Left alone in the silent house, Robert de Ligny relit the lamp. Serious
and even somewhat solemn voices were beginning to speak within him.
Moulded from childhood by the rules of moral responsibility, he now
experienced a sensation of painful regret, akin to remorse. Reflecting
that he had caused the death of this man, albeit without intending it or
knowing it, he did not feel wholly innocent. Shreds of his philosophic
and religious training came back to him, disturbing his conscience. The
phrases of moralists and preachers, learned at school, which had sunk to
the very depths of his memory, suddenly rose in his mind. Its inward
voices repeated them to him. They said, quoting some old religious
orator: "When we abandon ourselves to irregularities of conduct, even to
those regarded as least culpable in the opinion of the world, we render
ourselves liable to commit the most reprehensible actions. We perceive,
from the most frightful examples, that voluptuousness leads to crime."
These maxims, upon which he had never reflected, suddenly assumed for
him a precise and austere meaning. He thought the matter over seriously.
But since his mind was not deeply religious, and since he was incapable
of cherishing exaggerated scruples, he was conscious of only a passable
degree of edification, which was steadily diminishing. Before long he
decided that such scruples were out of place and that they could not
possibly apply to the situation. "When we abandon ourselves to
irregularities of conduct, even to those regarded as least culpable in
the opinion of the world.... We perceive, from the most frightful
examples...." These phrases, which only a little while ago had
reverberated through his soul like a peal of thunder, he now heard in
the snuffling and throaty voices of the professors and priests who had
taught them to him, and he found them somewhat ridiculous. By a natural
association of ideas he recalled a passage from an ancient Roman
history--which he had read, when in the second form, during a certain
course of study, and which had impressed itself on his mind--a few lines
concerning a lady who was convicted of adultery and accused of having
set fire to Rome. "So true it is," ran the historian's comment, "that a
person who violates the laws of chastity is capable of any crime." He
smiled inwardly at this recollection, reflecting that the moralists,
after all, had queer ideas about life.
The wick, which was charring, gave an insufficient light. He could not
manage to snuff it, and it was giving out a horrible stench of paraffin.
Thinking of the author of the passage relating to the Roman lady, he
said to himself: "Sure enough, it was a queer idea that he got hold of
there!"
He felt reassured as to his innocence. His slight feeling of remorse had
entirely evaporated, and he was unable to conceive how he could for a
moment have believed himself responsible for Chevalier's death. Yet the
affair troubled him.
Suddenly he thought: "Supposing he were still alive!"
A while ago, for the space of a second, by the light of a match blown
out as soon as it was struck, he had seen the hole in the actor's skull.
But what if he had seen incorrectly? What if he had taken a mere graze
of the skin for a serious lesion of the brain and skull? Does a man
retain his powers of judgment in the first moments of surprise and
horror? A wound may be hideous without being mortal, or even
particularly serious. It had certainly seemed to him that the man was
dead. But was he a medical man, able to judge with certainty?
He lost all patience with the wick, which was still charring, and
muttered:
"This lamp is enough to poison one."
Then recalling a trick of speech habitual to Dr. Socrates, as to the
origin of which he was ignorant, he repeated mentally:
"This lamp stinks like thirty-six cart-loads of devils."
Instances occurred to him of several abortive attempts at suicide. He
remembered having read in a newspaper that a married man, after killing
his wife, had, like Chevalier, fired his revolver into his mouth, but
had only succeeded in shattering his jaw; he remembered that at his club
a well known sportsman, after a card scandal, tried to blow out his
brains but merely shot off an ear. These instances applied to Chevalier
with striking exactitude.
"Supposing he were not dead."
He wished and hoped against all evidence that the unfortunate man might
still be breathing, that he might be saved. He thought of fetching
bandages, of giving first aid. Intending to re-examine the man lying in
the front room, he raised the lamp, which was still emitting an
insufficient light, too suddenly, and so extinguished it. Whereupon,
surprised by the sudden darkness, he lost patience and exclaimed:
"Confound the blasted thing!"
While lighting it again, he flattered himself with the idea that
Chevalier, once taken to hospital, would regain consciousness, and would
live, and seeing him already on his feet, perched on his long legs,
bawling, clearing his throat, sneering, his desire for his recovery
became less eager; he was even beginning to cease to desire it, to
regard it as annoying and inconsiderate. He asked himself anxiously,
with a feeling of real uneasiness:
"What in the world would he do if he came back, that dismal actor
fellow? Would he return to the Odéon? Would he stroll through its
corridors displaying his great scar? Would he once more have to see him
prowling round Félicie?"
He held the lighted lamp close to the body and recognized the livid
bleeding wound, the irregular outline of which reminded him of the
Africa of his schoolboy maps.
Plainly death had been instantaneous, and he failed to understand how he
could for a moment have doubted it.
He left the house and proceeded to stride up and down in the garden. The
image of the wound was flashing before his eyes like the impression
caused by too bright a light. It moved away from him, increasing in size
against the black sky; it took the shape of a pale continent whence he
saw swarms of distracted little blacks pouring forth, armed with bows
and arrows.
He decided that the first thing to do was to fetch Madame Simonneau, who
lived close at hand, in the Boulevard Bineau, in the residential part of
the café. He closed the gate carefully, and went in search of the
housekeeper. Once on the boulevard, he recovered his equanimity. He felt
most uncomfortable about the accident; he accepted the accomplished
fact, but he cavilled at fate in respect of the circumstances. Since
there had to be a death, he gave his consent that there should be one,
but he would have preferred another. Toward this one he was conscious of
a feeling of disgust and repugnance. He said to himself vaguely:
"I concede a suicide. But what is the good of a ridiculous and
declamatory suicide? Couldn't the fellow have killed himself at home?
Couldn't he, if his determination was irrevocable, have carried it out
discreetly, with proper pride? That is what a gentleman would have done
in his position. Then one might have pitied him, and respected his
memory."
He recalled word for word his conversation with Félicie in the bedroom
an hour before the tragedy. He asked her if she had not for a time been
Chevalier's mistress. He had asked her this, not because he wanted to
know, for he had very little doubt of it, but in order to show that he
knew it. And she had replied indignantly: "Chevalier? He? Good gracious
no! You wouldn't have had me look at him!"
He did not blame her for having lied. All women lie. He rather enjoyed
the graceful and easy manner with which she had cast the fellow out of
her past. But he was vexed with her for having given herself to a
low-down actor. Chevalier spoilt Félicie for him. Why did she take
lovers of that type? Was she wanting in taste? Did she not exercise a
certain selection? Did she behave like a woman of the town? Did she lack
a certain sense of niceness which warns women as to what they may or may
not do? Didn't she know how to behave? Well, this was the sort of thing
that happened if women had no breeding. He blamed Félicie for the
accident that had occurred and was relieved of a heavy incubus.
Madame Simonneau was not at home. He inquired her whereabouts of the
waiters in the café, the grocer's assistants, the girls at the laundry,
the police, and the postman. At last, following the direction of a
neighbour, he found her poulticing an old lady, for she was a nurse. Her
face was purple and she reeked of brandy. He sent her to watch the
corpse. He instructed her to cover it with a sheet, and to hold herself
at the disposal of the commissary and the doctor, who would come for the
particulars. She replied, somewhat nettled, that she knew please God,
what she had to do. She did indeed know. Madame Simonneau was born in a
social circle which is obsequious to the constituted authorities and
respects the dead. But when, having questioned Monsieur de Ligny, she
learnt that he had dragged the body into the front room, she could not
conceal from him that such behaviour was imprudent and might expose him
to unpleasantness.
"You ought not to have done it," she told him. "When anyone has killed
himself, you must never touch him before the police come."
Ligny thereupon went off to notify the commissary. The first excitement
having passed off, he no longer felt any surprise, doubtless because
events which, considered from a distance, would seem strange, when they
take place before us appear quite natural, as indeed they are. They
unfold themselves in an ordinary fashion, falling into place as a
succession of petty facts, and eventually losing themselves in the
everyday commonplace of life. His mind was distracted from the violent
death of an unfortunate fellow-creature by the very circumstances of
that death, by the part which he had played in the affair and the
occupation which it had imposed upon him. On his way to the commissary's
he felt as calm and as free from mental care as though he had been on
his way to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to decipher despatches.
At nine o'clock in the evening, the police commissary entered the garden
with his secretary and a policeman. The municipal physician, Monsieur
Hibry, arrived simultaneously. Already, thanks to the industry of Madame
Simonneau, who was always interested in matters of supply, the house
exhaled a violent smell of carbolic and was blazing with the candles
which she had lit. Madame Simonneau was bustling to and fro, actuated by
an urgent desire to procure a crucifix and a bough of consecrated
box-wood for the dead. The doctor examined the corpse by the light of a
candle.
He was a bulky man with a ruddy complexion. He breathed noisily. He had
just dined.
"The bullet, a large calibre bullet," he said, "penetrated by way of the
palatal vault, traversed the brain and finally fractured the left
parietal bone, carrying away a portion of the cerebral substance, and
blowing out a piece of the skull. Death was instantaneous."
He returned the candle to Madame Simonneau and continued:
"Splinters of the skull were projected to a certain distance. They will
probably be found in the garden. I should conjecture that the bullet was
round-nosed. A conical bullet would have caused less destruction."
However, the commissary. Monsieur Josse-Arbrissel, a tall, thin man with
a long grey moustache, seemed neither to see nor to hear. A dog was
howling outside the garden gate.
"The direction of the wound," said the doctor, "as well as the fingers
of the right hand, which are still contracted, are more than ample proof
of suicide."
He lit a cigar.
"We are sufficiently informed," remarked the commissary.
"I regret, gentlemen, to have disturbed you," said Robert de Ligny, "and
I thank you for the courteous manner in which you have carried out your
official duties."
The secretary and the police agent, Madame Simonneau showing the way,
carried the body up to the first floor.
Monsieur Josse-Arbrissel was biting his nails and looking into space.
"A tragedy of jealousy," he remarked, "nothing is more common. We have
here in Neuilly a steady average of self-inflicted deaths. Out of a
hundred suicides thirty are caused by gambling. The others are due to
disappointment in love, poverty, or incurable disease."
"Chevalier?" inquired Dr. Hibry, who was a lover of the theatre,
"Chevalier? Wait a minute! I have seen him; I saw him at a benefit
performance, at the Variétés. Of course! He recited a monologue."
The dog howled outside the garden gate.
"You cannot imagine," resumed the commissary, "the disasters caused in
this municipality by the _pari mutuel_. I am not exaggerating when I
assert that at least thirty per cent of the suicides which I have to
look into are caused by gambling. Everybody gambles here. Every
hairdresser's shop is a clandestine betting agency. No later than last
week a concierge in the Avenue du Roule was found hanging from a tree in
the Bois de Boulogne. Now, working men, servants, and junior clerks who
gamble do not need to take their own lives. They move to another
quarter, they disappear. But a man of position, an official whom
gambling has ruined, who is overwhelmed by clamorous creditors,
threatened with distraint, and on the point of being dragged before a
court of justice, cannot disappear. What is to become of him?"
"I have it!" exclaimed the physician. "He recited _The Duel in the
Prairie_. People are rather tired of monologues, but that is very funny.
You remember! 'Will you fight with the sword?' 'No, sir.' 'The pistol?'
'No, sir.' 'The sabre, the knife?' 'No, sir.' 'Ah, then, I see what you
want. You are not fastidious. What you want is a duel in the prairie. I
agree. We will replace the prairie by a five-storied house. You are
permitted to conceal yourself in the vegetation.' Chevalier used to
recite _The Duel in the Prairie_ in a very humorous manner. He amused me
greatly that night. It is true that I am not an ungrateful audience; I
worship the theatre."
The commissary was not listening. He was following up his own train of
thought.
"It will never be known, how many fortunes and lives are devoured each
year by the _pari mutuel_. Gambling never releases its victims; when it
has despoiled them of everything, it still remains their only hope. What
else, indeed, will permit them to hope?"
He ceased, straining his ear to catch the distant cry of a newsvendor,
and rushed out into the avenue in pursuit of the fugitive yelping
shadow, hailed him, and snatched from him a sporting paper, which he
spread out under the light of a gas-lamp, scanning its pages for certain
names of horses: _Fleur-des-pois_, _La Châtelaine_, _Lucrèce_. With
haggard eyes, trembling hands, dumbfounded, crushed, he dropped the
sheet: his horse had not won.
And Dr. Hibry, observing him from a distance, reflected that some day,
in his capacity of physician to the dead, he might well be called upon
to certify the suicide of his commissary of police, and he made up his
mind in advance to conclude, as far as possible, that his death was due
to accidental causes.
Suddenly he seized his umbrella.
"I must be off," he said. "I have been given a seat for the
Opéra-Comique to-night. It would be a pity to waste it."
Before leaving the house, Ligny asked Madame Simonneau:
"Where have you put him?"
"In the bed," replied Madame Simonneau. "It was more decent."
He made no objection, and raising his eyes to the front of the house, he
saw at the windows of the bedroom, through the muslin curtains, the
light of the two candles which the housekeeper had placed on the bedside
table.
"Perhaps," he said, "one might get a nun to watch by him."
"It's not necessary," replied Madame Simonneau, who had invited some
neighbours of her own sex, and had ordered her wine and meat. "It's not
necessary, I will watch by him myself."
Ligny did not press the point.
The dog was still howling outside the gate.
Returning on foot to the barrier, he noticed, over Paris, a reddish glow
which filled the whole sky. Above the chimney-pots the factory chimneys
rose grotesque and black, against this fiery mist, seeming to look down
with a ridiculous familiarity upon the mysterious conflagration of a
world. The few passers-by whom he met on the boulevard strolled along
quietly, without raising their heads. Although he knew that when cities
are wrapped in night the moist atmosphere often reflects the lights,
becoming tinged with this uniform glow, which shines without a flicker,
he fancied that he was looking at the reflection of a vast fire. He
accepted, without reflection, the idea that Paris was sinking into the
abyss of a prodigious conflagration; he found it natural that the
private catastrophe in which he had become involved should be merged
into a public disaster and that this same night should be for a whole
population, as for him! a night of sinister happenings.
Being extremely hungry, he took a cab at the barrier, and had himself
driven to a restaurant in the Rue Royale. In the bright, warm room he
was conscious of a sense of well-being. After ordering his meal, he
opened an evening newspaper and saw, in the Parliamentary report, that
his Minister had delivered a speech. On reading it, he smothered a
slight laugh; he remembered certain stories told at the Quai d'Orsay.
The Minister of Foreign Affairs was enamoured of Madame de Neuilles, an
elderly lady with a lurid past, whom public rumour had raised to the
status of adventuress and spy. He was wont, it was whispered, to try on
her the speeches which he was to deliver in the Chamber. Ligny, who had
formerly been to a certain small extent the lover of Madame de Neuilles,
pictured to himself the statesman in his shirt reciting to his lady-love
the following statement of principles: "Far be it from me to disregard
the legitimate susceptibilities of the national sentiment. Resolutely
pacific, but jealous of France's honour, the Government will, etc." This
vision put him in a merry mood. He turned the page, and read: To-morrow
at the Odéon, first performance (in this theatre) of _La Nuit du 23
octobre 1812_ with Messieurs Durville, Maury, Romilly, Destrée, Vicar,
Léon Clim, Valroche, Aman, Chevalier....