Before continuing this narrative, some explanation is necessary
concerning Erebus and Seigneur Pog, the silent and sarcastic man.
In the year 1612, twenty years before the period of which we write, a
Frenchman, still young, arrived at Tripoli, with one servant.
The captain of the vessel which brought him to Tripoli had frequent
opportunity to observe that his passenger was very expert in matters
pertaining to navigation; he concluded finally that the traveller was an
officer on the vessels and galleys of the king, and he was not mistaken.
Seigneur Pog--we continue to give him this assumed name--was an
excellent sailor, as we shall soon see.
Upon his arrival at Tripoli, Pog, after having, according to the custom
of Barbary, bought the protection of Bey Hassan, hired a house in the
suburbs of the city, not far from the sea. He lived there during one
year with his valet in profound solitude.
Some French merchants, established at Tripoli, exhausted their powers of
conjecture on the singular taste of their compatriot, who came, as they
thought, through mere caprice, to inhabit a wild and deserted coast.
Some attributed this eccentricity to a violent, desperate grief; others
saw, if not an unpardonable folly, a monomania, at least, in his strange
determination.
These last suppositions did not lack foundation.
At certain periods of the year, Pog, it was said, was subject to such
attacks of despair and rage that belated herdsmen, passing his solitary
house at night, would hear furious and frantic cries.
Three or four years passed in this manner.
To distract his mind from gloomy thoughts, and to recuperate his health,
Pog made long voyages at sea in a small vessel, but a very smooth and
swift-sailing ship which he himself managed with rare skill. His crew
consisted of two young slave Moors.
One day, one of the most famous and cruel corsairs of Tripoli, named
Kemal-Reis, came near perishing with his galley, which ran aground on
the Coast a short distance from the house of Pog.
Pog was just returning from one of his voyages. Recognising the galley
of Kemal-Reis, he set sail toward her, and rendered her the most
efficient aid.
One of Pog’s slaves reported later that he had heard him say, “Man
would be too happy if all the wolves and tigers were destroyed.” So
the saving of Kemal-Reis, dreaded for reason of his cruelties, was due
to the bitter misanthropy of Pog. Instead of yielding to an impulse of
natural generosity, he desired to preserve to humanity one of its most
terrible scourges.
A short time after this event Kemal-Reis visited the isolated house
of the Frenchman, and, by degrees, a sort of intimacy was established
between the pirate and the misanthrope.
One day the newsmongers of Tripoli learned with astonishment that
Pog had embarked on board the galley of Kemal-Reis. They supposed the
Frenchman to be very rich, and that he had freighted the Tripolitan
vessel in order to take a voyage of pleasure on the coast of Barbary and
Egypt and Syria.
To the great astonishment of the public, Kemal-Reis returned a month
after his departure, with his galley filled with French slaves, captured
from the coasts of Languedoc and Provence, and the rumour was current in
Tripoli that the favourable results of this audacious enter-prise were
owing to the information and advice given by Pog, who knew better than
any one else the weak points on the seashore of France. This rumour soon
acquired such probability that our consul at Tripoli deemed it his duty
to inform against Pog, and to instruct the ministers of Louis XIII. of
what had happened.
And here we make the statement, once for all, that in 1610, as well as
in 1630 and in 1700, the abduction of inhabitants from our coasts by
the regencies of Barbary was almost never considered a cause for a
declaration of war against these powers. Our consuls assisted at the
disembarking of the captives and generally acted as mediators for their
ransom.
If any measures were taken against Pog, it was because he had, as a
Frenchman, assisted with his own hand in an attack upon his country.
The information given by the consul was in vain, to the great scandal
of our compatriots and of Europeans established at Tripoli. Pog made
a solemn abjuration, renounced the cross, assumed the turban, and
henceforth remained unmolested.
Kemal-Reis had everywhere proclaimed that the new renegade was one
of the best captains whom he had ever known, and that the regency of
Barbary could not have made a more useful acquisition. From that moment
Pog-Reis equipped a galley and directed his operations solely against
French vessels, and especially against the galleys of Malta, commanded
by the chevaliers of our nation. Several times he ravaged the coasts
of Languedoc and Provence with impunity. It must be said, however, that
this fury for plunder and destruction only seized Pog, so to speak,
periodically, and by paroxysms, and his rage seemed to reach its height
about the end of the month of December.
During that month he showed himself without pity, and it is related,
with a shudder of horror, that several times he had the throats of a
great number of captives cut,--a frightful and bloody holocaust which he
offered, doubtless, on some painful and dreaded anniversary. The month
of December passed, his mind, obscured by a bloodthirsty madness, became
more calm, when, returning to Tripoli, and shutting himself up in his
solitude, he remained sometimes two or three months without putting to
sea. Then, his desperate soul again possessed by some bitter resentment,
he equipped his galley anew, and recommenced his atrocious career.
Among the French captives whom he had taken in his first expedition with
Kemal-Reis, and whom he had generously abandoned to this corsair, upon
the sole condition that liberty should never be restored to them, was
one whom he retained,--a child of four or five years carried away from
the coast of Languedoc, with an old woman who died during the passage.
This child of unparagoned beauty was Erebus.
Pog named him thus, as if he wished by the fatal name to predestinate
the unfortunate child to the career to which his evil designs devoted
him.
In the intensity of his hatred of the human race, Pog had the infernal
desire to destroy the soul of this unfortunate child, by giving him
the most pernicious education. He devoted himself to this task with
abominable perseverance. As Erebus advanced in years, Pog, without
reason for his absurd eccentricities, alternately expended upon the
boy a furious aversion and cruelty, and impulsive demonstrations of
solicitude,--these last being the only sentiments af kindness he had
felt for many years. By degrees, these spasmodic expressions of sympathy
discontinued, and Pog soon included Erebus in the common execration
with which he pursued mankind, and adhered to his fatal resolution with
deadly persistence. Far from leaving the boy’s mind uneducated, he took
particular pains in developing it. Among the numerous slaves which his
avocation of rapine brought in his way, Pog-Reis easily found professors
and teachers of all sorts, and what he failed to find he purchased from
other corsairs or obtained by other means.
For instance, having learned that a celebrated Spanish painter, named
Juan Pelieko, lived in Barcelona, he employed every stratagem to draw
him out of the city, and at last succeeded in capturing him and taking
him to Tripoli. When this artist had perfected Erebus in his art, Pog
had him put in chains, in which servitude he remained until he died.
In his impious and cruel course of experiment, Pog, desiring to force
his victim through every degree in the scale of iniquity, from vice to
crime, took pleasure in making the child acquainted with all kinds of
sin, and in giving him opportunities for culture and accomplishments.
He argued that with ordinary intelligence a man was only an ordinary
villain, but that various resources enabled him to achieve the most
wonderful results in audacious wickedness. Through this abominable
system, the arts, instead of elevating the soul of Erebus, were designed
to develop a passion for sensual pleasures, and to materialise an
otherwise exalted nature.
When the wonders of painting and music do not lift the soul into the
infinite realm of the ideal, when one seeks only a melody more or less
agreeable to the ear, or a form more or less attractive to the eye, then
the arts deprave rather than ennoble mankind.
Surely, Pog must have had a terrible vengeance to wreak upon humanity,
his misanthropy must have partaken of the nature of madness, that he
could have been guilty of the sacrilegious cruelty of thus degrading a
pure young soul!
No scruple or regret made him hesitate. As a tender father would seek to
guard his child’s mind from dangerous thoughts, and to encourage in his
young heart all noble and generous instincts, Pog, on the other hand,
left no means untried to corrupt this unhappy child, and to excite his
bad passions.
It is with certain moral organisations as with physical natures,--they
can be injured and enfeebled, but not completely ruined, so healthy
and vigorous is their vital germ. Thus it was with Erebus. By a special
providence, the pernicious teachings of Pog had not yet, so to speak,
essentially altered the heart of the poor boy.
The singular instinct of contradiction peculiar to youth saved him
from many dangers. The very facility with which he could, scarcely
adolescent, have yielded to every excess, the odious temptations
they dared set before him, sufficed to preserve him from precocious
dissipations.
In a word, the natural exaltation of his sentiments urged him
to cultivate the sweet, pure, and noble emotions from which they
endeavoured to remove him, but unfortunately the fatal influence of Pog
had not been absolutely vain. The ardent character of Erebus retained a
sad evidence of the perversity of his education.
If in some moments he had passionate yearnings toward good, if he
struggled against the detestable counsels of his tutor, the habit of a
warlike and adventurous life which he had led from the age of twelve or
thirteen years, the impetuosity of his character, and the transport of
his passions, often dragged him into grievous excess. From his earliest
youth, Pog had taken him along in the various incursions into the
shore, and the courage and natural daring of Erebus had been valiantly
exhibited in several combats.
Instructed by experience and by practice, he had learned with great
facility the avocation of sailor and mariner, and the constant aim of
Pog had been to inculcate in him a profound and relentless hatred of the
chevaliers of Malta, who were represented to him as the murderers of
his family, and the secret of this murder Pog had faithfully promised to
reveal to him some day.
Yet nothing was more false. Pog had no knowledge of the parents of the
child, left an orphan at such an early age, but he wished to perpetuate
in his victim his own hatred of the chevaliers of religion.
Erebus renewed his vows, and an ardent desire for vengeance developed
in his young soul against the soldiers of Christ, whom he believed to
be the murderers of his family. In other respects, Erebus gave less
satisfaction to Pog. Cruelty in cold blood was revolting to him, and
sometimes he was deeply moved at the sight of human suffering. Pog had
often observed that irony and sarcasm were a powerful and infallible
arm in combating the natural nobility of the youth’s character, and by
comparing him to a clergyman, or a tonsured Christian, or accusing him
of weakness and cowardice, he often provoked the unhappy boy to culpable
acts.
The scene in the rocks of Ollioules, where Erebus saw Reine for the
first time, is a striking proof of that constant struggle between his
natural inclinations and the bad passions that Pog excited in his heart.
The first impulse of Erebus was to hasten to the rescue of Raimond V.
and to respond with almost filial veneration to the old man’s outburst
of gratitude,--in fact, to believe himself rewarded for his generous
conduct by the satisfaction of his conscience and the grateful looks
of the young girl; but a bitter sarcasm from Pog, a coarse jest from
Trimalcyon, changed these noble emotions into sensual desire and a
profound disdain for the courageous action by which he had just honoured
himself.
Yet, in spite of the cynical bantering of the two pirates, the
enchanting beauty of Reine made a profound impression upon Erebus.
He had never loved, his heart had never taken part in the coarse
pleasures which he had sought among the slaves that the hazard of war
had thrown into his hands.
Pog and Trimalcyon were not long in perceiving a certain change in the
character of Erebus.
Some indiscreet words enlightened Pog as to the powerful influence
of this first love upon the young man, and he began to fear the
consequences of this passion, in elevating the heart of Erebus,--a love
which would make the young man blush for the abominable life he was
leading, and awaken in him the most generous sentiments. Pog, therefore
resolved to kill this love by possession, and proposed to Erebus to
abduct Reine by force.
He encountered a lively resistance in the young pirate. Erebus thought
the proposed abduction atrocious; he wished to be loved or to make
himself loved.
Pog then suggested another plan. He flattered the self-love of Erebus
beyond measure, by proving to him that he must have made a profound
impression on the heart of the young girl, but that it was necessary,
by mysterious means, to preserve and increase the remembrance that she
would necessarily hide from the knowledge of her father. Then, when he
was sure of being loved, he was to appear, offer to carry her away, and
withdraw if she did not accept his proposal.
This plan, which Pog intended to modify at its conclusion, satisfied
Erebus. We have seen how it was partly executed at Maison-Forte.
A Moor who had accompanied the young pirate at sea from his childhood,
and who was warmly attached to him, was to introduce himself secretly
into the castle of Anbiez.
This man was the Bohemian whom we have seen at Maison-Forte. He had
accompanied Erebus at the time of the audacious journey of the three
pirates in Provence. When they reached the port of Cette again, where
they had left their chebec, they embarked and rejoined their galleys,
which were anchored in the islands of Majorca, then open to all the
pirates of the Mediterranean.
There, Erebus, Pog, Trimalcyon, and Hadji--such was the name of the
Bohemian--contrived their plans.
The day of the adventure in the gorges of Ollioules Hadji had described
the old gentleman whom Erebus had just saved, and the young girl, to his
hosts in Marseilles, who gave him the name of Raimond V. and his young
daughter, for the Baron des Anbiez was well known in Provence.
During his sojourn at Majorca, Erebus, who in his leisure occupied
himself in the art of painting, made as a souvenir the miniature of
which we have spoken, and a skilful goldsmith enamelled the little dove
on some objects intended for Reine. Finally, Erebus added a portrait of
himself, which was placed in the medallion ornamenting the guzla of the
Bohemian.
These preparations completed, the Moor departed, taking with him, as
a means of correspondence with the two pirates, two pigeons raised on
board the chebec of Erebus, and habituated to seek and to recognise
this vessel, which they regained with a jerk of the wing as soon as they
perceived it, at a distance beyond the power of the eye of man.
At the end of fifteen days, the two galleys and the chebec began to
cruise and beat about in view of the coasts of Provence.
As we have said, the month of December was Pog’s gloomy month, the
period in which his cruel instincts were exasperated to a ferocious
monomania.
He had dared present himself under an assumed name to the Marshal
of Vitry, only to examine at leisure the state of the coast and
the fortifications of Marseilles, as he had the audacious design of
surprising and ravaging the city, and burning the port. He counted on
his understanding with some Moors established in Marseilles, to make
himself master of the boom of the harbour.
However absurd or impossible it may appear, this attack, or rather this
surprise, might have been successful. Pog did not despair of it If the
arrangements that he had manipulated failed at his signal, he was sure
at least of being able to lay waste a coast which was without defence,
and the little city of La Ciotat, for reason of its proximity to
Maison-Forte, must in this case share the fate of Marseilles.
In the tumult of the battle, Reine des Anbiez could easily be carried
off.
We have seen that the manoeuvres of the Bohemian succeeded.
A long time hidden among the rocks which bordered upon Maison-Forte,
he had several times seen Reine in the balcony of the window of her
oratory, and had observed that this window often remained open. Thanks
to his agility, the Bohemian had introduced himself there twice in the
evening,--the first time with the crystal vase containing a Persian
amaryllis, a bulbous plant which blooms in a few days; the second time
with the miniature.
Certain of having established these mysterious antecedents sufficiently
well to excite the curiosity of Reine, and thus force her to think of
Erebus, Hadji, thinking he could present himself at Maison-Forte without
awakening suspicion, was returning to the house of Raimond V., and on
the way met the recorder Isnard and his retinue.
Fifteen days after his arrival at Maison-Forte, the chebec, at the
setting of the sun, began to cruise at large. Hadji then sent one of the
pigeons as the bearer of a letter, informing Erebus that he was loved,
and Pog where he could attempt a landing, in case he should be compelled
to renounce his intention of surprising Marseilles.
The watchman’s eagle intercepted this correspondence by devouring
the messenger. Unhappily, Hadji had another emissary. The next day, at
sunset, the chebec appeared again, and a letter carried by the second
pigeon announced to Erebus that he was loved, and to Pog that the most
favourable moment for a descent upon La Ciotat was Christmas Day, a time
when all the Provençals were occupied with their family feasts and
merrymaking.
The tempest began to blow the very evening of the day on which Erebus
received this intelligence. He rejoined the two galleys which were
cruising off the coast of Hyères; the weather becoming more and
more violent, the three vessels put into Port Mage, on the island of
Port-Cros. As we have said, they had been anchored there since the day
before, impatiently waiting for the wind to change, as the celebration
of Christmas would occur the day after the morrow. Before attempting
anything at La Ciotat, Pog wished to assure himself that his enterprise
on Marseilles was not possible.
Now that we are acquainted with the fatal ties which bound Erebus to
Pog, we will follow the young adventurer on the galley of Trimalcyon.
He slowly ascended on board the _Sybarite_ and entered the apartment
where dinner was being served.