"Do you know that he was the most steadfast of all my band? I do not
wish to detract from the personal merit of those who are listening to
me, but Vasile possessed a blind devotion, a fearless obedience, a true
zeal under all circumstances. No labor was too great for his courage; no
occupation too repugnant for his fidelity. He would have killed every
one in the kingdom if I had ordered him to do so. He would have torn out
his best friend's eye, if I had given him a sign with my little finger.
And you have killed him! Poor Vasile! when I shall have a village to
burn, a miser to torture, a woman to cut in pieces, an infant to burn
alive, who will replace thee?"
All the brigands, electrified by this funeral oration, cried in one
voice. "We! We!" Some held out their arms to the King, others unsheathed
their daggers; the most zealous leveled their pistols at me.
Hadgi-Stavros checked their enthusiasm: he stepped in front of me to
shield me, and went on with his discourse in these words:
"Be consoled, Vasile, thou shalt not rest without vengeance. If I
listened only to my grief, I would offer to thy manes thy murderer's
head; but it is worth 15,000 francs, and that thought restrains me.
Thou, thyself, if thou couldst speak, as formerly in our councils, thou
wouldst beg me to spare him; thou wouldst refuse so costly a vengeance.
It is not proper, in the circumstances in which thy death has left us,
to do foolish things, and to throw money away."
He stopped a moment; I drew a deep breath.
"But," the King went on, "I will know how to reconcile interest with
justice. I will chastise the guilty one without risking the capital. His
punishment shall be the most beautiful ornament of funeral obsequies;
and, from above, from the homes of the Palikars, to which thy spirit has
gone, thou shalt contemplate, with joy, an expiatory punishment, which
shall not cost us a sou!"
This peroration aroused the audience. I was the only one not charmed. I
puzzled my brain trying to imagine what the King had in store for me,
and I felt so little assured, that my teeth chattered. Surely, I ought
to esteem myself happy to save my life, and the preservation of my head
seemed no mean advantage; but I knew the inventive imagination of these
Greeks of the highway. Hadgi-Stavros, without putting me to death, could
inflict such chastisement as would make me hate life. The old rascal
refused to inform me as to what punishment he had in store for me. He
pitied my agony so little, that he compelled me to assist in the funeral
ceremonies of his lieutenant.
The body was stripped of its garments, carried to the brook, and bathed.
Vasile's features were changed but little; his mouth, half-open, still
bore the silly smile of the drunkard; his open eyes preserved a stupid
look. His limbs had not lost their suppleness; the rigor mortis does not
come, for a long time, to those who die by accident.
The King's coffee-bearer and pipe-bearer proceeded to dress the dead.
The King bore the expenses as heir. Vasile had no relatives, and all his
property reverted to the King. They clothed the body in a fine shirt, a
shirt of beautiful percale, and a vest embroidered with silver. They
covered his wet locks with a bonnet which was nearly new. They put
leggins of red silk on the legs which would never run again. Slippers of
Russia leather were slipped on his feet. In all his life, poor Vasile
had never been so clean nor so gorgeous. They touched his lips with
carmine; they whitened and rouged his face as if he was a young actor
about to step on the stage. During the whole operation, the bandit
orchestra executed a lugubrious air, which you must have heard in the
streets of Athens. I congratulate myself that I did not die in Greece,
because the music is abominable, and I never could have consoled myself,
if I had been buried to that air.
Four brigands began to dig a grave in the middle of the chamber, upon
the place where Mrs. Simons' tent stood, and on the spot where Mary-Ann
had slept. Two others ran to the store-house to find wax-tapers, which
they distributed. I was given one with all the others. The monk intoned
the service for the dead. Hadgi-Stavros made the responses in firm tones
which went to the depths of my soul. There was a light breeze, and the
wax from my taper fell upon my hand in a burning shower; but that, alas!
was a small thing in comparison with what awaited me. I would have
willingly endured that trouble, if the ceremony could never have been
finished.
It was finished at last. When the last oration had been delivered, the
King solemnly approached the bier on which the body lay, and kissed
Vasile's lips. The bandits, one by one, followed his example. I shivered
at the thought that my turn was coming. I tried to hide behind two who
had already performed their duty, but they saw me and said: "It is your
turn! Start then! You certainly owe him that!"
Was this, at last, the expiation which awaited me? A just man would have
been satisfied, at least. I swear to you, Monsieur, that it is no
child's play to kiss the lips of a corpse, above all, when one can
reproach one's self with being the instrument of his death. I walked
toward the bier, I looked at the face whose eyes seemed to laugh at my
embarrassment. I bent my head, I slightly touched the lips. A humorous
brigand applied his hand to the nape of my neck. My mouth struck the
cold lips! I felt the icy teeth, and seized with horror, I raised my
head, carrying away with me I know not what terror of death, which
seizes me at this moment! Women are very fortunate, they have the
resource of fainting!
They then lowered the body into the earth, they threw in a handful of
flowers, a loaf of bread, an apple, and a little wine. This latter was
the thing of which he had the least need. The grave was quickly filled,
more quickly than I wished. A brigand observed that they must get two
sticks for a cross. Hadgi-Stavros replied: "Be quiet! we will put up
milord's sticks." I leave it to you to think whether my heart beat
tumultuously. What sticks? What was there in common between sticks and
me?
The King made a sign to his pipe-bearer, who ran to the office and came
back with two long laurel poles. Hadgi-Stavros took the funeral bier and
laid it upon the grave. He pressed it down hard into the freshly turned
earth, and he raised it up at one end, while the other lay in the soil,
and he smilingly said to me: "It is for you that I am working! Take off
your shoes, if you please!"
He must have read in my eyes a question full of agony and terror, for he
replied to the demand which I dared not address to him:
"I am not wicked, and I have always detested useless severity. That is
why I wish to inflict on you a chastisement which will be of use to us,
inasmuch as it will dispense with any future watchfulness over you. You
have had for several days a craze to escape. I hope, that when you have
received twenty blows of the stick upon the soles of your feet, you will
no longer need to be watched, and your love for traveling will cease
for some time. I know what the punishment is; the Turks treated me to a
dose of it in my youth, and I know, by experience, that one does not die
of it. One suffers much from it; you will cry out, I warn you of it.
Vasile will hear from the depths of his tomb, and he will be pleased
with us."
At this announcement, my first thought was to use my legs while I still
had the freedom to do so. But you must believe that my will was very
weak, for it was impossible to put one foot before the other.
Hadgi-Stavros raised me from the ground as lightly as we pick up an
insect in our path. I felt myself bound down and unshod, before a
thought, leaving my brain, had time to act upon any of my members. I
knew neither upon what they supported my feet, nor how they kept them
from falling at the first stroke of the stick. I saw the two sticks
lifted in the air, the one to the right, the other to the left; I closed
my eyes and waited. I certainly did not wait the tenth part of a second,
and yet, so short a time was sufficient to send a tender thought to my
father, a kiss to Mary-Ann, and more than a hundred imprecations to be
divided between Mrs. Simons and John Harris.
I did not become unconscious for an instant; it is a weakness which I
never possessed, I have told you so. There was, also, nothing to lose.
The first blow was so terrific that I believed that those which followed
could amount to little. It took me in the middle of the soles, under
that small, elastic arch, just in front of the heel, which supports the
body. It was not the foot that hurt me most that time; but I believed
that the bones of my poor legs were breaking in pieces. The second blow
struck lower, just under the heels; it gave me a shock, profound,
violent, which made my whole vertebral column quiver, and filled my
brain with a frightful tumult that almost split my cranium. The third
was given directly on the toes and produced an acute and stinging
sensation, which shot all over my body and made me believe, for an
instant, that the stick had hit me on the end of the nose. It was at
this moment that the blood flowed for the first time. The blows
succeeded each other in the same order and in the same places, at equal
intervals. I had enough courage to keep silent during the first two; I
cried out at the third; I howled at the fourth; I groaned at the fifth,
and those which followed. At the tenth, the flesh itself could suffer no
more; I was silent. But the prostration of my physical force diminished,
in no wise, the clearness of my perceptions. I could not have raised my
eyelids, and yet the lightest sounds reached my ears. I lost no word of
what was said around me. It was an observation which I shall remember
later, if I practice medicine. Doctors do not hesitate to condemn a sick
man, four feet from his bed, without thinking that perhaps the poor
devil can hear them. I heard a young brigand say to the King: "He is
dead. What good to weary two men without profit to any one?"
Hadgi-Stavros replied: "Fear nothing. I received sixty, one after
another, and two days afterward I danced the Romanique."
"How didst thou do that?"
"I used the pomade of the Italian renegade, Ludgi-Bey--Where were we?
How many blows?"
"Seventeen."
"Three more, my children; and lay on the last ones hard."
The stick had done its work well. The last blows fell upon a bloody but
insentient mass of flesh. Pain had nearly paralyzed me!
They raised me from the stretcher; they unbound the cords; they swathed
my feet with compresses dipped in fresh water, and, as I had the thirst
of the wounded, they gave me a large cup of wine. Anger returned with my
strength. I do not know whether you have ever been bastinadoed, but I
know nothing more humiliating than physical chastisement. In order to
become the sovereign of the whole world, I would not, for an instant, be
the slave of a vile stick. Born in the nineteenth century, understanding
the use of steam and electricity, possessing a good share of the secrets
of nature, knowing thoroughly all that science has invented for the
well-being and security of man, knowing also how to cure fevers, how to
prevent taking small-pox, and then, not to be able to defend one's self
against a blow from a stick. It is a little too much, surely! If I had
been a soldier and had submitted to corporal punishment, I should
certainly have killed my chiefs!
When I felt myself seated on the slimy ground, my feet paralyzed with
pain, my hand useless; when I saw around me the men who had beaten me,
the ones who had struck me and those who had seen me punished; anger,
shame, a feeling of outraged dignity, of justice violated, of
intelligence brutalized, swept through my enfeebled body in a wave of
hate, of revolt, and of vengeance. I forgot everything, prudence,
interest, discretion, the future, and I gave free vent to the thoughts
which stifled me; a torrent of abuse poured from my lips, while an
overflow of bile mounted to my eyes. Surely, I am no orator, and my
solitary studies have given me no exercise in the use of words, but
indignation, which has made some poets, lent me, for a quarter of an
hour, the savage eloquence of those prisoners who rendered up their
souls with insults and who breathed their last sighs in the face of the
Roman conquerors. Everything which can outrage a man in his pride, in
his affections, and in his dearest sentiments I said to the King of the
Mountains. I put him in the rank with unclean animals, and I denied him
even the name of man. I insulted him through his mother, his wife, his
daughter, and all of his posterity. I would like to repeat to you,
verbatim, all that I made him listen to, but words are wanting to-day,
as I am not angry. I invented terms which are not found in the
dictionary, but which were understood, however, for the audience of
outcasts howled under my words like a pack of hounds under the lash of
whippers-in. But although I kept watch of the old Palikar, eagerly
scanning the muscles of his face, and searching for the slightest trace
of a frown, I could discern not the slightest sign of emotion.
Hadgi-Stavros' face was like that of a marble statue. He replied to all
insults with a contemptuous silence. His attitude exasperated me to
madness. I was certainly insane for a moment. A red cloud like blood
passed before my eyes. I rose suddenly on my wounded feet. I saw a
pistol thrust in the waist-band of one of the brigands, I pulled it out,
I aimed it at the King, I drew the trigger, and fell back murmuring, "I
am avenged!"
It was the King himself who raised me. I looked at him with an
astonishment as great as if I had seen him walking out of hell. He
seemed not at all moved, and smiled as tranquilly as an immortal. And
moreover, Monsieur, I had not missed him. My ball had touched his
forehead, a little above the left eyebrow; a trace of blood testified to
it. Possibly the pistol was badly loaded, or the powder poor, or it may
be, that the ball had glanced across the bone, but whatever it was, my
bullet had made only an abrasion.
The invulnerable monster seated me carefully on the ground, leaned
toward me, pulled my ear and said: "Why do you attempt the impossible,
young man? I warned you that I had a head that was bullet-proof, and you
know that I never lie. Were you not told that Ibrahim had seven
Egyptians shoot at me and that he was unsuccessful? I hope that you do
not pretend to be more powerful than seven Egyptians? But do you know
that you have a nimble hand for a Northern man? Peste! if my mother, of
whom you spoke lightly a few moments ago, had not endowed me with
strength, I would now be a dead man. Another, in my place, would have
died without having time to say, 'Thank you!' As for me, such things
rejuvenate me. It recalls my best days. At your age, I exposed my life
four times a day, and I only digested the better for it. Come, I will
pardon you your hasty action. But as all my subjects are not proof
against bullets, and that you may commit no new imprudence, I shall
apply to your hands the same treatment as your feet received. Nothing
prevents us from punishing you immediately; I will wait, however, until
to-morrow, in the interests of your health. You see the stick is a blunt
weapon which kills no one; you have yourself proved that one bastinadoed
man is worth two. To-morrow's ceremony will occupy you. Prisoners do not
know how to pass the time. It was idleness which gave you bad counsels.
Rest easy, moreover; as soon as your ransom arrives, I will cure your
wounds. I still have some of Ludgi-Bey's balm. There will be no signs of
them at the end of two days, and you can dance at the ball at the
Palace, without telling your partners that they are leaning on the arm
of a cavalier who has been beaten."
I am not a Greek, and the insults wounded me as grievously as the blows.
I shook my fist in the old rascal's face, and cried out with all my
strength:
"No, wretch! my ransom will never be paid! No! I have not asked anyone
for the money! Thou wilt get from me only my head, which will serve thee
nothing. Take it quickly if it seems good to thee. It will do me a favor
and thyself also. Thou wilt spare me two weeks of torture, and the
disgust of looking at thee, which is the most of all. Thou wilt save my
board for fifteen days. Do not miss it, it is the only benefit that thou
wilt reap from me!"
He smiled, shrugged his shoulders, and replied: "Ta! ta! ta! ta! Thus it
is with young people! Extremists in everything! They throw the helve
after the hatchet. If I listened to you, I would regret it before eight
hours had passed, and so would you. The Englishwomen will pay, I am sure
of it. I know women yet, although I have lived in retirement for a long
time. What would be said if I killed you to-day, and your ransom arrived
to-morrow? The story would go out that I had broken my word, and my
prisoners would allow themselves to be killed like sheep, without asking
a centime of their parents. It would spoil the trade."
"Ah! thou believest that the Englishwomen will pay thee, my clever
fellow? Yes, they will pay thee as thou meritest!"
"You are very good."
"Their ransom will cost thee 80,000 francs, dost thou hear? Eighty
thousand francs out of thy pocket!"
"Do not say such things. One would think that the blows of the stick had
turned your brain."
"I tell thee the truth. Dost thou recall the name of thy prisoners?"
"No, but I have it in writing."
"I will jog thy memory. The lady called herself Mrs. Simons."
"Well!"
"Partner of the firm of Barley in London."
"My banker?"
"Precisely."
"How doest thou know my banker's name?"
"Because thou didst dictate before me."
"What matter, after all? They cannot escape; they are not Greeks, they
are English; the courts--I will make complaint!"
"And thou wouldst lose. They have a receipt!"
"That is so. But by what mischance did I give them a receipt?"
"Because I advised thee to do it, poor man!"
"Wretch! dog wrongly baptized! heretic of hell! thou hast ruined me!
thou hast betrayed me! Thou hast robbed me! eighty thousand francs! I am
responsible! If they were the bankers of the company, I would lose only
my share. But they hold only my capital; I shall lose it all. Art thou
very sure that she is a partner of the firm of Barley?"
"As I am sure of dying to-day."
"No! thou shalt not die till to-morrow. Thou hast not suffered enough.
We will make thee pay for those 80,000 francs. What punishment can we
invent? Eighty thousand francs! Eighty thousand deaths would be little.
What have I done to this traitor who has robbed me! Peuh! Child's play,
a pleasantry! He has not howled two hours! I must invent something
better. But may be there are two firms of the same name?"
"Cavendish Square, No. 31."
"Yes, it is the same. Fool! why didst thou not warn me instead of
betraying me? I would have asked double the sum. They would have paid
it; they have the means. I would not have given the receipt; I will
never give another. No! no! it is the last time! Received a hundred
thousand francs of Mrs. Simons! What a foolish sentence! Was it really I
who dictated that? But I reflect now; I did not sign it. Yes, but my
seal is equal to a signature! There are twenty letters in my name. Why
didst thou demand this receipt? What do you expect from those ladies?
Fifteen thousand francs for thy ransom? Selfishness, everywhere! Thou
shouldst have confided in me; I would have let thee go without the
ransom; I would even have paid thee. If thou art poor, as thou sayest
thou art, thou shouldst know how good money is. Thou thinkest only of a
sum of 80,000 francs? Dost thou know what a heap that would make in a
room? How many pieces of gold? How much money one could make in business
with 80,000 francs? It is a calamity! Thou hast robbed me of a fortune!
Thou hast robbed my daughter, the only being I love in the world. It is
for her that I work. But, if thou knowest my affairs, thou knowest that
I scour the mountains for a whole year to gain 40,000 francs. Thou hast
plundered me of two years' income; it is as if I had slept for two
years!"
I had then found the tender chord. The old Palikar was touched to the
heart. I knew that there was a heavy score against me, and I expected no
mercy, and moreover, I experienced an intense joy in seeing that
impassable mask torn asunder and that stony face wrung with emotion. I
rejoiced to see in his wrinkled face, the convulsive movements of
passion, as the ship-wrecked boat lost in a raging sea, admires, afar
off, the wave which is to engulf it. I was like the thinking reed, which
the brutal universe crushes into a shapeless mass, and which consoles
itself in dying with the lofty thought of its superiority. I said to
myself, with pride: "I shall die by torture, but I am the master of my
master, and the executioner of my execution!"