LITMIR.BIZ

Скачать книгу

the morrow, after taking a few hours’ rest, Jules entered his wife’s room, obeying mechanically his invariable custom of not leaving the house without a word to her. Clemence was sleeping. A ray of light passing through a chink in the upper blind of a window fell across the face of the dejected woman. Already suffering had impaired her forehead and the freshness of her lips. A lover’s eye could not fail to notice the appearance of dark blotches, and a sickly pallor in place of the uniform tone of the cheeks and the pure ivory whiteness of the skin, – two points at which the sentiments of her noble soul were artlessly wont to show themselves.

      “She suffers,” thought Jules. “Poor Clemence! May God protect us!”

      He kissed her very softly on the forehead. She woke, saw her husband, and remembered all. Unable to speak, she took his hand, her eyes filling with tears.

      “I am innocent,” she said, ending her dream.

      “You will not go out to-day, will you?” asked Jules.

      “No, I feel too weak to leave my bed.”

      “If you should change your mind, wait till I return,” said Jules.

      Then he went down to the porter’s lodge.

      “Fouguereau, you will watch the door yourself to-day. I wish to know exactly who comes to the house, and who leaves it.”

      Then he threw himself into a hackney-coach, and was driven to the hotel de Maulincour, where he asked for the baron.

      “Monsieur is ill,” they told him.

      Jules insisted on entering, and gave his name. If he could not see the baron, he wished to see the vidame or the dowager. He waited some time in the salon, where Madame de Maulincour finally came to him and told him that her grandson was much too ill to receive him.

      “I know, madame, the nature of his illness from the letter you did me the honor to write, and I beg you to believe – ”

      “A letter to you, monsieur, written by me!” cried the dowager, interrupting him. “I have written you no letter. What was I made to say in that letter, monsieur?”

      “Madame,” replied Jules, “intending to see Monsieur de Maulincour to-day, I thought it best to preserve the letter in spite of its injunction to destroy it. There it is.”

      Madame de Maulincour put on her spectacles, and the moment she cast her eyes on the paper she showed the utmost surprise.

      “Monsieur,” she said, “my writing is so perfectly imitated that, if the matter were not so recent, I might be deceived myself. My grandson is ill, it is true; but his reason has never for a moment been affected. We are the puppets of some evil-minded person or persons; and yet I cannot imagine the object of a trick like this. You shall see my grandson, monsieur, and you will at once perceive that he is perfectly sound in mind.”

      She rang the bell, and sent to ask if the baron felt able to receive Monsieur Desmarets. The servant returned with an affirmative answer. Jules went to the baron’s room, where he found him in an arm-chair near the fire. Too feeble to move, the unfortunate man merely bowed his head with a melancholy gesture. The Vidame de Pamiers was sitting with him.

      “Monsieur le baron,” said Jules, “I have something to say which makes it desirable that I should see you alone.”

      “Monsieur,” replied Auguste, “Monsieur le vidame knows about this affair; you can speak fearlessly before him.”

      “Monsieur le baron,” said Jules, in a grave voice, “you have troubled and well-nigh destroyed my happiness without having any right to do so. Until the moment when we can see clearly which of us should demand, or grant, reparation to the other, you are bound to help me in following the dark and mysterious path into which you have flung me. I have now come to ascertain from you the present residence of the extraordinary being who exercises such a baneful effect on your life and mine. On my return home yesterday, after listening to your avowals, I received that letter.”

      Jules gave him the forged letter.

      “This Ferragus, this Bourignard, or this Monsieur de Funcal, is a demon!” cried Maulincour, after having read it. “Oh, what a frightful maze I put my foot into when I meddled in this matter! Where am I going? I did wrong, monsieur,” he continued, looking at Jules; “but death is the greatest of all expiations, and my death is now approaching. You can ask me whatever you like; I am at your orders.”

      “Monsieur, you know, of course, where this man is living, and I must know it if it costs me all my fortune to penetrate this mystery. In presence of so cruel an enemy every moment is precious.”

      “Justin shall tell you all,” replied the baron.

      At these words the vidame fidgeted on his chair. Auguste rang the bell.

      “Justin is not in the house!” cried the vidame, in a hasty manner that told much.

      “Well, then,” said Auguste, excitedly, “the other servants must know where he is; send a man on horseback to fetch him. Your valet is in Paris, isn’t he? He can be found.”

      The vidame was visibly distressed.

      “Justin can’t come, my dear boy,” said the old man; “he is dead. I wanted to conceal the accident from you, but – ”

      “Dead!” cried Monsieur de Maulincour, – “dead! When and how?”

      “Last night. He had been supping with some old friends, and, I dare say, was drunk; his friends – no doubt they were drunk, too – left him lying in the street, and a heavy vehicle ran over him.”

      “The convict did not miss him; at the first stroke he killed,” said Auguste. “He has had less luck with me; it has taken four blows to put me out of the way.”

      Jules was gloomy and thoughtful.

      “Am I to know nothing, then?” he cried, after a long pause. “Your valet seems to have been justly punished. Did he not exceed your orders in calumniating Madame Desmarets to a person named Ida, whose jealousy he roused in order to turn her vindictiveness upon us?”

      “Ah, monsieur! in my anger I informed him about Madame Jules,” said Auguste.

      “Monsieur!” cried the husband, keenly irritated.

      “Oh, monsieur!” replied the baron, claiming silence by a gesture, “I am prepared for all. You cannot tell me anything my own conscience has not already told me. I am now expecting the most celebrated of all professors of toxicology, in order to learn my fate. If I am destined to intolerable suffering, my resolution is taken. I shall blow my brains out.”

      “You talk like a child!” cried the vidame, horrified by the coolness with which the baron said these words. “Your grandmother would die of grief.”

      “Then, monsieur,” said Jules, “am I to understand that there exist no means of discovering in what part of Paris this extraordinary man resides?”

      “I think, monsieur,” said the old vidame, “from what I have heard poor Justin say, that Monsieur de Funcal lives at either the Portuguese or the Brazilian embassy. Monsieur de Funcal is a nobleman belonging to both those countries. As for the convict, he is dead and buried. Your persecutor, whoever he is, seems to me so powerful that it would be well to take no decisive measures until you are sure of some way of confounding and crushing him. Act prudently and with caution, my dear monsieur. Had Monsieur de Maulincour followed my advice, nothing of all this would have happened.”

      Jules coldly but politely withdrew. He was now at a total loss to know how to reach Ferragus. As he passed into his own house, the porter told him that Madame had just been out to throw a letter into the post box at the head of the rue de Menars. Jules felt humiliated by this proof of the insight with which the porter espoused his cause, and the cleverness by which he guessed the way to serve him. The eagerness of servants, and their shrewdness in compromising masters who compromised themselves, was known to him, and he fully appreciated the danger of having them as accomplices, no matter for what purpose. But he could not think of his personal dignity until the moment when he found himself thus suddenly degraded.

Скачать книгу