by the physician: "There's no question of an anarchist plot,
is there? For I am as much of a radical as you please, but still, you
know, a landed proprietor."
"Landri de Claviers has just gone from here," Pierre replied, paying no
heed to the pleasantry. He had closed the door by way of precaution, and
spoke in a low voice. He did not wish his mother and sister, who were
looking over the week's laundry in an adjoining room, to suspect that
his father and he were closeted together. "Yes," he repeated, "Landri de
Claviers." And he gazed steadfastly at the discharged steward. He tried
to detect upon that enigmatic face a confusion which did not appear. The
thief recovered his self-control, and ventured to reply:--
"He is probably ashamed of the way his father behaved to his old tutor.
I don't class them together, Monsieur de Claviers and him. Landri is
weak. He doesn't dare to break a lance against the prejudices of a
society which he estimates none the less at its real worth. You saw how
absurdly he acted in that matter of the inventory. He is not a believer,
he adores the army, and still he gets his job taken away from him! He
has a poor head, but he's a very good fellow."
"Landri did not come to apologize either for himself or his father,"
said the doctor. "He came to accuse us."
"Us?" cried Chaffin. "Of what, I should like to know?"
Despite his self-control, that explicit statement made him jump. Among
the many suppositions with which his terror-haunted fancy had tormented
him, one had been especially persistent of late: he had written the
anonymous note, it will be remembered, on his typewriter. Several people
in the Claviers household knew that he had the machine. At the moment he
had said to himself: "Pshaw! there are thousands of others in Paris!"
and had gone ahead. Since then he had lived in deadly fear lest some
suggestion should lead the marquis to see whether the characters in the
letter did not correspond with those of his machine. It was an
extravagant fear. By virtue of what authority could M. de Claviers have
claimed such a power? But it is the peculiarity of the fixed idea, that
it does not distinguish the possible from the impossible. And then,
there was Pierre. To be assailed by an insinuation of that nature in the
esteem and affection of his son was to the father a worse punishment
than to be sent before the Assizes. Did Landri's accusation relate to
that? Did he claim the right to demand a test? But, if so, what was the
meaning of that "us?"
"I will tell you about it," rejoined the physician. He began to repeat
word for word the conversation he had had with his father's former
pupil, ending with the terrible question asked by himself: "Yes or no,
did you hear any talk of dishonesty?" and with Landri's evasive reply:
"I heard something said of confusion in Monsieur de Claviers' affairs."
As he told the story, which it was exceedingly painful to him to repeat
thus, his eyes continued to examine the face of the agent so directly
incriminated. Lively emotion was certain to be depicted thereon, even if
he were innocent,--especially if he were innocent. The news of Landri's
visit, under the existing conditions, could not be indifferent to a man
of heart. There was matter therein at which to take offence, to be
distressed, to be alarmed, to be indignant. Perhaps, if Chaffin had
foreseen this explanation with his son, he would have been shrewd enough
to feign agitation. But being attacked unexpectedly, he instinctively
feigned absolute impassibility. It is the least hazardous of defences
for a culprit taken by surprise. It offers no hold for an investigation,
but for that very reason it suggests mastery of self, a premeditated
reserve, the possibility of a secret.
Pierre felt this so strongly that, at the end of this painful
narration,--this cross-examination, rather, scarcely disguised,--he
uttered a cry, a downright appeal to the sense of honor of that father
of his, who listened to him with an impassive face which made it
impossible to discover a single one of his thoughts:--
"And it doesn't make you jump from your chair that I, your son, have
reached the point where I could put such a question to that man, and
that he refused to answer? You seem to have no suspicion that I am
passing through one of the most ghastly hours of my whole life! Don't
tell me that you had nothing to do with the disappearance of Monsieur
Jaubourg's papers. I know it. Don't tell me that this act of Landri's
proves that he and his father are crazy. I know it. But I know something
else, by an experience of many, many years! Monsieur de Claviers and
Landri, with all their failings and their prejudices and their follies
and their absurdities, are perfectly honorable men, incapable of
wronging any one knowingly. If they suspected you of this, it was
because they believed that they had the right to. It must be that you
and the marquis broke off your relations for some reason of which I know
nothing. I insist on knowing it. Yes, why did Monsieur de Claviers, who
finds it so hard to discharge his employés,--you used to complain of it
so often!--why did he part with you so abruptly, so brutally? Ah!" he
concluded in a heart-rending tone, "if the reason was what you told us,
Landri would never have come here, he would never have left me with that
evasive reply, after he had seen how I was suffering, and what I
thought--never!"
"I told your mother and sister and you the exact truth," said Chaffin,
pretending to be angry at last.
He could not assume any other attitude, but the contrast was too great
between this sudden outburst and the carefully guarded attention of a
few moments before. They who simulate emotions always miss their
imitation of reality in some detail. They exaggerate the symptoms or
distort them. For instance, the impostors who feign an attack of
vertigo, and who fall with their hands extended to protect themselves.
The genuine epileptic, being hurled to the ground as it were, has no
time to take that precaution. The error, in this case, was the sudden
change from premeditated indifference to extreme rage, without
transition. The protest, too emphatic in his too abrupt somersault, was
not sincere.
"Yes," the dishonest steward persisted none the less, "I told you the
truth, and it is incredible to me that you, my son, should be the one to
take sides against me with these great nobles whom you know only by
hearsay! I know them, I do, from having undergone innumerable
humiliations at their hands which I have always concealed from you. In
their eyes a man is of no account when he doesn't belong to their caste.
They wouldn't do you a material injury. They are very careful in that
respect, from pride. But as to other injuries, no. I expected better
things from Landri. Evidently he's no better than his father. Papers are
missing from Jaubourg's apartments, certificates of stock, I suppose?
They think at once of _us_, of _us_, mind you, of you as well as myself!
Do I conclude from that that they mean to accuse you of dishonesty? Not
at all. But you conclude that they do mean to accuse me! It is
incredible! But the dishonesty was in coming here to insult you and your
father! And you listened to my gentleman? And when he proved to you, by
the mere fact of coming here, his absolute lack of perspicacity, you
questioned him about me?--How many times must I tell you that Monsieur
de Claviers did not part with me, but I parted with him, and for the
reason that Landri admitted: he talked about confusion in my accounts,
when there was no confusion in anything but his expenditure, which was
insane! What Landri did not tell you is that I warned him personally of
the marquis's impending ruin, in order to save his fortune. Just ask him
about that. We will see whether he will dare to deny that conversation
at Grandchamp when I gave him the exact figures. I swear it, on your
mother's head and your sister's. If he had listened to me he wouldn't
have lost a sou. And this is how he rewards me! But he isn't my son, and
you, Pierre, have been too unjust to me, too ungrateful. I have only
lived and worked for you all, for you especially. I have tried to spare
you all the miseries of the breadwinner which crushed me at your age.
You were intelligent and hard-working. I kept you at home, so that you
could give your time to science as you chose, and prepare for your
examinations, while your comrades were wearing themselves out with
patients; and you have forgotten all my sacrifices!--Ah! it's too
horrible!"
"For the very reason that I am living on your benefactions," replied the
physician with savage asperity, "I cannot endure certain ideas. And
those ideas," he continued still more harshly, "let us admit that it is,
as you say, horrible to entertain them. It is a fact that I do entertain
them. Would you like me to tell you why? Landri de Claviers' conduct has
nothing to do with it. The change in you that I have noticed these last
weeks has given them to me, nothing else. Since you left Grandchamp you
are not the same man. I see it with my eyes. I see that you are
suffering. You are growing thin. You don't eat. You don't sleep. You
have some persistent trouble that you cannot hide, and I too am
beginning to have one, I feel it growing and taking possession of me--it
is suspicion. I do not want it. We must not both play at madness. Let us
have more pride. A father and son should not exchange such words as
these twice. There is one way of putting an end to them. It is too late
to-day," he added, looking at the clock; "but to-morrow, at eleven,
after the Hôtel-Dieu, I'll call for you, and we will go together to Rue
du Faubourg-Saint-Honoré. We will ask to speak with the marquis. You
will tell him, or, if you prefer, I will, that there are rumors abroad.
And it is true. Louvet has changed his manner to me since you left the
Claviers. These rumors have reached our ears. We have come to ask him to
cut them short by declaring publicly, and first of all before me, that
he has nothing to reproach you with in your stewardship that affects
your honor. I will demand that he put that declaration in writing for
me, if necessary."
"I will not do it!" cried Chaffin, his eyes bulging out with terror as,
in imagination, they saw M. de Claviers. "I will not do it! You talk
about pride, and yet you don't see that you are proposing to me a
nameless humiliation, worse than all the rest!"
"What, pray?" his son quickly retorted. "What humiliation is there in
going to a man as to whom you have nothing to reproach yourself with,
and claiming from him reparation for involuntary injustice? Tell me,
when Louvet and I--and how many others that I don't know!--may have
received an unfavorable impression of your quarrel with Monsieur de
Claviers, is not that an injustice, if the quarrel was a mere caprice on
his part? And is he not responsible for it by the exaggerated
indignation which you claim that he has shown?"
"People may think what they choose," interposed Chaffin. "I won't go up
that man's stairs. I won't go to his house. I won't go."
"Very good," said Pierre, "then I shall go alone."
"You won't put that affront on me?" the father implored. "You shall not
go! I forbid you. To humiliate yourself is to humiliate me. We are one
as to that. You must obey me."
"Because of that very identity of interest, I shall not obey you,"
rejoined the son. "Your honor is my honor. I propose to know whether the
money I am living on is pure. At eleven o'clock to-morrow I shall be
there. I hope you will be there too. But if you are not, I shall go in
alone. Nothing on earth, you understand, nothing shall prevent my having
an explanation with Monsieur de Claviers, unless--"
"Unless what?" queried Chaffin breathlessly. "Go on."
"Unless you tell me that your leaving his service was for a different
reason, and what it was."
"I can't invent one," the father replied.
"Then I can't understand your objections to a step which, I tell you
once more, I must take in order to put an end to an intolerable state of
mind."
"Well!" said Chaffin, after a pause, "do it, since you no longer believe
in your father; but remember this, that I will never forgive you."
An awkward and ill-timed attempt at paternal dignity, which lacked the
accent, the expression, the gesture, in a word the inimitable and
irresistible reality, which Pierre craved as he craved bread and water,
air and light! Chaffin resorted to it, however, as a desperate effort to
prevent that visit, the threat of which had sent a stream of fire
running through his veins. What an evening and night he passed under the
apprehension of that hour, which every minute brought nearer, when his
shamefully wronged employer and his idolized son should be face to face!
The young man did not dine at home, in order to avoid meeting his
father. The latter heard him come in about midnight. A mad temptation
assailed him, as he heard that well-known step, to rise and go to him
and confess everything. But no. Pierre's terrible words were still
ringing in his ears: "I propose to know whether the money I am living on
is pure." How could he bear to tell that boy, whose probity was so
absolute, that that money was not pure, that the little fortune, by
virtue of which he was pursuing his studies, almost without practising,
was, in part, stolen! For that was really one of the motives that had
led Chaffin into rascality: his passionate desire to assure his son
Pierre immunity from his own laborious life was his revenge for his
semi-menial position. He had imagined him physician to the hospitals,
professor in the Faculty, member of the Académie de Medicine, perhaps
of the Institute.
This excitation of his paternal love was due to the same malevolence,
born of his abortive destiny, that filled him with implacable hatred of
his noble and magnificent employer. That most excellent sentiments can
exist in the same heart with evil sentiments, and criminal resolutions
inspired by the latter justify themselves by the former, is a fact of
every-day observation, as disconcerting as it is indisputable. It
explains why the great legislators, who were also great psychologists,
always strove to punish acts in themselves, without seeking the intent
with which they were committed. The decadence of civic justice began
with this search for the intent, which, in healthy societies, is left to
religion to deal with. The Church can still find reasons for pardoning a
Chaffin for his crimes, when human tribunals, taking cognizance of his
case, owe him naught save the galleys.
"If he ever finds that out," said the guilty father to himself, in that
vigil of anguish, "he will leave me. He will go away from the house. His
mother and sister will insist on knowing, too. They will guess the
truth. At any price, Pierre must remain in ignorance. But how?"
Then it was that in that mind, already exhausted by the stings of
conscience, an idea began to take root. It occurred to him to go
himself, about nine o'clock, while his son was at the Hôtel-Dieu, and
throw himself at the marquis's feet. He would implore him not to
dishonor him in Pierre's eyes. M. de Claviers was generous. He would
take pity on him. He would promise not to speak. He would not speak. But
to appear before Madame de Claviers' husband after he had, like a
dastard, dealt him that despicable blow of the anonymous letter, was
beyond the Judas's courage. He could not even endure the thought. There
had been, in the attitude maintained by that proud man since he had
received the letter of his wife, testifying to her liaison with Jaubourg
and the illegitimacy of the child, a mystery which terrified Chaffin. He
divined therein a bottomless abyss of suffering over which it would be
too horrible for him to lean.
Landri's visit to Pierre had intensified that puzzled sensation. His
inquiries concerning papers said to have been stolen from Jaubourg
implied that the young count was informed of the anonymous letter. Had
M. de Claviers shown it to him? If so, why? Why, so that Landri might
institute this inquiry, of course! And with what object, if not to
unearth the holder of the "other documents"? Chaffin recalled those
words in his letter, which was written in the paroxysm of nervous
excitement caused by the gratification of long-cherished hate. He had
added to it, in pure wantonness, a threat of blackmail which he had
never intended to put in execution.
That recollection suggested a second plan: since his threat had produced
such an effect on the two men, he had a certain means of obtaining from
them a promise of silence with respect to his son. It was to Landri that
the marquis had entrusted the mission of seeking those documents. It was
to Landri that he must appeal. The anticipation of that interview was
painful to the dishonored tutor. But it was not unendurable, like the
other. But would Landri give way under that pressure? Would he not, on
the other hand, reply: "You threaten us with a scandal? Very good. We
propose to apply for a warrant against you."
No, he must not take that risk. Chaffin devised a safer method of
procedure. He thought that he was well acquainted with his pupil of so
many years. He believed him to be very weak, but he knew his absolute
loyalty and the noble elements of his character. The better way was to
go to him and say: "It was I who wrote that outrageous denunciation in a
moment of insanity. I am sorry for it. I have the other papers. Here
they are. I place them in your hands. I ask you, in return, to induce
Monsieur de Claviers not to tell Pierre the real reason for my leaving
him." The acceptance of that restitution would create the most sacred of
obligations in the eyes of the noble-hearted young man.
Such are the disconcerting contradictions of human nature, that, upon
representing to himself that scene of confession, although dictated
entirely by self-interest, Chaffin had a sense of relief, almost as of
rehabilitation. At all events he should have spoken, should have
confessed his crime, which was suffocating him.
Once determined upon this course, he was in such feverish haste to carry
it out that he left the house before nine o'clock, as soon as his son
had started for the Hôtel-Dieu. He had not reckoned upon the working of
Pierre's mind in a direction parallel to his own. The physician had said
to himself, on leaving his father:--
"To-morrow he will have reflected. He will decide to go to Monsieur de
Claviers with me if there's nothing wrong; and if there is anything, he
will confess."
When he found, in the morning, that Chaffin did not mention the subject
again, he reasoned thus:--
"My father has devised some expedient. What can it be? If he is guilty,
there is only one: to go there first, in order to implore the marquis to
spare him with regard to me. But is it possible?"
The physician had resolved to go to all lengths now, to put an end to
the torture of suspicion, which, to his horror, was already changing
from a recurrent to a fixed idea. He dreaded too keenly the form of
monomania so well defined by one of his confrères of ancient times:
_Animi angor in una cogitatione defixus et inhœrens_. He had acted at
once therefore. Instead of going to the hospital, he had stationed
himself at the corner of Rue des Deux-Ponts and Quai de Béthune. He had
seen his father leave the house, look about him like one who fears that
he is watched, and then bend his steps, with an air of feigned
indifference, toward Pont Sully, where he took a cab. Pierre himself
hailed the first cab that passed. He gave the driver a five-franc piece,
telling him to drive as fast as possible to the corner of Rue
d'Aguesseau and Rue du Faubourg-Saint-Honoré, where he arrived in time
to see Chaffin's cab stop in front of the hôtel de Claviers. He waited
a few moments, then rang and asked the concierge:--
"Is my father with Monsieur le Marquis?"
"No, Monsieur le Docteur," the man replied, "Monsieur Chaffin came to
see Monsieur le Comte."
"Very well! I beg you to send and ask Monsieur le Marquis if he can
receive me," said Pierre, after a moment's hesitation.
He had fancied that he could read in the concierge's eyes the same
constraint that he had noticed of late in Professor Louvet's. He was
only partly mistaken. Naturally, the magnanimous M. de Claviers had
confided to no one in his entourage his grievances against his
secretary. But his servants were well aware of his unalloyed kindness of
heart. They had imagined the reason of Chaffin's abrupt dismissal, the
more readily because they were not ignorant of his daily peculation. But
they were not officially informed. Pierre had sufficient proof of that,
for Landri's door was not closed to his father, and he himself was
admitted to the presence of M. de Claviers. The concierge called up the
speaking-tube that connected his lodge with the house. An affirmative
answer was returned. The bell rang, announcing the visitor, and the
doctor was ushered into the presence of the marquis five minutes after
Chaffin's humble and suppliant figure had passed through Landri's door.
"There may be nothing wrong after all," thought the doctor, "as they
receive us both. If it were only true! What a weight would be taken from
my heart! However, I shall soon know."
The _grand seigneur_, with whom the son of the unfaithful steward, of
the villainous informer, ventured to adopt this tragic step, was in the
vast, severe library, which had been the scene, a fortnight before, of a
no less tragic explanation, that with Landri. He was seated at his table
this time, engaged in a task which would have seemed most strange to one
who was not aware of the secret resolutions of his mind. He was
transcribing himself, upon detached sheets, the number of which was
already very great, a schedule of all the artistic treasures preserved
in the château of Grandchamp. He had proceeded methodically, room by
room, and he was at that moment, as was indicated by the line written at
the top of the sheet, in the apartment of the deceased marchioness. He
had kept it till the last. The reason will be only too readily
understood.