I.
THE HUNGER OF FERDINAND
DAUBERVAL
It wanted about an hour to sunset when Ferdinand Dauberval, sick
with hunger and fatigue, passed through the Porte St. Denis and asked
of the guard there the way to the Rue St. Paul.
“I am from Avranches, monsieur,” said he, “and though you may not
think it from my appearance, this is the first time that I have set
eyes upon the city of Paris.”
The guard thus addressed was a tall, good-humoured fellow, mounted
upon a great black horse. He looked down, half in pity, half in
amusement, at the dust-begrimed young man, who now clung to his
stirrup-leather, if possible to rest his weary legs for a moment.
“_Sang bleu!_” said the guard. “If I took note of your appearance, my
friend, I should think a good many things. You are from Avranches, you
say? Then what have you to do in the Rue St. Paul?”
“That is my business,” replied Dauberval, sulkily; but correcting
himself in a moment, he added, “though I don’t know why I should not
tell you. I seek Mademoiselle de Montesson at the Hôtel Beautreillis.
You know her house?”
The guard answered with a merry sneer.
“Oh,” cried he, “I should know that house pretty well--all the beggars
in Paris go there. Follow the first blind man from the Quinze-Vingts
Infirmary and he will lead you to the door like a dog at the end of a
string.”
Dauberval, weak as he was, flushed with anger at the insult.
“Do you think that I ask alms?” he exclaimed.
“I am sure of it,” answered the guard, smiling maliciously; “_Dame!_
you look as though you had not seen a crown for a twelvemonth. I
should advise you to make haste. They close the gate at curfew, and
then there is no more bread nor hot bean soup. You would not like to
hear that, eh?”
Dauberval swore a big oath.
“If I had you upon the stones,” he snarled, “I would knock some sense
into your silly head. Do you not see to whom you are talking? Oh, this
Paris is a pretty place for a gentleman!”
He could have cried with his vexation, for pride, and pride alone, had
brought him to the capital. It was true that his boots were in holes,
while his clothes were so covered with the dust that their quality was
not to be discerned; but still he plumed himself that his bearing and
his manner of speaking were such as became the son of the advocate of
Avranches, and it was galling to the point of madness that the first
Parisian he met should talk to him as one would talk to a leper upon
the steps of a parish church.
“To-morrow,” cried he, shaking his fist at the little group of idlers
who had gathered about the horseman,--“to-morrow, I will return with
my friends.”
“Hark to that,” roared a bellman, who was one of the first to come up,
“the dusty gentleman has friends. He will return with them to-morrow.
Let the Grand Chamberlain be informed, and the pages provided. Where
is his excellency’s horse?”
“Do we know to whom we are talking?” chimed in a merry cooper, who
stood with his hoops flung over his shoulder,--“well, it’s my belief
that we talk to our Lord the Pope--”
“Or to the Captain of the Gate,” suggested a laughing hussy.
“Or to both,” said a rat-catcher.
Dauberval answered them with a word hissed out between his teeth. If
he had not been so weak from hunger and fatigue, he would have run
away from them, but as it was, he only walked on down the Rue St.
Denis, cursing the day which had carried him to Paris; and that other
day when he staked his last crown on a throw of the dice at
Couches--and had lost it. Never had he thought that he, whose younger
brother was high in the service of the Grand Equerry, would come to
look with hungry eyes upon the bread which the very beggars ate,--much
less that he himself would be mistaken for a beggar.
“Pah!” he muttered, while he fought the phantoms of hunger who seemed
to dance up from the dirty gutters bearing loaves of sweet white bread
in their hands, “why should I despair? The Rue St. Paul cannot be far
from here, and Mademoiselle Corinne will know how to cure my troubles.
Did she not find a place for Armand, my brother--and what a place! It
is true that he has told her lies about me--but I shall answer them.
And she will believe me. A pretty woman always believes a man when he
is young and--”
He added in his heart “good-looking;” although it did occur to him
that he would need a great deal of brushing and mending before he
could appear without shame in Mademoiselle Corinne’s presence. He
consoled himself, however, with the thought that her lacqueys would do
this for him while their mistress was causing a good hot dinner to be
prepared; and so keen was his imagination that the warmth of the food
he awaited seemed already to fill his body with a delicious glow of
heat. He began, in his fancy, to smell the pungent odour of spices; he
said that he would arrive in the Rue St. Paul about the hour of
supper, and that a fat capon might possibly be set before him. The
horrible overpowering nausea, which was the result of his hunger,
almost left him in the presence of these suggestions. He moved his
mouth with the action of a man eating heartily, and a momentary return
of his bodily strength enabled him to run straight on until he came
out upon the Quai de l’Hôtel de Ville, and beheld the spires of Notre
Dame stand up before him.
Paris was beginning to wake to the pleasures of her night then; and
although it was early in the month of April in the year 1760, many
people were abroad in the streets, sitting before the doors of their
houses, or returning from their walk upon the ramparts. The great
river itself was alive with boats; some filled by noisy students who
played upon horns and drums; others with more orderly citizens bound
for the wine-gardens and taverns of Passy. Dauberval stood a minute
upon the quay to let the cool breeze play upon his burning face, and
to watch the many strange figures and the many strange sights about
him. He saw that he had never thought Paris could be so big. What a
maze of threatening, cramped, yet picturesque houses was that upon the
great island before him! How the cathedral dominated it all. Were
there ever such fine fellows as these bucks and gallants on their way
to dance with the butter-girls at the Quai de Gesvreo! Did any one
ever hear such gibberish as these German mountebanks were talking! How
the professional psalm-singers drawled! And there was a puppet-show
too; and an acrobat from Italy, and a peoples’ letter-writer, and a
hundred others; all merry, and busy, and withal good-humoured, because
the day was done with and the lights had begun to twinkle in the city.
Dauberval would have been content at any other time to have spent a
day upon this busy quay, but the hunger tearing at his vitals quickly
made him remember his errand. He asked of a petty wench who was
selling cocoa--“two goes for a liard”--the way to the Rue St. Paul,
and she answered him with a saucy laugh.
“_Ventrebleu!_” she cried, “that you should be so blind--yonder it
stands as close to your feet as a fool’s cap to his head. Oh, all the
world can see where you come from.”
“And the Hôtel Beautreillis?” asked Dauberval, too weak to argue with
her.
“At the corner past the Rue Charlemagne. Stop under the great bronze
lamp and tell the concierge that you are a simple young man from the
country. He will give you five sous to buy your supper with, and I
will give you a drink of cocoa for nothing.”
She held out her can to him, and he took a little sup of the cocoa;
but so great was his impatience to get to Mademoiselle Corinne’s house
that he would not wait for the boiling stuff to cool, but ran on when
he had gulped down a few drops of it. A minute later, he found himself
under the shadow of the great walls of the Hôtel Beautreillis; and he
saw the bronze lamp which the hussy had named. But it was unlighted,
and the forbidding iron-sheathed door in the quaint Norman tower at
the corner of the street offered to him a heart-breaking welcome. How,
he asked, if the pretty philanthropist whom he had walked all the way
from Avranches to see, were at her country house near Gros Bois? His
brain went whirling round at the thought! He prayed to God--and it was
many a year since a prayer had come to his lips--that his burden of
suffering might not have this new evil added to it.
The Rue St. Paul was almost deserted at that hour. Long black shadows
were stealing over the muddy flags of the wretched street. A few
flickering lanterns cast a dull gleam of yellow light upon the dirty
water of the open gutter. In the great house itself a dreadful silence
reigned. Not a lamp shone in any of the narrow windows; not a footfall
was to be heard in any of the courts. Dauberval beat with his fists
upon the heavy oaken door, but he might as well have struck at the
wall of the Bastille. No one answered to his puny knocking. He picked
up a flag from the gutter and hurled it at the iron armour of the
gate, but got for his pains only the weird echoes which went booming
from cloister to cloister, and from tower to tower. And his hunger was
now irresistible, horrible. His whole body seemed to be wasting away
as he stood.
“Oh, _mon Dieu!_” he wailed, wringing his hands, and sobbing for very
weakness, “have pity, have pity--one little drink of milk, oh, for
Christ’s sake.”
He thought surely that he was dying; and it was cruel, he said, that
he must perish of hunger at the very gate of his fortunes. The
possibility that pretty Mademoiselle Corinne, who had done so much for
his younger brother, Armand, might be at her château near Gros Bois,
had not come into his reckoning until that moment. Never before in all
his life had he known the meaning of hunger. He sat upon the stone
steps before the unyielding door, and it seemed to him that a hundred
demons were dancing round him, each bearing a tempting dish or a
goblet of rich red wine. He beat them off with his fists, and others
arose to caress him with visions of splendid feasts and tables
groaning. His greedy eyes searched the gutters in the vain hope that
an untrodden crust might lie there. He dipped his hands in the water
of a shining puddle and bathed his burning forehead; but it only
burned the more. He muttered a new prayer; and it was this--that his
death might come quickly, and that he might suffer such agony no
longer. And this was a prayer to which an answer was vouchsafed--but
not such an answer as he had looked for.
Truth to tell, it all came upon him very suddenly. He had sunk down
upon the step then, and his cheek was resting upon a slab of marble.
Pain had begun to give way to unconsciousness; the turbid dreams to
utter darkness of the mind. But from such a state of trance he awoke
presently to find that the rays of a lantern were flashing in his
eyes, and that a man dressed from head to foot in black had gripped
him firmly by the arm. He had heard strange tales of the footpads of
Paris; and his yawning imagination convinced him, for an awakening
idea, that one such rogue sought to rob him. At any other time he
would have laughed loudly at the notion; but now he was too weak to
laugh--too weak almost to stand.
“_Pardieu!_” he snarled, “what the devil do you want with me? Can’t
you see--?”
The man answered him with a word spoken to another at his elbow.
“Aubin,” said he, “take the right arm of Monsieur Dauberval, and let
Joseph bring another lantern.”
Dauberval started up when he heard his name. The dazzling rays no
longer blinded his eyes. He saw that the stranger’s black vest was
richly embroidered with silver, and that diamonds sparkled upon the
hilt of his sword. Beyond this, the great door of the Hôtel
Beautreillis was now wide open, and servants were busy in its
courtyard. Dauberval, who had been ready to declare that the
apparition was a new cheat of his fancy, doubted no longer.
Mademoiselle Corinne was in Paris. What was more, she knew that he was
hungering at her gates. Never did a man’s fortune seem to be made so
readily.
“Monsieur,” said he to the unknown, as they passed the lodge of the
concierge, and so entered the vast central courtyard, “you have my
name!”
“Assuredly,” said the other. “Your name is Ferdinand Dauberval, and
you are the son of the advocate of Avranches. Five days ago, you left
your home to walk to this house--having first robbed your father of a
hundred crowns, the last of which you lost over the dice at Couches
two days ago. I speak rightly, monsieur?”
Dauberval stood still with his astonishment.
“_Ciel!_” he cried, “you insult me, monsieur?”
“Oh, not at all,” replied the unknown. “You put a question to me, and
I answer it. Is that an insult?”
“You say that I robbed?--” expostulated Dauberval.
“Come, come,” said the other, a little severely. “I really cannot
argue with you, Monsieur Dauberval. While we wait in this draughty
courtyard, your supper is getting cold. Remember how hungry you are.”
Dauberval, trembling with excitement, permitted himself to be led
across the court and so to the smaller pavilion upon the left-hand
side of it.
“I shall make up some tale,” he thought, “and she will believe me.
Meanwhile, there will be food to eat and wine to drink. _Dieu_, how I
could drink a cup of Burgundy! It will be time after that to remember
my misfortunes.”
Like all rogues, he was easily elated. And the things which he saw
about him were of a quality to satisfy any man. No sooner had he
entered the pavilion than lacqueys came unbidden to brush his clothes
and to bring a golden basin for his hands. While one fellow begged him
to be seated and to remove his dirty shoes, another offered him a coat
of velvet heavily laced with silver braid. Everything that greed of
show and of wealth could prompt him to wish for was now thrust upon
him unasked. Silk stockings took the place of his dusty woollen ones;
the perfume of attar of roses exuded from the cooling water in which
he washed the dust from his face; the lacqueys waited upon him with a
homage which might have served a king. And this was the mystery of it
all--that they did these things for one whom their mistress knew to be
a thief.
Dauberval was too hungry at the first to debate upon such a nice
problem. He did observe that the unknown man in black watched him with
a curious smile--the smile of one who enjoyed some secret, but did not
wish to share it. Yet this, he said, was the man’s satisfaction at his
new appearance. Indeed, the stranger told him so presently, when he
rose to conduct him to his supper.
“_Ma foi_, Monsieur Dauberval,” said he, “you will break some hearts
in Paris. I never saw a coat sit so well upon a man. And you know how
to carry it, too. Saint Denis, we must find you a sword presently,
when the perruquier has done with you. You can use a sword, I will
wager?”
Dauberval, who was the greatest coward in Normandy, drew himself up
and bowed at the compliment.
“Sir,” said he, “if I were not so hungry--”
“Exactly, my friend. And since you are very hungry--come, supper is
prepared for you.”
He opened a door in the ante-chamber to which they had first come, and
motioned the other to go forward. Dauberval could scarce suppress a
cry of delight when he saw that a table was spread in an exquisitely
furnished cabinet; and that other lacqueys waited to serve him with
all those good things of which he had lately dreamed. Nay, he was not
sure that he did not dream still, for this room, he said, must surely
be one in which kings supped. Such divinely wrought candelabra, such a
painted ceiling, such a profusion of wax tapers, so soft a carpet,
were not to be looked for except at the palace of the Tuilleries or at
Versailles. Dauberval declared that the owner of it all must be rich
beyond any woman in Paris. “And,” he said, “she means well to me or I
should not be here.”
This self-assurance brought him to the table in wondrous good spirits.
Although he had suffered much from his hunger, he was not so far gone
that eating would be a danger to him; and when a lacquey put a little
bowl of soup before him, he drank it down in great gulps. The warmth
of it seemed to fill his body to the very toes.
“Oh,” he said, “how good it is--how good! Surely it is well to have
suffered, monsieur, if one may--”
At this moment he turned round to find himself alone with the lacquey
in the cabinet. The unknown had left him at the door; and Dauberval
really was not sorry to be quit of his company.
“One can do nothing with a man,” he thought; “and he is gone to tell
pretty Mademoiselle Corinne that I am here. She will come to see me
presently, and I shall persuade her that I am a very honest fellow.
After that, she will find me some place in Paris, and I shall have
lacqueys of my own, and wine like this Burgundy. Saint John, how it
warms my heart! And I have yet the half of a bottle to drink! Oh, it
was a great day that took me from Avranches to my fortune at the
Hôtel Beautreillis!”
Hopes like these, with a hundred others, filled his brain, while he
helped himself to a dish of artichokes fried in marmalade, and
afterwards to the breast of a well-boiled capon. He was careful to eat
sparingly of the food, remembering how long he had fasted; but of the
wine he drank abundantly. Nor did the lacqueys once speak to him while
he ate. They might have been machines answering to some invisible
wires. Dauberval, warmed with the Burgundy, began to assume lofty and
patronising airs. He even attempted to enter into conversation with
one of those who waited upon him.
“My good fellow,” said he, “is your mistress in Paris?”
The man bowed, but that was all his answer. Dauberval, more than ever
anxious to play the part of the fine gentleman, pushed his chair away
from the table and leant back in it posingly.
“Have the goodness,” he cried, “to inform Mademoiselle de Montesson
that I crave a word with her so soon as it may please her to give me
audience.”
The lacquey bowed again, and left the room with his fellows. He was
careful not to laugh until he had shut the door upon his mistress’s
guest; but then he laughed very heartily. Dauberval, meanwhile, was
leaning back in his chair, and telling himself that this for a surety
was the day of his life.
“She cannot mean to punish me for borrowing two hundred crowns of my
father,” he said to himself, “or she would not have treated me like
this. No doubt she has heard some slander; but I shall correct all
that. And then she will give me a place. Possibly it will be with the
Grand Equerry, where my brother is; or should there be no vacancy
there, I would even submit to serve for a while as page to his
highness the Duke of Nevers. In any case she will make my fortunes.
Who knows, she might even think me handsome, as the girls of Avranches
did. And then--_pardieu!_--and then--”
To his utter confusion, a voice of singular sweetness answered his
question, which he had intended for no other ears than his own.
“And then, Monsieur Dauberval?”
“_Diable!_” cried the man, as he sprang up from his chair and turned
round to face the intruder. But the other words he would have spoken
died away upon his lips; for there, standing behind him, with the
merriest laugh possible upon her pretty face, was Mademoiselle
Corinne. And so great was the shame of the fellow because his silly
talk was overheard that he would have thanked God if the earth had
opened and swallowed him up.
“Mademoiselle,” he stammered, and he was sure that he had never seen a
more exquisite vision than this of the owner of all these
riches,--“mademoiselle, I do not--indeed.”
“Oh,” she said, laughing more than ever at his confusion, “but you
did. And let me tell you, monsieur, that I think the girls of
Avranches showed exceedingly good taste.”
Dauberval, like most rogues, could bear himself well in ordinary
circumstances before a woman. He had looked to find a grand dame,
haughty, imperious, exacting; but now that Mademoiselle Corinne really
stood before him, and he saw that she was an exceedingly beautiful
girl, whose face wore the kindliest smile he had ever beheld, he took
new courage and began to look up.
“Mademoiselle,” he exclaimed, “you overheard me just now saying some
very foolish things. I thought that I was alone or I should not have
uttered them. I beg you to forgive me.”
“Indeed, monsieur,” she answered, still smiling, “I shall do nothing
of the sort. You have yet to answer my question. Here am I agreeing
with the young ladies you speak of, and dying to know what next--yet
you tell me nothing. For shame, monsieur, to leave a lady ailing with
her curiosity.”
“Misfortune overtake me if I do any such thing,” cried Dauberval,
bowing gallantly, “yet, for the life of me, mademoiselle, I cannot
remember what I was saying.”
“Oh, but I remember it perfectly, Monsieur Dauberval,” she answered;
“you were saying ‘and then--’ I want to know what comes after ‘and
then’--”
A quick thought passed like an inspiration through the man’s mind.
“Mademoiselle,” he cried, “you insist?”
“Certainly I do.”
“Then I will tell you in a word. I was saying to myself as you came in
that if I should be happy enough to merit your favor, you would find
me some place in Paris.”
He stood watching her keenly to see how his boldness would be repaid;
but her immediate answer was only a command.
“Sit, _mon ami_,” she said, “and then we will talk of things.”
Dauberval took a chair and drew it near to the little couch upon which
she was resting. He was so close to her now that he could count the
diamonds which made a rope about her lovely neck. He said that he had
never seen such surpassing loveliness of skin or face; never a woman
worthy to sit at the feet of Corinne de Montesson. The very air about
her was laden with the breath of roses. Her girlish face was like the
face of one of the Madonnas which the great masters had painted. Her
voice was like the note of a silver bell.
“You wish me to find you a place in Paris, Monsieur Dauberval,” she
said, when they were seated. “Well, that is already done--”
“What,” cried Dauberval, forgetting himself in his surprise,--at the
same time he said to himself, “My fortune is made.”
“Yes,” she continued, “after making all inquiries about you, I am
willing to take you into my service.”
Dauberval’s expectation became tremendous. “She knows nothing,” he
thought.
“You will consent, I am sure, monsieur,” Corinne went on, “to do as my
other servants have done, and to attain promotion by your diligence
and fidelity. Yet I do not forget that you were educated by the curé
of Avranches, and are a man of some learning. On that account, I have
determined to overlook all that I might remember about you, and to
make you an usher of the table.”
Dauberval listened no more, but sprang from his chair. He was white
with passion when he answered her.
“_Dieu!_ mademoiselle,” he cried, “would you make a lacquey of me?”
“Exactly,” she replied, without so much as noticing his temper; “an
usher of my table to begin with, and after that clerk to my household,
if your service in the first employment warrants it. It is even
possible, should you seek by the future to blot out the sins of your
past, that I may remember you as the brother of Armand Dauberval--whom
you drove from his home after accusing him falsely of a robbery.”
“It is a lie!” stammered Dauberval, hoarse with his anger. “I am the
victim of--”
Corinne de Montesson rose from her seat, and touched a gong at her
side.
“Monsieur,” she said very quietly, “to-night you remain here as my
guest. If you are willing to accept the post which I offer you, hold
yourself ready to begin your work at ten o’clock to-morrow morning.
But I warn you that should you speak to me again as you spoke just
now, my servants shall flog you at the tail of a cart. You understand
me?”
There was laughter in her eyes no longer, and her cheek was warmed
with a red flush. Dauberval realised for the first time what a great
gulf lay between them. His hopes had gone tumbling down already
pell-mell, like stones into a pit. He was cowed, and he trembled with
rage and disappointment.
“_Ciel!_” said he, wringing his hands, “that you should wish to make a
lacquey of me! Oh, mademoiselle, have pity--you know what I have
suffered.”
“Say rather, that I remember what your brother suffered at your
hands,” she replied. “Indeed, Monsieur Dauberval, you reap that which
you have sown. Have a care, then, to treasure in the future the seeds
of honesty and of love. I wish you good-night, monsieur.”
She retired with a gentle grace, a lacquey holding the door as she
passed to her own apartments. Dauberval followed her with eyes in
which the tears of shame and cowardice welled up plenteously. Her
words had stung him like a whip; yet, he said, he could have forgotten
them quickly enough had she not sought to put this insult upon him.
But to make a lacquey of him! Better by far to have remained in
Avranches, he thought, and to have extorted money from his father.
There, at any rate, people did not forget that he was born a
gentleman. But here, in this unpitying Paris--to make a menial of him,
he who had dreamed that he was soon to have lacqueys of his own! Oh,
it was not to be tolerated!
He had been pacing the room for some little time, gathering the
threads of his anger, when the servant returned to tell him that his
bed-chamber was prepared. He followed the fellow sullenly, determined
already in his own heart that he would never submit to the proposed
degradation. After all, he could still return to his home and say,
“Father, I have sinned.” It would be a terrible humiliation; but he
preferred the thought of facing it to that of remaining in the Hôtel
Beautreillis. As for his brother Armand--it would be no use to beg of
him. Dauberval knew well enough that he had driven his brother from
their home, caring nothing if he lived or died. How then should that
brother pity him?
The lacquey, meanwhile, had conducted him down a long stone corridor;
thence across a little garden, and through a second passage, which
terminated in a small circular hall off which five doors opened.
Dauberval scarce took notice of anything that he passed; but when the
lacquey opened the third of the five doors and informed him that here
was his bed-chamber, a new interest occupied him. None of Mademoiselle
Corinne’s reproaches seemed to fit in with the elegance of the room to
which he had been conducted. It was a room for the king, he said for
the second time, while the man lighted the candles in the gilt sconces
and set a cup of wine upon the table. The great bed with the canopy of
gold above it; the superb tapestries hung upon the wall; the many
candelabra of solid silver; the luxurious carpet beneath his
feet,--all these things should have been at Versailles, he thought,
and not at the Hôtel Beautreillis. And it was maddening to him to
remember that he was to enjoy such splendours for one night, and only
for one night.
“To-morrow,” he snarled, for the servant had left him
then,--“to-morrow they will make a lacquey of me! Oh, that shall never
be! I swear it on the cross. She shall listen to me in the morning--I
will go on my knees to her--I will humble myself--she will surely
relent then. She must relent.”
He repeated these words again and again, and they were still upon his
lips when he climbed into the high bed and stretched himself
luxuriously upon the downy cushions. The candle was out now, and the
moon’s beams flooded the room picturesquely, seeming to magnify its
size and beauty. Indeed, the very splendours of the apartment awed the
man. He lay for a long while unable to sleep, or to do anything but
contemplate the things he would plan and say when morning came. When
he had settled those to his satisfaction, and sleep still refused her
friendship, he began to follow the path of the pale yellow rays and to
observe the beauty of the things they touched with their caressing
light. He remarked then for the first time a little picture of a
Madonna hung near the wall by his bed; and when he had looked at this
for some moments, he saw that it was the central piece of a shrine
upon which there was a cross with a great diamond blazing in the
centre of it. So beautiful were the lights which the jewel scattered,
so large was it, that Dauberval asked himself why he had not seen it
before. Then he sat up in bed the better to observe it, but lay down
again quickly lest the thought which came to him so powerfully should
remain and prevail.
“She must be very rich,” he said, as he drew the clothes over his head
and fought anew for sleep. “That diamond alone would keep a man in
food and wine for life. She has many more like it, I am sure, and
would never miss it. If a rogue were sleeping here, he would put that
cross in his pocket and she would never know its loss. Besides, she is
going to make a lacquey of me. Saint John--I could be even with her if
I had the mind to!”
He lay for some moments trembling with the excitement of the thought.
He knew that such a diamond as the one which lay within reach of his
hand would enrich him for life. He had but to slip the cross into his
pocket and to climb the wall of the garden through which he had passed
to his room, and he need think of being a lacquey no more. What a
revenge that would be, he said. And why did he owe her any mercy? She
had shown him none. Nay, she had threatened to have him beaten at a
cart’s tail. “We shall see about that,” he muttered--and then he sat
up in bed again. The diamond shone now with a finer, richer lustre.
All the loveliest hues seemed to be commingled, and to be poured out
together from its sparkling wells of light. Dauberval had not dreamed
that there was such a jewel in all the world. The sight of it was to
him like a cup of wine to a drunkard. “Heaven!” he muttered, “it is a
prince’s ransom--and I am alone.”
He was out of bed now, and his teeth were chattering with dread of his
determination. While he said all the time that he was not going to
steal the diamond, he knew perfectly well that he had made up his mind
to do so. Quickly and with trembling hand he drew on his boots and his
fine new coat. He opened his bedroom door, and found to his
satisfaction that the little hall outside was in darkness and as
silent as the grave. Everything drove him on to the crime which he
declared that he would never commit, but which he was even then
committing. Twice he touched the diamond, and drew back his hand as
though it had been burned by fire.
“Coward,” he cried, “coward, coward--to turn your back on a fortune
which lies there before your eyes. Ten steps and you are in the
garden; you leave Paris at dawn and set out for England--a little
hiding by the way, perhaps, a little privation--and then, and then--!”
Visions of luxury, of ease, even of vice, passed before his burning
eyes. A new hunger, the hunger of wealth, was upon him now. The
agonies of the temptation were like the agonies of a burning fever. He
stood rocking on his heels before the shrine, saying, “I will not, I
will not.” He covered his face with his hands, yet the lights from the
sparkling jewel seemed to flash into his very brain. When at last he
grasped the stone with trembling fingers, and thrust it deep down into
his bosom, phantoms of the night gathered about him in his fancy and
cried, “We see, we see.”
With possession, the fever abated a little. He was in a cold sweat
now; but his ideas were less confusing. When he opened his bedroom
door to pass into the circular hall, he knew well enough what plan to
follow. The garden, he was sure, lay not more than twenty yards from
him. He had seen, while they had conducted him to his room, great
trees growing against the walls of it, and he determined to climb this
wall by their help and so to gain the street.
He opened his door, and stood for a moment to listen if there were any
sound about the house. A little whisper of the wind sighing in the
dome of the hall was the only answer to his silent question.
Encouraged by the stillness, he stepped from his chamber and began to
creep towards that door of the five through which he believed that he
had passed to his bedroom. And here a difficulty which he had not
foreseen suddenly presented itself and demanded consideration. The
five doors in the hall were as alike as five drops of water. How if he
opened the wrong one, and found himself, not in the garden, but in the
bed-chamber of some lacquey or page? That, he declared, would mean the
galleys at the least. And he blamed himself now that he had not tried
the doors before leaving his bedroom. To be taken with the jewel in
his possession were a folly indeed.
Dauberval was a cunning rogue at all times; but he did not know what
forces of cunning and trickery were being pitted against him as he
stood debating the puzzle of the doors. At the very moment when he
thought he was alone, six pairs of eyes were watching him with
interest and not a little amusement. True, there was a moment when he
had an instinctive warning of peril hovering about him, and that was
the moment when the door of the bedroom he had just quitted shut
suddenly and the key grated ominously in the lock.
“_Mort Christ!_” he muttered, “my door has locked itself--I heard the
key turn--what a thing to happen!”
There was no doubt about it at all. The door had shut and the key had
turned. Dauberval stood like one petrified, pressing the jewel to his
breast with both his hands, and telling himself that the wind had done
the work. So unnerved was he that he did not lift a foot until minutes
had passed and no other sound had come to break the whispers of the
night. The vision of the galleys and the whip was ever before his
eyes. When at length he moved again, it was this vision which gave him
strength.
“Bah!” he said, “am I a woman to start at the fall of a pebble? If I
stand here much longer I shall go to sleep, and a lacquey will find me
at daybreak. Courage, then--a little courage and all is well.”
The idea put new life into him. He tried the first of the doors, but
it was locked; and the second, in like manner, refused to yield to his
hand. Only when he came to the fourth door did he take heart and say
that success was near to him. For that door opened readily at his
touch; and when he had hesitated a moment lest it should lead him to a
room and not to a passage, he pushed it back inch by inch that the
little light in the hall might break the darkness which now blinded
him. He would have given half he possessed to hold a lantern for a
minute then, so dark was the place in which he found himself; but he
knew that he could not work miracles, and so he nerved himself for a
last effort and boldly passed the door. In the same instant, the place
was flooded by a soft yellow light, and Mademoiselle Corinne stood
face to face with him.
She was dressed in a loose gown of muslin, spotlessly white and
unornamented, and she held a golden candlestick high above her head
that the light might fall upon the face of the man. Dauberval,
staggering with terror, observed that a small diamond cross glittered
upon her white neck, and that a great Russian hound crouched by her
side and pressed his nose into her hand. She had entered the little
cabinet through a panel opening in the wall at a spot exactly opposite
to the door which led the rogue to this trap; but she appeared to be
quite alone, and to know the purpose of her coming.
“Well, Monsieur Dauberval,” she cried, and there was merriment in her
voice,--“well, Monsieur Dauberval, are you not pleased to see me?”
Deceived by her manner, the robber looked up. “She is alone,” he
thought, “and she is a woman.” But he made no attempt to answer her,
seeking rather to escape from the room into the hall behind him. And
at this she laughed aloud.
“For a truth, you are a bold fellow,” she continued, as the man backed
towards the door, “and I am very glad that you did not die at my gate
to-night. Have a care to your steps, I beg of you, Monsieur Dauberval,
or you will be of little service to the galleys. Shall I summon a
lacquey to carry your plunder? How unfortunate that you should awake
me at the very moment you were robbing my house!”
Something in the tone of her voice, a note of scorn mingling with the
chord of her laughter, compelled the man to stand. It occurred to him
that he must deal with her before he left the room, or assuredly she
would awake the house, and he would be taken in the gardens of it. He
determined to play first upon her pity.
“Mademoiselle,” he exclaimed, coming a little nearer to her, and
speaking with an effort, “you are very cruel to me--I could not
sleep--I wished to walk a little way in your gardens--do you think
that I am a robber? God forbid--I swear it on the cross.”
“On the cross which you carry at your breast, Monsieur Dauberval?”
“_Ciel!_” he gasped, drawing back again, “you know about that?”
“You hear that I do; and since I know about it my servants are now
going to carry you to the Palais de Justice, where you will have
leisure to regret that you did not become a lacquey.”
She said this, and with the words she took up a padded stick and
raised it as though to beat upon the gong by which she stood. For a
moment, however, she held her hand; and forgetting that she had
laughed, she went on to remind the man of that which he had lost.
“When you came to my house to-night,” she said, “I was content to
forget the life you have lived and the crimes you have committed. For
your brother’s sake, I thought to give you one more opportunity of
becoming that which you will never be--an honest man. To-morrow, had
you submitted for a day to the test which I chose for you, I would
have remembered again that you were the son of the advocate of
Avranches. You will not ask me to do that now, Monsieur Dauberval?”
Dauberval listened to her with burning ears. He watched the upraised
stick as he would have watched a tiger about to leap upon him. He knew
that if the gong were struck, his hope of life would die away with the
echoes of the note.
“Mademoiselle,” he wailed, “for God’s sake spare me--you will never
regret it--I swear it on my knees--hear me--you will not summon your
servants?”
He fell upon his knees before her and raised his hands in cowardly
entreaty. But her answer was unpitying.
“Nay,” she said, “I am about to summon my servants now.”
“_Dieu!_ mademoiselle,” muttered the man, springing to his feet, “you
shall do nothing of the sort.” But to himself he said again--“She is a
woman, and she is alone.”
All the devils of evil were spurring him on now. He knew that it was
his life or hers--the life of a helpless girl or of a man with one
foot already upon the scaffold. And he was going to plead with her no
more. When he rose from the floor, he told himself that he would kill
her. The madness of his mood magnified and became uncontrollable. He
raised his hand to strike her down, shutting his eyes that he might
not see the exquisite beauty of her face.
“You shall not do it,” he cried savagely. “By Heaven, I will prevent
you.”
“Indeed,” she cried, stepping back quickly, “it is already done;” and
even as she spoke the blows fell,--that of the man in the air, that of
the woman upon the silver gong.
Dauberval had struck wildly; but he struck no second blow. He had said
“She is alone;” but never was she less alone. The great dog at her
side, who had curled himself up to sleep while his mistress had no
need of him, awoke at the booming of the gong, and was at the throat
of the man, even while he reeled back for a new attack. With a low
warning roar, the beast sprang at the robber, and felled him as an ox
is felled by a butcher’s axe. Over and over upon the wooden floor the
two rolled; the dog growling ferociously, the man imploring,
screaming, fighting. Death seemed to breathe into his very face now.
He had his arm across his throat, and the hound’s fangs touched the
bone of it. He struck the brute again and again with his clenched
fist; and for every blow his whole body was shaken until his teeth
gnashed like the teeth of a madman.
“Kill me, kill me,” he screamed, “for God’s sake!--oh, he is tearing
me limb for limb! Heaven!--what suffering!”
He had rolled now almost to the door of the room, and there the hound
drew back for a moment, hearing his mistress’s voice. Dauberval, mad
with fear and pain, scrambled to his feet and staggered out into the
hall of the unyielding doors. A light was there now; and one of the
five doors stood wide open before him; but he had no thought of asking
how or for what reason. Dread of the dog drove him onward recklessly.
“Anything, anything but that,” he cried; and reeling, staggering,
sobbing, he passed through the door and down the long passage to which
it gave access. Whither he was going or to what end, he knew not nor
cared to think. One idea dominated him to the exclusion of all
others--it was the idea of flight--flight to any refuge, even the
refuge of the scaffold.
There was very little light in the corridor where he now found
himself, and when he had run perhaps twenty yards he turned a sharp
corner and was then in utter darkness. So black was it that he could
not see the ground at his feet. He guided himself only by touching the
wall with his fingers. It was a smooth wall, a panelled one, he saw at
first; and though he knew that he might go tumbling headlong down a
staircase, or crashing against a door at any step, so great was his
terror that he ran heedlessly, believing ever to hear the patter of
the hound’s paws upon the ground behind him, even to feel his wet and
frothing lips against his hand. And he was becoming exhausted now.
Often he reeled against the wall and thought that he was fainting.
Would he never come into the garden, he asked? He had been running for
long minutes now, and still the dreadful wall guided him onward,
onward. Once he paused, panting for his breath, but his ear told him
plainly that the hound had followed him. There was no mistaking that
haunting “pat, pat, pat,” behind him. “God have mercy--he will tear me
limb from limb,” he cried, and so wailing he began to run again.
Dauberval was a man who had known few hardships in life; but just as
the past two days had taught him what it is to hunger, so did this
night of agony teach him the meaning both of fear and fatigue. He had
not dreamed that a man could conceive so great a horror and loathing
as this horror and loathing of the hound which now possessed him. As
to his fatigue, there were no words to tell of that. His life seemed
to exude from his body drop by drop. Every step was a torture to him.
The tears ran down his face like rain; a spasm gripped his heart and
seemed to hold it still; his legs were so weary that he could scarce
lift them from the ground. And to his terror of the seen, the terror
of the unseen was now added. He had run for the third part of an hour
by this time; and still the terrible wall led him on. He began to say
that fiends were cheating him--for how could the Hôtel Beautreillis
possess a corridor down which a man might run for twenty minutes? That
would carry him half across Paris. Under any other circumstances he
would have tried to reason with the situation, but the ominous patter
of the hound banished reason from his head. More than this, he heard
the soft tread of other hounds now before him, now behind him. He
shrieked aloud with his fear, and fled again like a madman.
There is an end to the endurance of terror and of the false strength
which it inspires. Dauberval kept his legs to the ultimate moment, for
he told himself that if he fell, the hounds would tear him as they
would tear a deer. But at last pitying nature came to his aid. He
remembered only that he stretched out his hands before him, staggering
blindly into the darkness. Then, with a terrible cry, for he heard the
dogs at his very feet, he fell senseless to the floor and lay like a
dead man.
When he opened his eyes, hours had passed. The ghostly dawn light
streaming through a lantern tower above him told him that day had
broken; but he lay motionless for long minutes, unable to remember how
he had come into the place where now he was, or why he slept upon a
wooden floor. He was still very weak, and his limbs were cold and
stiff and painful; his brain burnt, and would shape no story for him.
When at last he began to remember the events of the dreadful night, he
thought first of the diamond, and pressed his hands to his breast
instinctively; but the jewel was gone; nor could he recollect how he
had lost it. By and by he recalled the moment when he had left his
bed-chamber; and that other moment when pretty Mademoiselle Corinne
stood before him and he had struck her, and from that thought he
passed to memory of the hound. So potent was this in terror, that it
compelled him to stagger to his feet. Half awake as he was, the whole
dread of the night came rushing back to him. He could hear the hound
still--that he would swear; and even when he stood up and asked
himself, “Where am I?” the haunting “pit, pat” still sang in his ears.
“Oh, _mon Dieu!_” he wailed, “have I lost my reason? Where am I? What
do I hear? Oh, pity me, pity me!”
He looked all about him and could make nothing of his environment. He
was in a great building, certainly,--a building which looked like a
riding-school, and was in the shape of an oval. He observed clearly
that a high wall ran round this building, and that he had been lying
upon a wooden corridor which made a little platform beneath the wall.
Dense as he was, it began to dawn upon him that he had been running
round and round this corridor; and at this thought he trembled with
passion.
“Heaven!” he cried, “that I should have run round and round like a
horse which amuses the people--oh, what cruelty to play me such a
trick--what cruelty--”
His distress was so great that he began to wring his hands and to pace
the corridor distractedly. And he had been engaged in this employment
for the space of a minute, when the second of his delusions was taken
from him. For, suddenly, he came upon a little fountain built into the
wall of the riding-school; and as he stood a minute to bathe his hands
and forehead at it, it occurred to him that the music of it was
familiar; and that its “drip, drip, drip” was just like the pat of a
dog’s paw upon the ground. “Holy Saints!” he cried with a sob, “that I
should have run away from a basin of water. There is the patter of my
hound. Oh, God! what a night of agony!”
A mocking laugh was the answer to his word of ultimate distress. He
turned round to find himself in the presence of the man in black, who
had met him at the gate yesterday; and he saw that a lacquey awaited
the orders of the unknown.
At sunset that evening, Ferdinand Dauberval passed through the Porte
St. Denis on his way to his father at Avranches.
“Halloa,” cries the bellman, “here is the dusty gentleman who has
friends. _Bon soir_, monsieur--was the king well when your excellency
dined with him?”
“It is my belief that we talk to our Lord the Pope,” exclaimed the
cooper.
“Or to the Captain of the Gate,” said the saucy wench.
“Or to both,” shouted the rat-catcher.