The childhood of the Abbé Rosselot is as secret as his origin, and no
man may know whether Belfort or Bavaria smiled upon his innocence. A
like mystery enshrouds his early manhood, and the malice of his foes,
who are legion, denounces him for a Jesuit of Innsbruck. But since he
has lived within the eye of the world his villainies have been revealed
as clearly as his attainments, and history provides him no other rival
in the corruption of youth than the infamous Thwackum.
It is not every scholar's ambition to teach the elements, and Rosselot
adopted his modest calling as a cloak of crime. No sooner was he
installed in a mansion than he became the mansion's master, and
henceforth he ruled his employer's domain with the tyrannical severity
of a Grand Inquisitor. His soul wrapped in the triple brass of
arrogance, he even dared to lay his hands upon food before his betters
were served; and presently, emboldened by success, he would order the
dinners, reproach the cook with a too lavish use of condiments, and
descend with insolent expostulation into the kitchen. In a week he had
opened the cupboards upon a dozen skeletons, and made them rattle their
rickety bones up and down the draughty staircases, until the inmates
shivered with horror and the terrified neighbours fled the haunted
castle as a lazar-house. Once in possession of a family secret, he felt
himself secure, and henceforth he was free to browbeat his employer and
to flog his pupil to the satisfaction of his waspish nature. Moreover,
he was endowed with all the insight and effrontery of a trained
journalist. So sedulous was he in his search after the truth, that
neither man nor woman could deny him confidence. And, as vinegar flowed
in his veins for blood, it was his merry sport to set wife against
husband and children against father. Not even were the servants
safe from his watchful inquiry, and housemaids and governesses alike
entrusted their hopes and fears to his malicious keeping. And when the
house had retired to rest, with what a sinister delight did he chuckle
over the frailties and infamies, a guilty knowledge of which he had
dragged from many an unwilling sinner! To oust him, when installed, was
a plain impossibility, for this wringer of hearts was only too glib
in the surrender of another's scandal; and as he accepted the last
scurrility with Christian resignation, his unfortunate employer could
but strengthen his vocabulary and patiently endure the presence of this
smiling, demoniacal tutor.
But a too villainous curiosity was not the Abbé's capital sin.
Not only did he entertain his leisure with wrecking the happiness of a
united family, but he was an enemy open and declared of France. It
was his amiable pastime at the dinner-table, when he had first helped
himself to such delicacies as tempted his dainty palate, to pronounce
a pompous eulogy upon the German Emperor. France, he would say with an
exultant smile, is a pays pourri, which exists merely to be the football
of Prussia. She has but one hope of salvation--still the monster
speaks--and that is to fall into the benign occupation of a vigorous
race. Once upon a time--the infamy is scarce credible--he was conducting
his young charges past a town-hall, over the lintel of whose door
glittered those proud initials 'R. F.' 'What do they stand for?' asked
this demon Barlow. And when the patriotic Tommy hesitated for an answer,
the preceptor exclaimed with ineffable contempt, 'Race de fous'! It is
no wonder, then, that this foe of his fatherland feared to receive a
letter openly addressed; rather he would slink out under cover of night
and seek his correspondence at the poste restante, like a guilty lover
or a British tourist.
The Château de Presles was built for his reception. It was haunted by a
secret, which none dare murmur in the remotest garret. There was no more
than a whisper of murder in the air, but the Marquis shuddered when his
wife's eye frowned upon him. True, the miserable Menaldo had disappeared
from his seminary ten years since, but threats of disclosure were
uttered continually, and respectability might only be purchased by a
profound silence. Here was the Abbé's most splendid opportunity, and he
seized it with all the eagerness of a greedy temperament. The Marquise,
a wealthy peasant, who was rather at home on the wild hill-side than in
her stately castle, became an instant prey to his devilish intrigue.
The governess, an antic old maid of fifty-seven, whose conversation was
designed to bring a blush to the cheek of the most hardened dragoon,
was immediately on terms of so frank an intimacy that she flung bread
pellets at him across the table, and joyously proposed, if we may
believe the priest on his oath, to set up housekeeping with him, that
they might save expense. Two high-spirited boys were always at hand to
encourage his taste for flogging, and had it not been for the Marquis,
the Abbé's cup would have been full to overflowing. But the Marquis
loved not the lean, ogling instructor of his sons, and presently began
to assail him with all the abuse of which he was master. He charged the
Abbé with unspeakable villainy; salop and saligaud were the terms in
which he would habitually refer to him. He knew the rascal for a spy,
and no modesty restrained him from proclaiming his knowledge. But
whatever insults were thrown at the Abbé he received with a grin
complacent as Shylock's, for was he not conscious that when he liked the
pound of flesh was his own!
With a fiend's duplicity he laid his plans of ruin and death. The
Marquise, swayed to his will, received him secretly in the blue room
(whose very colour suggests a guilty intrigue), though never, upon
the oath of an Abbé, when the key was turned in the lock. A journey to
Switzerland had freed him from the haunting suspicion of the Marquis,
and at last he might compel the wife to denounce her husband as
a murderer. The terrified woman drew the indictment at the Abbé's
dictation, and when her husband returned to St. Amand he was instantly
thrust into prison. Nothing remained but to cajole the sons into an
expressed hatred of their father, and the last enormity was committed by
a masterpiece of cunning. 'Your father's one chance of escape,' argued
this villain in a cassock, 'is to be proved an inhuman ruffian.
Swear that he beat you unmercifully and you will save him from the
guillotine.' All the dupes learned their lesson with a certainty which
reflects infinite credit upon the Abbé's method of instruction.
For once in his life the Abbé had been moved by greed as well as by
villainy. His early exploits had no worse motive than the satisfaction
of an inhuman lust for cruelty and destruction. But the Marquise was
rich, and when once her husband's head were off, might not the Abbé reap
his share of the gathered harvest? The stakes were high, but the game
was worth the playing, and Rosselot played it with spirit and energy
unto the last card. His appearance in court is ever memorable, and as
his ferret eyes glinted through glass at the President, he seemed the
villain of some Middle Age Romance. His head, poised upon a lean, bony
frame, was embellished with a nose thin and sharp as the blade of a
knife; his tightly compressed lips were an indication of the rascal's
determination. 'Long as a day in Lent'--that is how a spectator
described him; and if ever a sinister nature glared through a sinister
figure, the Abbé's character was revealed before he parted his lips in
speech. Unmoved he stood and immovable; he treated the imprecations of
the Marquis with a cold disdain; as the burden of proof grew heavy on
his back, he shrugged his shoulders in weary indifference. He told his
monstrous story with a cynical contempt, which has scarce its equal in
the history of crime; and priest, as he was, he proved that he did
not yield to the Marquis himself in the Rabelaisian amplitude of his
vocabulary. He brought charges against the weird world of Presles with
an insouciance and brutality which defeated their own aim. He described
the vices of his master and the sins of the servants in a slang which
would sit more gracefully upon an idle roysterer than upon a pious Abbé.
And, his story ended, he leered at the Court with the satisfaction of
one who had discharged a fearsome duty.
But his rascality overshot its mark; the Marquise, obedient to his
priestly casuistry, displayed too fierce a zeal in the execution of his
commands. And he took to flight, hoping to lose in the larger world of
Paris the notoriety which his prowess won him among the poor despised
Berrichons. He left behind for our consolation a snatch of philosophy
which helps to explain his last and greatest achievement. 'Those who
have money exist only to be fleeced.' Thus he spake with a reckless
revelation of self. Yet the mystery of his being is still unpierced. He
is traitor, schemer, spy; but is he an Abbé? Perhaps not. At any rate,
he once attended the 'Messe des Morts,' and was heard to mumble a
'Credo,' which, as every good Catholic remembers, has no place in that
solemn service.
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Printed by T. and A. CONSTABLE, Printers to His Majesty at the Edinburgh
University Press