The Marquis Gaspard hitched about in his chair; and, as his body lay
back in the deep cushions, I noticed, on either of the arms of gilded
wood, a small withered hand, the desiccated skin of which, faultlessly
manicured, was as glossy as ancient ivory. The Count François and the
Vicomte Antoine, whether of their own accord or in imitation of their
respective parent and grand-parent, relaxed into similar comfortable
positions, their hands also, broader and less wasted, likewise resting
on their carved chair-arms--which they quite encircled, what with
fingers and palm. I could not help observing these details; for a
clear, definite conviction mysteriously seized upon my mind that those
talons, of such innocent and genteel exteriors, had their nails somehow
buried in every part of my tortured flesh.
The marquis was again speaking: “Monsieur le capitaine, I consider
you an intelligent man; and I will not do you the injustice of
supposing for an instant that you have failed to divine the nature
of the restriction which I have always been careful to introduce
expressly into all my offers of service and hospitality. The time has
come--believe me, I am more pained than you thereat--for us to touch
more directly upon this restriction. As I have repeatedly assured you,
Monsieur le capitaine, our house is wholly, entirely, absolutely at
your disposal; but you will understand, knowing what you know, that you
will never be allowed to depart from it. Everything here is yours for
the asking, everything! Everything save one single thing: your freedom!
“In thus detaining you against your will, our sorrow, Monsieur le
capitaine, knows no bounds, no bounds whatever. I say that in behalf
of the three of us; for I know that the count here, and the vicomte,
feel the same regret as I. But what else can we do? In our heart of
hearts, we regard ourselves as absolutely not responsible for any of
the consequences that may result from your visit to our abode. Chance,
and your own--very pardonable--curiosity, are to blame. A thousand
to one chance--and it went against you! It was your ridiculously
unreasonable misfortune to have seen last evening something that no
mortal man could be allowed to see: Madame de X.... on the Col de la
Mort de Gauthier. But your bad luck did not end even there. In your
rambling search for your lady, it was your second mischance to come
dangerously near our refuge. From that point on we were helpless.
Knowing, perhaps, that we exist, knowing perhaps where we live, knowing
perhaps the kind of visits we are occasionally obliged to receive, you
know far too much, Monsieur le capitaine; for the Secret preserves
its efficacy only so long as it remains a Secret. It must, by nature,
be the exclusive appanage of a few Living Men. Let the generality of
Mortals even suspect its existence, and it is finished. Our Secret,
you see, Monsieur, is an essentially aristocratic one. Its exercise
presupposes the subservience of a great number of inferior creatures,
who must endure labor, suffering and fatigue for the profit and welfare
of a few master beings. I need not remind you that the humanitarian
prejudices, the democratic sentimentality, of the present age would
not take kindly to such a notion. Your politicians, who flatter and
fawn on a vulgar demos more vilely than any of my comrades, the royal
pages, ever courted the _Roi Bien Aimé_, would tear their hair in
oratoric indignation if they ever discovered that for the past hundred
and seventy-five years one man has been allowing himself to avoid death
in defiance of all equalitarian principles. So much so, Monsieur le
capitaine, that we three, among the most well-intentioned gentlemen in
the Kingdom, as I boasted not long since, find ourselves obliged to
hide like brigands in this out-of-the-way spot, and behind a labyrinth
of boulders, precipices and thickets certain to keep all intruders away.
“In the circumstances, our embarrassment should not be hard to
understand. You have happened on us, Monsieur le capitaine, much as a
wasp might strike into a spider’s web, tearing everything to pieces. If
you were left at liberty to return whence you came, carrying the shreds
of our Secret in your pockets, it would be the jolly end of us, now
would it not? I am speaking, as you well realize, without a trace of
exaggeration.
“Consider a moment, Monsieur le capitaine! Try to imagine the
prodigies of prudence and cunning we have had to perform, the
limitless sacrifices we have had to make, to ensure our safety and our
independence in the various countries where we have had to live. For
one thing, we have always been moving from this place to that. The
business of a Wandering Jew would be child’s play compared with our
many flights and migrations. But the discomforts attendant on such
things have been the least of our troubles. Monsieur le capitaine, when
my master died, I was still a comparatively young man, and François
here was a mere boy. His mother I had married twenty years before, in
France--still young and beautiful she was, and as strict in her loyalty
to her husband as conjugal happiness demands--neither too much nor too
little, that is. I loved her dearly; and my great joy, at first, was
to think of taking her along with me to share the new destiny I had in
store. But then I reflected: was it wise, was it prudent, to entrust
to a woman a Secret on the keeping of which depended whether I should
come to be another Count de Saint Germain, and perhaps, indeed, an
older and a more learned one? Could I stake, on a female’s discretion
and wisdom, the outcome of a game to last for years and years, when
winning would make us literally immortal, and a single uncautious
word would spell certain ruin? Alas! You understand: I could not! I
submitted accordingly, Monsieur le capitaine, to the torture of seeing
the mother of my only child perish before my very eyes, while, all
along, I could have preserved forever the smile of her lips and the
sweetness of her caresses. Such a price the continuance of our lives
as Living Men exacted. And twenty years thereafter, my son, in his
turn, to prevent the Secret of Long Life from becoming entangled in
skirts, sacrificed his wife. Such facts will enable you, Monsieur le
capitaine, to estimate the value of this formidable knowledge, which
we have preferred to two lives no less precious, you must admit, than
your own. I have said two lives, with a view to a reasonable statistic.
There may have been more. A few moments ago you saw how pale and
weakened your friend, Madame de X...., appeared. It is no simple matter
to give up some eight or ten pounds of living substance to another
person.... Then, there are the accidents to take account of.... We have
had such lamentable occurrences to regret, unfortunately ... though
very few, very very few.... In any event, you can see that the ransom
of our lives must be a heavy one, though a capricious Circumstance
has decreed that others should pay it for us.... Alas, Monsieur le
capitaine! You surely will not be surprised if it has fallen to you now
to assume a portion of the cost....
“You must, in short, pay something; and I am certain I can rely, in
such a matter, on your liberality as a gentleman of parts.... What
puzzles me rather is the kind of currency that might be passed between
us....”
At this point he broke off, and looked first at the one and then at the
other of his two companions, who, first one and then the other, wagged
their heads in doubt. A moment or so must thus have passed.
“Monsieur le capitaine,” the marquis suddenly resumed; “if we
were living a hundred years earlier, in 1808 instead of 1908, our
difficulties would be easily superable. For, I must tell you: this
is not the first time we have been embarrassed by the inconvenient
presence with us of an intruder--living or dead as the case may be.
Forgive my using such a term for you; it is accurate, however seemingly
discourteous. Yes, I remember, to mention only one such episode, a
poor Neapolitan who, some eighty odd years ago, died in our house most
inopportunely. We were living in Naples at the time. The police service
of the Bourbons was a pretty ramshackle affair; none the less I was
afraid of considerable annoyance, should it ever occur to the Gentlemen
of the Guard to ask how that particular person happened to be found
dead so far from his own home. I decided to anticipate any indiscrete
inquisitiveness. A felucca from Malta happened to be lying in port. We
went aboard long before any one in town could possibly have begun to
work up interest in the death of that unfortunate man. The felucca set
sail; and no one found any objection to raise against the departure of
three kind-hearted old gentlemen noted for the promptness with which
they paid their bills. From Malta we took another boat to Cadiz; and
from Cadiz we went on to Seville, where we were sure no citizen of the
Two Sicilies would ever suspect our presence.
“But nowadays, alas, the earth has become much smaller, and the
telegraph, especially, has seriously complicated our manner of living.
Take your case, Monsieur le capitaine. I have no doubt that in the
course of the next few hours, any number of official dispatches will
be sent out over all this region, broadcasting the news that you are
missing and asking light on the mysterious failure of your mission.
There is another difficulty. At the time of our settling here, I was
obliged, through the obnoxious provisions of French law, to make a
declaration before your magistrates, in order to acquire legal title to
this homestead. So you see, the authorities know who I am; or at least
they think they know who I am. You can rely upon it: if you were to
drop out of sight, an army of detectives would come looking for you,
and turn this house upside down from cellar to attic. You know that I
am right. Well, there we are, in a blind alley as it were. We cannot
let you go away, alive and free, as you came. Nor can we keep you here,
a prisoner--or a corpse....”
Again he broke off. Then inclining his head slightly to one side, and
pushing his lips forward into a grimace of amusement, he laughed once
more in the same thin, high-pitched, crackling tone.
“I seem to note a movement of surprise in you,” he now continued. “I
imagine you are thinking of your friend, Madame de X...., and you
are objecting that she comes here, goes away, comes back again, and
that others, doubtless, of our contributors do likewise without any
untoward consequence resulting. And you are right. But do you suppose
that she or any one of her co-workers knows the slightest thing about
us and about what we are doing, that any one of them is in the least
conscious of the philanthropic service he or she is rendering? Monsieur
le capitaine, our disposition to solitude has always inclined us to
choose very secluded spots for our abode in whatever neighborhood we
are living. The road to our door is necessarily a long one, and our
guests would have good reason to complain had we not, from the very
outset, devised a means of sinking them into an hypnotic slumber which
spares them all consciousness of fatigue. On such a system, for that
matter, our security itself depends, as you can readily see. By virtue
of it, we are able, whenever we set up our household for ten or twenty
years in some hospitable region, to survey the inhabitants for their
strongest and most robust members, to select, in the end, those who
are freest and most independent in their habits and manner of living.
These latter, only, become collaborators in our Secret. And may I, in
this connection, reassure you, in case there should be some temptation
to jealousy on your part: Madame de X.... was not chosen by us for her
pretty eyes, though these may, I grant you, be the brightest pair in
the world; but because she lives, for most of the time, quite apart
from any relatives, and because her country house, situated at some
distance from Toulon, requires frequent protracted absences from the
city; and her occasional disappearances are not, therefore, likely to
cause uneasiness in her husband or in any of her friends. I hope, now,
Monsieur le capitaine, that your mind is at rest on that point....
“ ... as I wish mine were on the issue of your adventure! We have
reached this conclusion in our talk thus far: that you cannot leave
this place alive and free; on the other hand, you cannot remain here a
prisoner, and much less a corpse. Oh, of course, we might conceivably
take unfair advantage of the situation you are in, kill you, and carry
your body to some place where no possible suspicion could fall upon us.
But for all you may be thinking or may actually have said, we are not
murderers, Monsieur le capitaine, nor anything resembling murderers.
For that reason we shall not kill you, even were the temptation to do
so to be very great indeed....
“Such being the case, our problem is to discover some way of not
killing you ... a problem which I regard as difficult enough to merit
consulting the views of each of us, yours included, Monsieur le
capitaine!”
The marquis once more opened his snuff-box and offered a pinch first
to the count and then to the vicomte. Then he helped himself; and this
time he sneezed, voluptuously, into his handkerchief.