By M. Bernard-Jean-Baptiste Macloud, Baron Bourlac.
Formerly attorney-general to the Royal Court of Rouen. Grand officer of
the Legion of honor.
“Ha! the slayer of Madame’s daughter! of the Chevalier du Vissard! the
man who condemned her to twenty years’ imprisonment!” said Godefroid,
in a feeble voice. His legs gave way under him, and he dropped into a
chair. “What a beginning!” he muttered.
“This matter, my dear Godefroid,” resumed Monsieur Joseph, “concerns us
all. You have done your part; leave the rest to us. I beg you to have
no more to do with it; go and fetch the things you have left behind you.
Don’t say a word of all this. Practise absolute discretion. Tell the
Baron de Bourlac to address himself to me. By that time we shall have
decided how to act under the circumstances.”
Godefroid left him, took a cab, and went back as fast as he could to
the boulevard du Mont-Parnasse, filled with horror as he remembered that
indictment signed with Bourlac’s name, the bloody drama ending on the
scaffold, and Madame de la Chanterie’s imprisonment at Bicetre. He
understood now the abandonment in which this former attorney-general,
another Fourquier-Tinville in the public mind, was ending his days, and
the true reasons for the concealment of his name.
“May Monsieur Joseph avenge her terribly!” he thought. As he uttered the
wish in his own mind, he saw Auguste.
“What do you want of me?” he asked.
“My good friend, such a dreadful misfortune has overtaken us that I am
almost mad. Wretches have come here and seized all my mother’s property,
and they are going to put my grandfather in prison. But it is not on
account of those misfortunes that I come to implore you,” said the lad,
with Roman pride; “it is to ask you to do me a service such as people do
to those who are condemned to die.”
“Go on, what is it?” said Godefroid.
“They came here to seize my grandfather’s manuscript; and as I think
he gave you the book itself I want you to take the notes, for Madame
Vauthier will not let me carry anything out of the house. Put them with
the volumes and--”
“Yes, yes,” said Godefroid, “go and get them at once.”
While the lad went back to his own rooms, returning immediately,
Godefroid reflected that the poor child was guilty of no crime, and that
he ought not to put despair into that young heart by speaking of his
grandfather and of the punishment for his savage political actions that
had overtaken his old age. He therefore took the little package with a
good grace.
“What is your mother’s name?” he asked.
“My mother is the Baronne de Mergi; my father was the son of the
president of the Royal Court at Rouen.”
“Ah!” said Godefroid; “then your grandfather married his daughter to the
son of the famous president Mergi.”
“Yes, monsieur.”
“Now, my little friend, leave me,” said Godefroid. He went with young
Mergi to the landing, and called to Madame Vauthier.
“Mere Vauthier,” he said, “you can let my rooms. I shall not come back
any more.”
He gathered his things together, went downstairs, and got into the cab.
“Have you given anything to that gentleman?” said the Vauthier to
Auguste.
“Yes,” said the young man.
“You’re a pretty fellow! that’s the agent of your grandfather’s enemies.
He managed this whole business, and the proof is that, now that the
trick is played, he goes off and isn’t coming back any more. He has just
told me I can let his lodgings.”
Auguste flew to the boulevard and ran after the cab shouting so loudly
that he finally stopped it.
“What do you want?” asked Godefroid.
“My grandfather’s manuscripts.”
“Tell them he can get them from Monsieur Joseph.”
The youth thought the words were intended as a cruel joke. He sat down
in the snow as he saw the cab disappearing rapidly. Presently he sprang
up with momentary vigor, returned to his room and went to bed worn out
with fatigue and distress.
The next morning, when the poor boy woke alone in that apartment so
lately occupied by his mother and grandfather, the painful emotions of
his cruel position filled his mind. The solitude of his home, where up
to this time every moment had had its duty and its occupation, seemed
so hard to bear that he went down to Madame Vauthier to ask if she had
received any news of his grandfather. The woman answered sneeringly that
he knew very well, or he might know, where to find his grandfather; the
reason why he had not come in, she said, was because he had gone to live
at the chateau de Clichy. This malicious speech, from the woman who had
coaxed and wheedled him the evening before, put the lad into another
frenzy, and he rushed to the hospital once more, desperate with the idea
that his grandfather was in prison.
Baron Bourlac had wandered all night round the hospital, where he was
refused entrance, and round the private residence of Dr. Halpersohn from
whom he wished, naturally, to obtain an explanation of such treatment.
The doctor did not get home till two in the morning. At half-past one
the old man was at his door; on being told he was absent, he turned and
walked about the grand alley of the Champs Elysees until half-past
two. When he again went to the house, the porter told him that Monsieur
Halpersohn had returned, gone to bed, was asleep, and could not be
disturbed.
The poor father, in despair, wandered along the quay and under the
frost-laden trees of the Cours-la-reine, waiting for daylight. At nine
o’clock in the morning he again presented himself at the doctor’s
house, demanding to know the reason why his daughter was thus virtually
imprisoned.
“Monsieur,” replied the doctor, to whose presence he was admitted,
“yesterday I told you I would answer for your daughter’s recovery; but
to-day I am responsible for her life and you will readily understand
that I must be the sovereign master in such a case. Yesterday your
daughter took a medicine intended to bring out her disease, the _plica
polonica_; until that horrible disease shows itself on the surface you
cannot see her. I will not allow excitement or any mistake of management
to carry off my patient and your daughter. If you positively insist on
seeing her, I shall call a consultation of three physicians, so as to
relieve myself of responsibility, for the patient may die of it.”
The old man, worn out with fatigue, dropped on a chair; but he rose
immediately, saying:--
“Forgive me, monsieur. I have spent the night waiting for you in
dreadful distress of mind. You cannot know to what degree I love my
daughter; I have nursed her for fifteen years hovering between life and
death, and this week of waiting is torture to me.”
The baron left the room staggering like a drunken man. The doctor
followed and supported him by the arm until he saw him safely down the
staircase.
An hour later Auguste de Mergi entered the doctor’s room. On questioning
the porter at the hospital the unhappy lad heard that his grandfather
had been refused an entrance and had gone away to find Monsieur
Halpersohn, who could probably give information about him. As Auguste
entered the doctor’s study Halpersohn was breakfasting on a cup of
chocolate and a glass of water. He did not disturb himself at the young
man’s entrance, but went on sopping his bread in the chocolate; for he
never ate anything for breakfast but a small roll cut into four strips
with careful precision.
“Well, young man,” he said, glancing at Vanda’s son, “so you have come,
too, to find out about your mother?”
“Yes, monsieur;” replied Auguste de Mergi.
Auguste was standing near the table on which lay several bank-notes
among a pile of gold louis. Under the circumstances in which the unhappy
boy was placed the temptation was stronger than his principles, solid
as they were. He saw a means of saving his grandfather and the fruits
of almost a lifetime of toil. He yielded. The fascination was rapid
as thought; and it was justified to the child’s mind by the idea
of self-devotion. “I destroy myself, but I save my mother and my
grandfather,” he thought. Under the strain put upon his reason by this
criminal temptation he acquired, like madmen, a singular and momentary
dexterity.
Halpersohn, an experienced observer, had divined, retrospectively, the
life of the old man and that of the lad and of the mother. He felt or
perceived the truth; the Baronne de Mergi’s remarks had helped to unveil
it to him; and the result was a feeling of benevolent pity for his
new clients. As for respect or admiration, he was incapable of those
emotions.
“Well, my dear boy,” he replied familiarly, “I am taking care of your
mother, and I shall return her to you young and handsome and perfectly
well in health. Here is one of those rare cases in which physicians take
an interest. Besides, through her mother, she is a compatriot of mine.
You and your grandfather must for two weeks have the courage to keep
away from Madame--?”
“The Baronne de Mergi.”
“Ah! if she is a baroness, you must be a baron,” remarked Halpersohn.
At that instant the theft was accomplished. While the doctor was looking
at his sopped bread heavy with chocolate, Auguste snatched four notes
and put them into his pocket, as if he were merely putting his hand
there by accident.
“Yes, monsieur,” he replied, “I am a baron, and so is my grandfather; he
was attorney-general under the Restoration.”
“You blush, young man; there’s no need to blush for being a poor baron;
that’s common enough.”
“Who told you, monsieur, that we are poor?”
“Your grandfather told me he had spent the night in the Champs Elysees;
and though I know no palace with half so fine a ceiling as that of the
skies at two o’clock this morning, I assure you it was pretty cold in
the palace where your grandfather passed the night. We don’t select the
‘Star’ inn from choice.”
“Has my grandfather been here this morning?” said Auguste, seizing the
opportunity to get away. “I thank you, monsieur, and I will call again,
if you will permit me, to ask for news of my mother.”
As soon as he was in the street the young baron took a cab to go
as rapidly as he could to the sheriff’s office, where he paid his
grandfather’s debt. The sheriff gave him the papers and a receipted bill
of costs, and told one of his clerks to accompany the young man home and
relieve the legal guardian of her functions.
“As Messieurs Barbet and Metivier live in your quarter,” he said, “I
will tell my young man to carry the money there and obtain the bill of
sale of the books and return it to you.”
Auguste who did not understand either the terms or the formalities of
the law, did exactly as he was told. He received seven hundred francs
change from the four thousand francs he had stolen, and went away with
the clerk. He got back into the cab in a condition of semi-stupor; for,
the result being now obtained, remorse began; he saw himself dishonored,
cursed by his grandfather, whose inflexible nature was well-known
to him, and he felt that his mother would surely die if she knew him
guilty. All nature changed for him. He was hot; he did not see the snow;
the houses looked like spectres flitting past him.
By the time he reached home the young baron had decided on his course
which was certainly that of an honest man. He went to his mother’s room,
took the gold snuff-box set with diamonds given to his grandfather by
the Emperor, and wrapped it in a parcel with the seven hundred francs
and the following letter, which required several rough copies before it
was satisfactory. Then he directed the whole to Doctor Halpersohn:--
Monsieur,--The fruits of twenty years of my grandfather’s toil
were about to be seized by usurers, who even threatened to put him
in prison. Three thousand three hundred francs were enough to save
him. Seeing all that money on your table, I could not resist the
happiness of freeing my grandfather from his danger. I borrowed,
without your consent, four thousand francs of you; but as three
thousand three hundred were all that was necessary, I send the
other seven hundred in money, together with a gold snuff-box set
with diamonds, given to my grandfather by the Emperor, the value
of which will probably cover the whole sum.
In case you do not believe in the honor of him who will forever
regard you as a benefactor, I pray you to keep silence about an
act which would be quite unjustifiable under other circumstances;
for by so doing you will save my grandfather’s life, just as you
are saving my mother’s life; and I shall be forever
Your devoted servant, Auguste de Mergi.
About half-past two o’clock in the afternoon, Auguste, who went himself
as far as the Champs Elysees, sent the package from there by a street
messenger to Doctor Halpersohn’s house; then he walked slowly homeward
by the pont de Jena, the Invalides, and the boulevards, relying on
Halpersohn’s generosity.
The Polish doctor had meanwhile discovered the theft, and he instantly
changed his opinion of his clients. He now thought the old man had come
to rob him, and being unable to succeed, had sent the boy. He doubted
the rank they had claimed, and went straight to the police-office where
he lodged a complaint, requesting that the lad might be arrested at
once.
The prudence with which the law proceeds seldom allows it to move as
rapidly as complainants desire; but about three o’clock of that day a
commissary of police, accompanied by agents who kept watch outside the
house, was questioning Madame Vauthier as to her lodgers, and the
widow was increasing, without being aware of it, the suspicions of the
policeman.
When Nepomucene saw the police agents stationed outside the house,
he thought they had come to arrest the old man, and as he was fond of
Monsieur Auguste, he rushed to meet Monsieur Bernard, whom he now saw on
his way home in the avenue de l’Observatoire.
“Hide yourself, monsieur!” he cried, “the police have come to arrest
you. The sheriff was here yesterday and seized everything. Madame
Vauthier didn’t give you the stamped papers, and she says you’ll be in
Clichy to-night or to-morrow. There, don’t you see those policemen?”
Baron Bourlac immediately resolved to go straight to Barbet. The former
publisher lived in the rue Saint-Catherine d’Enfer, and it took him a
quarter of an hour to reach the house.
“Ah! I suppose you have come to get that bill of sale,” said Barbet,
replying to the salutation of his victim. “Here it is.”
And, to Baron Bourlac’s great astonishment, he held out the document,
which the baron took, saying,--
“I do not understand.”
“Didn’t you pay me?” said the usurer.
“Are you paid?”
“Yes, your grandson took the money to the sheriff this morning.”
“Then it is true you made a seizure at my house yesterday?”
“Haven’t you been home for two days?” asked Barbet. “But an old
magistrate ought to know what a notification of arrest means.”
Hearing that remark, the baron bowed coldly to Barbet and returned home,
thinking that the policemen whom Nepomucene had pointed out must have
come for the two impecunious authors on the upper floor. He walked
slowly, lost in vague apprehensions; for, in spite of the explanation he
gave himself, Nepomucene’s words came back, and seemed to him more
and more obscure and inexplicable. Was it possible that Godefroid had
betrayed him?