Ill
 
 UNIVERSITY O 
 CALIFORNIA 
 
 SAN
 
 PM
 
 MASTERPIECES OF ADVENTURE
 
 Masterpieces of 
 Adventure 
 
 In Four Volumes 
 
 ADVENTURES WITHIN WALLS 
 
 Edited by 
 Nella Braddy 
 
 Garden City New York 
 
 Doubleday, Page & Company 
 
 1922
 
 COPYRIGHT, 1921, BY 
 DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY 
 
 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED, INCLUDING THAT OF TRANSLATION 
 INTO FOREIGN LANGUAGES, INCLUDING THK SCANDINAVIAN 
 
 PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES 
 
 AT 
 THE COUNTRY LIFE PRESS, GARDEN CITY, N. Y.
 
 GRATEFULLY DEDICATED 
 TO 
 
 BLANCHE COLTON WILLIAMS, PH.D.
 
 EDITOR'S NOTE 
 
 In these volumes the word adventure has been 
 used in its broadest sense to cover not only strange 
 happenings in strange places but also love and life 
 and death all things that have to do with the great 
 adventure of living. Questions as to the fitness of a 
 story were settled by examining the qualities of the 
 narrative as such rather than by reference to a 
 technical classification of short stories. 
 
 It is the inalienable right of the editor of a work 
 of this kind to plead copyright difficulties in extenua- 
 tion for whatever faults it may possess. We beg the 
 reader to believe that this is why his favorite story 
 was omitted while one vastly inferior was included
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 I. THE SIRE DE MALfeTRorr's DOOR . 3 
 Robert Louis Stevenson 
 
 IE. A DouBLE-D\ED DECEIVER ... 35 
 0. Henry 
 
 HE. THE BOLD DRAGOON 53 
 
 Washington Irving 
 
 IV. THE BET ... 66 
 
 Anton Chekhov 
 
 V. LA GRANDE BRETECHE .... 78 
 Honore de Balzac 
 
 VI. THE MASQUE OP THE RED DEATH . no 
 
 Edgar Allan Poe 
 
 VIE. DR. MANETTE'S MANUSCRIPT . . . 120 
 Charles Dickens 
 
 m. SILENCE . 142 
 
 Leonidas Andreiyeff
 
 MASTERPIECES OF ADVENTURE
 
 Masterpieces of 
 Adventure 
 
 i 
 
 THE SIRE DE MALfiTROIT'S DOOR* 
 
 ROBERT Louis STEVENSON 
 
 DENIS DE BEAULIEU was not yet two- 
 and-twenty, but he counted himself a grown 
 man, and a very accomplished cavalier into 
 the bargain. Lads were early formed in that rough, 
 warfaring epoch; and when one has been in a 
 pitched battle and a dozen raids, has killed one's 
 man in an honourable fashion, and knows a thing or 
 two of strategy and mankind, a certain swagger in 
 the gait is surely to be pardoned. He had put up his 
 horse with due care, and supped with due delibera- 
 tion; and then, in a very agreeable frame of mind, 
 went out to pay a visit in the grey of the evening. 
 It was not a very wise proceeding on the young man's 
 
 Reprinted by permission of Charles Scribner's Sons. 
 3
 
 Masterpieces of Adventure 
 
 part. He would have done better to remain beside 
 the fire or go decently to bed. For the town was 
 full of the troops of Burgundy and England under a 
 mixed command; and though Denis was there on 
 safe-conduct, his safe-conduct was like to serve him 
 little on a chance encounter. 
 
 It was September 1429; the weather had fallen 
 sharp; a flighty, piping wind, laden with showers, 
 beat about the township; and the dead leaves ran 
 riot along the streets. Here and there a window 
 was already lighted up; and the noise of men-at-arms 
 making merry over supper within, came forth in fits 
 and was swallowed up and carried away by the wind. 
 The night fell swiftly; the flag of England, fluttering 
 on the spire-top, grew ever fainter and fainter 
 against the flying clouds a black speck like a swal- 
 low in the tumultuous, leaden chaos of the sky. As 
 the night fell the wind rose, and began to hoot under 
 archways and roar amid the tree-tops in the valley 
 below the town. 
 
 Denis de Beaulieu walked fast and was soon knock- 
 ing at his friend's door; but though he promised him- 
 self to stay only a little while and make an early 
 return, his welcome was so pleasant, and he found so 
 much to delay him, that it was already long past 
 midnight before he said good-bye upon the threshold. 
 The wind had fallen again in the meanwhile; the 
 night was as black as the grave; not a star, nor a 
 glimmer of moonshine, slipped through the canopy 
 of cloud. Denis was ill-acquainted with the intricate 
 4
 
 The Sire de Maletroit's Door 
 
 lanes of Chateau Landon; even by daylight he had 
 found some trouble in picking his way; and in this 
 absolute darkness he soon lost it altogether. He was 
 certain of one thing only to keep mounting the 
 hill; for his friend's house lay at the lower end, or 
 tail, of Chateau Landon, while the inn was up at 
 the head, under the great church spire. With this 
 clue to go upon he stumbled and groped forward, 
 now breathing more freely in open places where there 
 was a good slice of sky overhead, now feeling along 
 the wall in stifling closes. It is an eerie and mysteri- 
 ous position to be thus submerged in opaque black- 
 ness in an almost unknown town. The silence is 
 terrifying in its possibilities. The touch of cold 
 window bars to the exploring hand startles the man 
 like the touch of a toad; the inequalities of the pave- 
 ment shake his heart into his mouth; a piece of denser 
 darkness threatens an ambuscade or a chasm in the 
 pathway; and where the air is brighter, the houses 
 put on strange and bewildering appearances, as if 
 to lead him farther from his way. For Denis, who 
 had to regain his inn without attracting notice, there 
 was real danger as well as mere discomfort in the 
 walk; and he went warily and boldly at once, 'and at 
 every corner paused to make an observation. 
 
 He had been for some time threading a lane so 
 narrow that he could touch a wall with either hand, 
 when it began to open out and go sharply downward. 
 Plainly this lay no longer in the direction of his inn; 
 but the hope of a little more light tempted him for- 
 5
 
 Masterpieces of Adventure 
 
 ward to reconnoitre. The lane ended in a terrace 
 with a bartizan wall, which gave an outlook between 
 high houses, as out of an embrasure, into the valley 
 lying dark and formless several hundred feet below. 
 Denis looked down, and could discern a few tree-tops 
 waving and a single speck of brightness where the 
 river ran across a weir. The weather was clearing up, 
 and the sky had lightened, so as to show the outline 
 of the heavier clouds and the dark margin of the hills. 
 By the uncertain glimmer, the house on his left hand 
 should be a place of some pretensions; it was sur- 
 mounted by several pinnacles and turret-tops; the 
 round stern of a chapel, with a fringe of flying but- 
 tresses, projected boldly from the main block; and 
 the door was sheltered under a deep porch carved 
 with figures and overhung by two long gargoyles. 
 The windows of the chapel gleamed through their 
 intricate tracery with a light as of many tapers, and 
 threw out the buttresses and the peaked roof in a 
 more intense blackness against the sky. It was 
 plainly the hotel of some great family of the neigh- 
 bourhood; and as it reminded Denis of a town house 
 of his own at Bourges, he stood for some time gazing 
 up at it and mentally gauging the skill of the archi- 
 tects and the consideration of the two families. 
 
 There seemed to be no issue to the terrace but 
 the lane by which he had reached it; he could only 
 retrace his steps, but he had gained some notion of 
 his whereabouts, and hoped by this means to hit the 
 main thoroughfare and speedily regain the inn. He 
 6
 
 The Sire de Maletroit's Door 
 
 was reckoning without that chapter of accidents 
 which was to make this night memorable above all 
 others in his career; for he had not gone back above 
 a hundred yards before he saw a light coming to meet 
 him, and heard loud voices speaking together in 
 the echoing narrows of the lane. It was a party of 
 men-at-arms going the night round with torches. 
 Denis assured himself that they had all been making 
 free with the wine-bowl, and were in no mood to be 
 particular about safe-conducts or the niceties of 
 chivalrous war. It was as like as not that they 
 would kill him like a dog and leave him where he 
 fell. The situation was inspiriting but nervous. 
 Their own torches would conceal him from sight, 
 he reflected; and he hoped that they would drown 
 the noise of his footsteps with their own empty 
 voices. If he were but fleet and silent, he might 
 evade their notice altogether. 
 
 Unfortunately, as he turned to beat a retreat, his 
 foot rolled upon a pebble; he fell against the wall 
 with an ejaculation, and his sword rang loudly on 
 the stones. Two or three voices demanded who 
 went there some in French, some in English; but 
 Denis made no reply, and ran the faster down the 
 lane. Once upon the terrace, he paused to look 
 back. They still kept calling after him, and just 
 then began to double the pace in pursuit, with a 
 considerable clank of armour, and great tossing of the 
 torchlight to and fro in the narrow jaws of the 
 passage. 
 
 7
 
 Masterpieces of Adventure 
 
 Denis cast a look around and darted into the 
 porch. There he might escape observation, or 
 if that were too much to expect was in a capital 
 posture whether for parley or defence. So thinking, 
 he drew his sword and tried to set his back against 
 the door. To his surprise, it yielded behind his 
 weight; and though he turned in a moment, con- 
 tinued to swing back on oiled and noiseless hinges, 
 until it stood wide open on a black interior. When 
 things fall out opportunely for the person con- 
 cerned, he is not apt to be critical about the how or 
 why, his own immediate personal convenience 
 seeming a sufficient reason for the strangest oddities 
 and revolutions in our sublunary things; and so 
 Denis, without a moment's hesitation, stepped 
 within and partly closed the door behind him to 
 conceal his place of refuge. Nothing was further 
 from his thoughts than to close it altogether; but for 
 some inexplicable reason perhaps by a spring or a 
 weight the ponderous mass of oak whipped itself 
 out of his fingers and clanked to, with a formidable 
 rumble and a noise like the falling of an automatic 
 bar. 
 
 The round, at that very moment, debouched 
 upon the terrace and proceeded to summon him with 
 shouts and curses. He heard them ferreting in the 
 dark corners; the stock of a lance even rattled along 
 the outer surface of the door behind which he stood; 
 but these gentlemen were in too high a humour to 
 be long delayed, and soon made off down a cork- 
 8
 
 The Sire de Maletroit's Door 
 
 scre\\ pathway which had escaped Denis's observa- 
 tion, and passed out of sight and hearing along the 
 battlements of the town. 
 
 Denis breathed again. He gave them a few 
 minutes' grace for fear of accidents, and then groped 
 about for some means of opening the door and 
 slipping forth again. The inner surface was quite 
 smooth, not a handle, not a moulding, not a projec- 
 tion of any sort. He got his finger-nails round the 
 edges and pulled, but the mass was immovable. He 
 shook it, it was as firm as a rock. Denis de Beaulieu 
 frowned and gave vent to a little noiseless whistle. 
 What ailed the door? he wondered. Why was it 
 open? How came it to shut so easily and so effect- 
 ually after him? There was something obscure and 
 underhand about all this, that was little to the 
 young man's fancy. It looked like a snare; and 
 yet who could suppose a snare in such a quiet by- 
 street and in a house of so prosperous and even 
 noble an exterior? And yet snare or no snare, 
 intentionally or unintentionally here he was, 
 prettily trapped; and for the life of him he could see 
 no way out of it again. The darkness began to 
 weigh upon him. He gave ear; all was silent without, 
 but within and close by he seemed to catch a faint 
 sighing, a faint sobbing rustle, a little stealthy creek 
 as though many persons were at his side, holding 
 themselves quite still, and governing even their 
 respiration with the extreme of slyness. The idea 
 went to his vitals with a shock, and he faced about 
 9
 
 Masterpieces of Adventure 
 
 suddenly as if to defend his life. Then, for the first 
 time, he became aware of a light about the level of 
 his eyes and at some distance in the interior of the 
 house a vertical thread of light, widening toward 
 the bottom, such as might escape between two 
 wings of arras over a doorway. To see anything 
 was a relief to Denis; it was like a piece of solid 
 ground to a man labouring in a morass; his mind 
 seized upon it with avidity; and he stood staring 
 at it and trying to piece together some logical con- 
 ception of his surroundings. Plainly there was a 
 flight of steps ascending from his own level to that 
 of this illuminated doorway; and indeed he thought 
 he could make out another thread of light, as fine as 
 a needle and as faint as phosphorescence, which 
 might very well be reflected along the polished wood 
 of a handrail. Since he had begun to suspect that 
 he was not alone, his heart had continued to beat 
 with smothering violence, and an intolerable desire 
 for action of any sort had possessed itself of his 
 spirit. He was in deadly peril, he believed. What 
 could be more natural than to mount the staircase, 
 lift the curtain, and confront his difficulty at once? 
 At least he would be dealing with something tangi- 
 ble; at least he would be no longer in the dark. He 
 stepped slowly forward with outstretched hands, 
 until his foot struck the bottom step ; then he rapidly 
 scaled the stairs, stood for a moment to compose 
 his expression, lifted the arras and went in. 
 He found himself in a large apartment of polished 
 10
 
 The Sire de Maletroit's Door 
 
 tone. There were three doors; one on each of 
 three sides; all similarly curtained with tapestry. 
 The fourth side was occupied by two large windows 
 and a great stone chimney-piece, carved with the 
 arms of the Maletroits. Denis recognized the 
 bearings, and was gratified to find himself in such 
 good hands. The room was strongly illuminated; 
 but it contained little furniture except a heavy 
 table and a chair or two, the hearth was innocent of 
 fire, and the pavement was but sparsely strewn 
 with rushes clearly many days old. 
 
 On a high chair beside the chimney, and directly 
 facing Denis as he entered, sat a little old gentleman 
 in a fur tippet. He sat with his legs crossed and 
 his hands folded, and a cup of spiced wine stood by 
 his elbow on a bracket on the wall. His counte- 
 nance had a strongly masculine cast; not properly 
 human, but such as we see in the bull, the goat, or 
 the domestic boar; something equivocal and whee- 
 dling, something greedy, brutal, and dangerous. 
 The upper lip was inordinately full, as though 
 swollen by a blow or a toothache; and the smile, the 
 peaked eyebrows, and the small, strong eyes were 
 quaintly and almost comically evil in expression. 
 Beautiful white hair hung straight all round his 
 head, like a saint's, and fell in a single curl upon the 
 tippet. His beard and moustache were the pink 
 of venerable sweetness. Age, probably in conse- 
 quence of inordinate precautions, had left no mark 
 upon his hands; and the Maletroit hand was famous. 
 U
 
 Masterpieces of Adventure 
 
 It would be difficult to imagine anything at once 
 so fleshly and so delicate in design; the taper, sensual 
 fingers were like those of one of Leonardo's women; 
 the fork of the thumb made a dimpled protuberance 
 when closed; the nails were perfectly shaped, and 
 of a dead, surprising whiteness. It rendered his 
 aspect tenfold more redoubtable, that a man with 
 hands like these should keep them devoutly folded 
 in his lap like a virgin martyr that a man with 
 so intense and startling an expression of face should 
 sit patiently on his seat and contemplate people 
 with an unwinking stare, like a god or a god's statue. 
 His quiescence seemed ironical and treacherous, it 
 fitted so poorly with his looks. Such was Alain, 
 Sire de Maletroit. 
 
 Denis and he looked silently at each other for a 
 second or two. 
 
 "Pray step in," said the Sure de Maletroit. "I 
 have been expecting you all evening." 
 
 He had not risen, but he accompanied his words 
 with a smile and a slight but courteous inclination 
 of the head. Partly from the smile, partly from 
 the strange musical murmur with which the Sir 
 prefaced his observation, Denis felt a strong shudder 
 of disgust go through his marrow. And what with 
 disgust and honest confusion of mind, he could 
 scarcely get words together in reply. 
 
 "I fear," he said, "that this is a double accident. 
 I am not the person you suppose me. It seems you 
 were looking for a visit; but for my part, nothing 
 12
 
 The Sire de Maletroit's Door 
 
 was further from my thoughts nothing could be 
 more contrary to my wishes than this intrusion." 
 
 "Well, well," replied the old gentleman indul- 
 gently, "here you are, which is the main point. Seat 
 yourself, my friend, and put yourself entirely at 
 your ease. We shall arrange our little affairs pres- 
 ently." 
 
 Denis perceived that the matter was still compli- 
 cated with some misconception, and he hastened to 
 continue his explanations. 
 
 "Your door . . ." he began. 
 
 "About my door?" asked the other, raising his 
 peaked eyebrows. "A little piece of ingenuity." 
 And he shrugged his shoulders. "A hospitable 
 fancy! By your own account, you were not desirous 
 of making my acquaintance. We old people look 
 for such reluctance now and then; and when it 
 touches our honour, we cast about until we find some 
 way of overcoming it. You arrive uninvited, but, 
 believe me, very welcome." 
 
 "You persist in error, sir," said Denis. "There 
 can be no question between you and me. I am a 
 stranger in this countryside. My name is Denis, 
 damoiseau de Beaulieu. If you see me in your house, 
 it is only " 
 
 "My young friend," interrupted the other, "you 
 will permit me to have my own ideas on that subject. 
 They probably differ from yours at the present 
 moment," he added with a leer, "but time will show 
 which of us is in the right." 
 13
 
 Masterpieces of Adventure 
 
 Denis was convinced he had to do with a lunatic- 
 He seated himself with a shrug, content to wait the 
 upshot; and a pause ensued, during which he thought 
 he could distinguish a hurried gabbling as of prayer 
 from behind the arras immediately opposite him. 
 Sometimes there seemed to be but one person en- 
 gaged, sometimes two; and the vehemence of the 
 voice, low as it was, seemed to indicate either great 
 haste or an agony of spirit. It occurred to him that 
 this piece of tapestry covered the entrance to the 
 chapel he had noticed from without. 
 
 The old gentleman meanwhile surveyed Denis 
 from head to foot with a smile, and from time to 
 time emitted little noises like a bird or a mouse, 
 which seemed to indicate a high degree of satisfac- 
 tion. This state of matters became rapidly insup- 
 portable; and Denis, to put an end to it, remarked 
 politely that the wind had gone down. 
 
 The old gentleman fell into a fit of silent laughter, 
 so prolonged and violent that he became quite red 
 in the face. Denis got upon his feet at once, and 
 put on his hat with a flourish. 
 
 "Sir," he said, "if you are in your wits, you have 
 affronted me grossly. If you are out of them, I 
 flatter myself I can find better employment for my 
 brains than to talk with lunatics. My conscience 
 is clear; you have made a fool of me from the first 
 moment; you have refused to hear my explanations; 
 and now there is no power under God will make me 
 stay here any longer; and if I cannot make my way 
 14
 
 The Sire de Maletroit's Door 
 
 out in a more decent fashion, I will hack your door 
 in pieces with my sword." 
 
 The Sire de Maletroit raised his right hand and 
 wagged it at Denis with the fore and little fingers 
 extended. 
 
 "My dear nephew," he said, "sit down." 
 
 "Nephew!" retorted Denis, "you lie in your 
 throat;" and he snapped his fingers in his face. 
 
 "Sit down, you rogue!" cried the old gentleman, 
 in a sudden, harsh voice, like the barking of a dog. 
 "Do you fancy," he went on, "that when I had 
 made my little contrivance for the door, I had 
 stopped short with that? If you prefer to be bound 
 hand and foot till your bones ache, rise and try to 
 go away. If you choose to remain a free young buck, 
 agreeably conversing with an old gentleman why, 
 sit where you are in peace, and God be with you." 
 
 "Do you mean I am a prisoner?" demanded Denis. 
 
 "I state the facts," replied the other. "I would 
 rather leave the conclusion to yourself." 
 
 Denis sat down again. Externally he managed to 
 keep pretty calm; but within, he was now boiling 
 with anger, now chilled with apprehension. He no 
 longer felt convinced that he was dealing with a mad- 
 man. And if the old gentleman was sane, what, in 
 God's name, had he to look for? What absurd or 
 tragical adventure had befallen him? What counte- 
 nance was he to assume? 
 
 While he was thus unpleasantly reflecting, the 
 arras that overhung the chapel door was raised, and 
 15
 
 Masterpieces of Adventure 
 
 a tall priest in his robes came forth and, giving a 
 long, keen stare at Denis, said something in an un- 
 dertone to the Sire de Maletroit. 
 
 "She is in a better frame of spirit?" asked the 
 latter. 
 
 "She is more resigned, messire," replied the 
 priest.' 
 
 "Now the Lord help her, she is hard to please!" 
 sneered the old gentleman. "A likely stripling > 
 not ill-born and of her own choosing, too? Why, 
 what more would the jade have?" 
 
 "The situation is not usual for a young damsel," 
 said the other, "and somewhat trying to her blushes." 
 
 "She should have thought of that before she began 
 the dance? It was none of my choosing, God knows 
 that: but since she is in it, by our lady, she shall 
 carry it to an end." And then addressing Denis, 
 "Monsieur de Beaulieu," he asked, "may I present 
 you to my niece? She has been waiting your 
 arrival, I may say, with even greater impatience 
 than myself." 
 
 Denis had resigned himself with a good grace 
 all he desired was to know the worst of it as speedily 
 as possible; so he rose at once, and bowed in acquies- 
 cence. The Sire de Maletroit followed his example 
 and limped, with the assistance of the chaplain's 
 arm, toward the chapel-door. The priest pulled 
 aside the arras, and all three entered. The building 
 had considerable architectural pretensions. A light 
 groining sprang from six stout columns, and hung 
 16
 
 The Sire de Maletroit's Door 
 
 down in two rich pendants from the centre of the 
 vault. The place terminated behind the altar in a 
 round end, embossed and honey-combed with a 
 superfluity of ornament in relief, and pierced by 
 many .little windows shaped like stars, trefoils, or 
 wheels. These windows were imperfectly glazed, 
 so that the night air circulated freely in the chapel. 
 The tapers, of which there must have been half a 
 hundred burning on the altar, were unmercifully 
 blown about; and the light went through many 
 different phases of brilliancy and semi-eclipse. On 
 the steps in front of the altar knelt a young girl richly 
 attired as a bride. A chill settled over Denis as he 
 observed her costume; he fought with desperate 
 energy against the conclusion that was being thrust 
 upon his mind; it could not it should not be as he 
 feared. 
 
 "Blanche," said the Sire, in his most flute-like 
 tones, " I have brought a friend to see you, my little 
 girl; turn round and give him your pretty hand. It 
 is good to be devout; but it is necessary to be polite, 
 my niece." 
 
 The girl rose to her feet and turned toward the 
 newcomers. She moved all of a piece; and shame 
 and exhaustion were expressed in every line of her 
 fresh young body; and she held her head down and 
 kept her eyes upon the pavement, as she came slowly 
 forward. In the course of her advance, her eyes fell 
 upon Denis de Beaulieu's feet feet of which he was 
 justly vain, be it remarked, and wore in the most 
 17
 
 Masterpieces of Adventure 
 
 elegant accoutrement even while travelling. She 
 paused started, as if his yellow boots had conveyed 
 some shocking meaning and glanced suddenly up 
 into the wearer's countenance. Their eyes met; 
 shame gave place to horror and terror in her looks; 
 the blood left her lips; with a piercing scream she 
 covered her face with her hands and sank upon the 
 chapel-floor. 
 
 "That is not the man!" she cried. "My uncle, 
 that is not the man!" 
 
 The Sire de Maletroit chirped agreeably. "Of 
 course not," he said, "I expected as much. It was 
 so unfortunate you could not remember his name." 
 
 "Indeed," she cried, "indeed, I have never seen 
 this person till this moment I have never so much 
 as set eyes upon him I never wish to see him again. 
 Sir," she said, turning to Denis, "if you are a gentle- 
 man, you will bear me out. Have I ever seen you 
 have you ever seen me before this accursed hour?" 
 
 "To speak for myself, I have never had that 
 pleasure," answered the young man. "This is the 
 first tune, messire, that I have met with your engag- 
 ing niece." 
 
 The old gentleman shrugged his shoulders. 
 
 "I am distressed to hear it," he said. "But it is 
 never too late to begin. I had little more acquaint- 
 ance with my own late lady ere I married her; which 
 proves," he added with a grimace, "that these im- 
 promptu marriages may often produce an excellent 
 understanding hi the long run. As the bridegroom 
 18
 
 The Sire de Male"troit's Door 
 
 is to have a voice in the matter, I will give him two 
 hours to make up for lost time before we proceed 
 with the ceremony." And he turned toward the 
 door, followed by the clergyman. 
 
 The girl was on her feet in a moment. "My 
 uncle, you cannot be in earnest," she said. "I de- 
 clare before God I will stab myself rather than be 
 forced on that young man. The heart rises at it; 
 God forbids such marriages; you dishonour your 
 white hair. Oh, my uncle, pity me! There is not a 
 woman in all the world but would prefer death to 
 such a nuptial. Is it possible," she added, faltering 
 "is it possible that you do not believe me that 
 you still think this" and she pointed at Denis with 
 a tremor of anger and contempt "that you still 
 think this to be the man?" 
 
 "Frankly," said the old gentleman, pausing on 
 the threshold, "I do. But let me explain to you 
 once for all, Blanche de Mal6troit, my way of think- 
 ing about this affair. When you took it into your 
 head to dishonour my family and the name that I 
 have borne, in peace and war, for more than three- 
 score years, you forfeited, not only the right to ques- 
 tion my designs, but that of looking me in the face. 
 If your father had been alive, he would have spat 
 on you and turned you out of doors. His was the 
 hand of iron. You may bless your God you have 
 only to deal with the hand of velvet, mademoiselle. 
 It was my duty to get you married without delay. 
 Out of pure goodwill, I have tried to find your ow* 
 19
 
 Masterpieces of Adventure 
 
 gallant for you. And I believe I have succeeded. 
 But before God and all the hoi}' angels, Blanche de 
 Maletroit, if I have not, I care not one jack-straw. 
 So let me recommend you to be polite to our young 
 friend; for upon my word, your next groom may be 
 less appetising." 
 
 And with that he went out, with the chaplain at 
 his heels; and the arras fell behind the pair. 
 
 The girl turned upon Denis with flashing eyes. 
 
 "And what, sir," she demanded, "may be the 
 meaning of all this?" 
 
 "God knows," returned Denis gloomily. "I am 
 a prisoner in this house, which seems full of mad 
 people. More I know not; and nothing do I under- 
 stand." 
 
 "And pray how came you here?" she asked. 
 
 He told her as briefly as he could. "For the rest," 
 he added, "perhaps you will follow my example, and 
 tell me the answer to all these riddles, and what, in 
 God's name, is like to be the end of it." 
 
 She stood silent for a little, and he could see her 
 lips tremble and her tearless eyes burn with a fever- 
 ish lustre. Then she pressed her forehead in both 
 hands. 
 
 "Alas, how my head aches!" she said wearily 
 "to say nothing of my poor heart! But it is due to 
 you to know my story, unmaidenly as it must seem. 
 I am called Blanche de Maletreit; I have been with- 
 out father or mother for oh! for as long as I can 
 recollect, and indeed I have been most unhappy all 
 20
 
 The Sire de Male"troit's Door 
 
 my life. Three months ago a young captain began 
 to stand near me every day in church. I could see 
 that I pleased him ; I am afraid I am silly, but I was 
 so glad that any one should love me; and when he 
 passed me a letter, I took it home with me and read 
 it with great pleasure. Since that time he has 
 written many. He was so anxious to speak with 
 me, poor fellow! and kept asking me to leave the 
 door open some evening that we might have two 
 words upon the stair. For he knew how much my 
 uncle trusted me." She gave something like a sob 
 at that, and it was a moment before she could go 
 on. "My uncle is a hard man, but he is very 
 shrewd," she said at last. "He has performed 
 many feats in war, and was a great person at court, 
 and much trusted by Queen Isabeau in old days. 
 How he came to suspect me I cannot tell; but it is 
 hard to keep anything from his knowledge; and this 
 morning, as we came from mass, he took my hand 
 in his, forced it open, and read my little billet, walk- 
 ing by my side all the while. When he had finished, 
 he gave it back to me with great politeness. It 
 contained another request to have the door left 
 open; and this has been the ruin of us all. My 
 uncle kept me strictly in my room until evening, 
 and then ordered me to dress myself as you see me 
 a hard mockery for a young girl, do you not think 
 so? I suppose, when he could not prevail with me 
 to tell him the young captain's name, he must have 
 laid a trap for him: into which, alas! you have fallen 
 21
 
 Masterpieces of Adventure 
 
 in the anger of God. I looked for much confusion; 
 for how could I tell whether he was willing to take 
 me for his wife on these sharp terms? He might 
 have been trifling with me from the first; or I might 
 have made myself too cheap in his eyes. But truly 
 I had not looked for such a shameful punishment 
 as this! I could not think that God would let a 
 girl be so disgraced before a young man. And now 
 I have told you all, as I am true-born; although I 
 can scarcely hope that you will believe me, since I 
 fear that my own uncle does not." 
 
 Denis made her a respectful inclination. 
 
 "Madam," he said, "you have honoured me by 
 your confidence. It remains for me to prove that 
 I am not unworthy of the honour. Is Messire de 
 Male"troitathand?" 
 
 "I believe he is writing in the salle without," she 
 answered. 
 
 "May I lead you thither, madam?" asked Denis, 
 offering his hand with his most courtly bearing. 
 
 She accepted it; and the pair passed out of the 
 chapel, Blanche in a very drooping and shamefaced 
 condition, but Denis strutting and ruffling in the 
 consciousness of a mission, and the boyish certainty 
 of accomplishing it with honour. 
 
 The Sire de Maletroit rose to meet them with an 
 ironical obeisance. 
 
 "Sir," said Denis, with the grandest possible air, 
 "I believe I am to have some say in the matter of 
 this marriage; and let me tell you at once, I will be 
 22
 
 The Sire de Maletroit's Door 
 
 no party to forcing the inclination of this young 
 lady. Had it been freely offered to me, I should 
 have been proud to accept her hand, for I perceive 
 she is as good as she is beautiful; but as things are, 
 I have now the honour, messire, of refusing." 
 
 Blanche looked at him with gratitude in her eyes; 
 but the old gentleman only smiled and smiled, until 
 his smile grew positively sickening to Denis. 
 
 "I am afraid," he said, "Monsieur de Beaulieu, 
 that you do not perfectly understand the choice I 
 have to offer you. Follow me, I beseech you, to 
 this window." And he led the way to one of the 
 large windows which stood open on the night. 
 "You observe," he went on, "there is an iron ring 
 in the upper masonry, and reeved through that, a 
 very efficacious rope. Now, mark my words: if 
 you should find your disinclination to my niece's 
 person insurmountable, I shall have you hanged out 
 of this window before sunrise. I shall only proceed 
 to such an extremity ; with the greatest regret, you 
 may believe me. For it is not at all your death that 
 I desire, but my niece's establishment in life. At 
 the same time, it must come to that if you prove 
 obstinate. Your family, Monsieur de Beaulieu, is 
 very well in its way; but if you sprang from Charle- 
 magne, you should not refuse the hand of a Male- 
 troit with impunity not if she had been as common 
 as the Paris road not if she were as hideous as the 
 gargoyle over my door. Neither my niece nor you, 
 nor my own private feelings, move me at all in this 
 23
 
 Masterpieces of Adventure 
 
 matter. The honour of my house has been com- 
 promised; I believe you to be the guilty person; at 
 least you are now in the secret; and you can hardly 
 wonder if I request you to wipe out the stain. If 
 you will not, your blood be on your own head! It 
 will be no great satisfaction to me to have your 
 interesting relics kicking their heels in the breeze 
 below my windows; but half a loaf is better than no 
 bread, and if I cannot cure the dishonour, I shall at 
 least stop the scandal." 
 
 There was a pause. 
 
 "I believe there are other ways of settling such 
 imbroglios among gentlemen," said Denis. "You 
 wear a sword, and I hear you have used it with 
 distinction." 
 
 The Sire de Maletroit made a signal to the chap- 
 lain, who crossed the room with long silent strides 
 and raised the arras over the third of the three doors. 
 It was only a moment before he let it fall again; but 
 Denis had time to see a dusky passage full of armed 
 men. 
 
 "When I was a little younger, I should have been 
 delighted to honour you, Monsieur de Beaulieu," 
 said Sire Alain; "but I am now too old. Faithful 
 retainers are the sinews of age, and I must employ 
 the strength I have. This is one of the hardest 
 things to swallow as a man grows up in years; but 
 with a little patience, even this becomes habitual. 
 You and the lady seem to prefer the salle for what 
 remains of your two hours; and as I have no desire 
 24
 
 The Sire de Maletroit's Door 
 
 to cross your preference, I shall resign it to your use 
 with all the pleasure in the world. No haste!" he 
 added, holding up his hand, as he saw a dangerous 
 look come into Denis de Beaulieu's face. "If your 
 mind revolts against hanging, it will be time enough 
 two hours hence to throw yourself out of the window 
 or upon the pikes of my retainers. Two hours of 
 life are always two hours. A great many things 
 may turn up in even as little a while as that. And, 
 besides, if I understand her appearance, my niece 
 has still something to say to you. You will not 
 disfigure your last hours by a want of politeness to 
 a lady?" 
 
 > Denis looked at Blanche, and she made him an 
 imploring gesture. 
 
 The old gentleman was hugely pleased at this 
 symptom of an understanding. "Let us give them 
 all the rope we can," he thought; and then he con- 
 tinued aloud: "If you will give me your word of 
 honour, Monsieur de Beaulieu, to await my return 
 at the end of the two hours before attempting any- 
 thing desperate, I shall withdraw my retainers, and 
 let you speak in greater privacy with mademoiselle." 
 
 Denis again glanced at the girl, who seemed to 
 beseech him to agree. 
 
 " I give you my word of honour, " he said. 
 
 Messire de Maletroit bowed, and proceeded to 
 
 limp about the apartment, clearing his throat the 
 
 while with that odd musical chirp which had already 
 
 grown so irritating in the ears of Denis de Beaulieu. 
 
 25
 
 Masterpieces of Adventure 
 
 He first possessed himself of some papers which lay 
 upon the table; then he went to the mouth of the 
 passage and appeared to give an order to the men 
 behind the arras; and lastly he hobbled out through 
 the door by which Denis had come in, turning upon 
 the threshold to address a last smiling bow to the 
 young couple, and followed by the chaplain with a 
 hand-lamp. 
 
 No sooner were they alone than Blanche ad- 
 vanced toward Denis with her hands extended. 
 Her face was flushed and excited, and her eyes shone 
 with tears. 
 
 "You shall not die!" she cried, "you shall marry 
 me after all." 
 
 "You seem to think, madam," replied Denis, 
 "that I stand much hi fear of death." 
 
 "Oh no, no," she said, "I see you are no poltroon. 
 It is for my own sake I could not bear to have you 
 slam for such a scruple." 
 
 "I am afraid," returned Denis, "that you 
 underrate the difficulty, madam. What you 
 may be too generous to refuse, I may be too 
 proud to accept. In a moment of noble feeling 
 toward me, you forget what you perhaps owe 
 to others." 
 
 He had the decency to keep his eyes upon the floor 
 as he said this, and after he had finished, so as not 
 to spy upon her confusion. She stood silent for a 
 moment, then walked suddenly away, and sitting 
 down in her uncle's chair, fairly burst out sobbing. 
 26
 
 The Sire de Maletroit's Door 
 
 Denis was in the acme of embarrassment. He 
 looked round, as if to seek for inspiration, and see- 
 ing a stool, plumped down upon it for something to 
 do. There he sat, playing with the guard of his 
 rapier, and wishing himself dead a thousand times 
 over, and buried in the nastiest kitchen-heap in 
 France. His eyes wandered round the apartment, 
 but found nothing to arrest them. There were 
 such wide spaces between the furniture, the light 
 fell so baldly and cheerlessly over all, the dark out- 
 side air looked in so coldly through the windows, 
 that he thought he had never seen a church so vast, 
 nor a tomb so melancholy. The regular sobs of 
 Blanche de Maletroit measured out the time like the 
 ticking of a clock. He read the device upon the 
 shield over and over again, until his eyes became 
 obscured; he stared into shadowy corners until he 
 imagined they were swarming with horrible animals; 
 and every now and again he awoke with a start, to 
 remember that his last two hours were running, and 
 death was on the march. 
 
 Oftener and oftener, as the time went on, did his 
 glance settle on the girl herself. Her face was 
 bowed forward and covered with her hands, and she 
 was shaken at intervals by the convulsive hiccup of 
 grief. Even thus she was not an unpleasant object 
 to dwell upon, so plump and yet so fine, with a warm 
 brown skin, and the most beautiful hair, Denis 
 thought, in the whole world of womankind. Her 
 hands were like her uncle's; but they were more in 
 27
 
 Masterpieces of Adventure 
 
 place at the end of her young arms, and looked 
 infinitely soft and caressing. He remembered how 
 her blue eyes had shone upon him, full of anger, 
 pity, and innocence. And the more he dwelt on her 
 perfections, the uglier death looked, and the more 
 deeply was he smitten with penitence at her con- 
 tinued tears. Now he felt that no man could have 
 the courage to leave a world which contained so 
 beautiful a creature; and now he would have given 
 forty minutes of his last hour to have unsaid his 
 cruel speech. 
 
 Suddenly a hoarse and ragged peal of cockcrow 
 rose to their ears from the dark valley below the 
 windows. And this shattering noise in the silence 
 of all around was like a light in a dark place, and 
 shook them both out of their reflections. 
 
 "Alas, can I do nothing to help you?" she said, 
 looking up. 
 
 "Madam," replied Denis, with a fine irrelevancy, 
 "if I have said anything to wound you, believe me, 
 it was for your own sake and not for mine." 
 
 She thanked him with a tearful look. 
 
 "I feel your position cruelly, " he went on. "The 
 world has been bitter hard on you. Your uncle is a 
 disgrace to mankind. Believe me, madam, there is 
 no young gentleman in all France but would be 
 glad of my opportunity, to die in doing you a mo- 
 mentary service." 
 
 "I know already that you can be very brave and 
 generous," she answered. "What I want to know 
 28
 
 The Sire de Maletroit's Door 
 
 is whether I can serve you now or afterward," 
 she added, with a quaver. 
 
 "Most certainly," he answered with a smile. 
 "Let me sit beside you as if I were a friend, instead 
 of a foolish intruder; try to forget how awkwardly we 
 are placed to one another; make my last moments 
 go pleasantly; and you will do me the chief service 
 possible." 
 
 "You are very gallant," she added, with a yet 
 deeper sadness . . . "very gallant . . . 
 and it somehow pains me. But draw nearer, if 
 you please; and if you find anything to say to me, 
 you will at least make certain of a very friendly 
 listener. Ah! Monsieur de Beaulieu," she broke 
 forth "ah! Monsieur de Beaulieu, how can I look 
 you in the face?" And she fell to weeping again 
 with a renewed effusion. 
 
 "Madam," said Denis, taking her hand in both 
 of his, "reflect on the little time I have before me, 
 and the great bitterness into which I am cast by 
 the sight of your distress. Spare me, in my last 
 moments, the spectacle of what I cannot cure even 
 with the sacrifice of my life." 
 
 "I am very selfish," answered Blanche. "I will 
 be braver, Monsieur de Beaulieu, for your sake. 
 But think if I can do you no kindness in the 
 future if you have no friends to whom I could 
 carry your adieux. Charge me as heavily as 
 you can; every burden will lighten, by so little, 
 the invaluable gratitude I owe you. Put it in 
 29
 
 Masterpieces of Adventure 
 
 my power to do something more for you than 
 weep." 
 
 "My mother is married again, and has a young 
 family to care for. My brother Guichard will in- 
 herit my fiefs; and if I am not in error, that will 
 content him amply for my death. Life is a little 
 vapour that passeth away, as we are told by those 
 in holy orders. When a man is in a fair way and 
 sees all life open in front of him, he seems to himself 
 to make a very important figure in the world. His 
 horse whinnies to him; the trumpets blow and the 
 girls look out of windows as he rides into a town 
 before his company; he receives many assurances of 
 trust and regard sometimes by express in a letter 
 sometimes face to face, with persons of great conse- 
 quence falling on his neck. It is not wonderful if 
 his head is turned for a time. But once he is dead, 
 were he as brave as Hercules or as wise as Solomon, 
 he is soon forgotten. It is not ten years since my 
 father fell, with many other knights around him, in a 
 very fierce encounter, and I do not think that any 
 one of them, nor so much as the name of the fight, 
 is now remembered. No, no, madam, the nearer 
 you come to it, you see that death is a dark and 
 dusty corner, where a man gets into his tomb and 
 has the door shut after him till the judgment day. 
 I have few friends just now, and once I am dead I 
 shall have none." 
 
 "Ah, Monsieur de Beaulieu!" she exclaimed, "you 
 forget Blanche de Maletroit." 
 30
 
 The Sire de Maletroit's Door 
 
 "You have a sweet nature, madam, and you are 
 pleased to estimate a little service far beyond its 
 worth." 
 
 "It is not that," she answered. "You mistake 
 me if you think I am so easily touched by my own 
 concerns. I say so, because you are the noblest man 
 I have ever met; because I recognize in you a spirit 
 that would have made even a common person 
 famous in the land." 
 
 "And yet here I die in a mousetrap with no more 
 noise about it than my own squeaking," answered he. 
 
 A look of pain crossed her face, and she was silent 
 for a little while. Then a light came into her eyes, 
 and with a smile she spoke again. 
 
 "I cannot have my champion think meanly of 
 himself. Anyone who gives his life for another will 
 be met in Paradise by all the heralds and angels of 
 the Lord God. And you have no such cause to hang 
 your head. For . . . Pray, do you think me beau- 
 tiful?" she asked, with a deep flush. 
 
 "Indeed, madam, I do," he said. 
 
 "I am glad of that," she answered heartily. "Do 
 you think there are many men in France who have 
 been asked in marriage by a beautiful maiden with 
 her own lips and who have refused her to her face? 
 I know you men would half despise such a triumph; 
 but believe me, we women know more of what is 
 precious in love. There is nothing that should set 
 a person higher in his own esteem; and we women 
 would prize nothing more dearly." 
 31
 
 Masterpieces of Adventure 
 
 "You are very good," he said; "but you cannot 
 make me forget that I was asked in pity and not for 
 love." 
 
 "I am not so sure of that," she replied, holding 
 down her head. "Hear me to an end, Monsieur de 
 Beaulieu. I know how you must despise me; I feel 
 you are right to do so; I am too poor a creature to 
 occupy one thought of your mind, although, alas! 
 you must die for me this morning. But when I asked 
 you to marry me, indeed, and indeed, it was because 
 I respected and admired you, and loved you with 
 my whole soul, from the very moment that you took 
 my part against my uncle. If you had seen yourself, 
 and how noble you looked, you would pity rather 
 than despise me. And now," she went on, hurriedly 
 checking him with her hand, "although I have laid 
 aside all reserve and told you so much, remember 
 that I know your sentiments toward me already. 
 I would not, believe me, being nobly born, weary 
 you with importunities into consent. I, too, have 
 a pride of my own; and I declare before the 
 holy mother of God, if you should now go 
 back from your word already given, I would no 
 more marry you than I would marry my uncle's 
 groom." 
 
 Denis smiled a little bitterly. 
 
 "It is a small love," he said, "that shies at a little 
 pride." 
 
 She made no answer, although she probably had 
 her own thoughts. 
 
 32
 
 The Sire de Maletroit's Door 
 
 "Come hither to the window," he said, with a 
 sigh. "Here is the dawn." 
 
 And indeed the dawn was already beginning. The 
 hollow of the sky was full of essential daylight, 
 colourless and clean; and the valley underneath was 
 flooded with a grey reflection. A few thin vapours 
 clung in the coves of the forest or lay along the wind- 
 ing course of the river. The scene disengaged a sur- 
 prising effect of stillness, which was hardly inter- 
 rupted when the cocks began once more to crow 
 among the steadings. Perhaps the same fellow who 
 had made so horrid a clangour in the darkness not 
 half an hour before, now sent up the merriest cheer 
 to greet the coming day. A little wind went bustling 
 and eddying among the tree-tops underneath the 
 windows. And still the daylight kept flooding in- 
 sensibly out of the east, which was soon to grow in- 
 candescent and cast up that red-hot cannon-ball, 
 the rising sun. 
 
 Denis looked out over all this with a bit of a shiver. 
 He had taken her hand, and retained it in his almost 
 unconsciously. 
 
 "Has the day begun already?" she said; and then, 
 illogically enough: "The night has been so long! 
 Alas! what shall we say to my uncle when he re- 
 turns?" 
 
 "What you will," said Denis, and he pressed her 
 fingers in his. She was silent. 
 
 "Blanche," he said, with a swift, uncertain, pas- 
 sionate utterance, "you have seen whether I fear 
 33
 
 Masterpieces of Adventure 
 
 death. You must know well enough that I would 
 as gladly leap out of that window into the empty air 
 as lay a finger on you without your free and full 
 consent. But if you care for me at all do not let me 
 lose my life in a misapprehension; for I love you 
 better than the whole world; and though I will die 
 for you blithely, it would be like all the joys of Para- 
 dise to live on and spend my life in your service." 
 
 As he stopped speaking, a bell began to ring loudly 
 in the interior of the house; and a clatter of armour 
 in the corridor showed that the retainers were 
 returning to their post, and the two hours were at 
 an end. 
 
 "After all that you have heard?" she whispered, 
 leaning toward him with her lips and eyes. 
 
 "I have heard nothing," he replied. 
 
 "The captain's name was Florimond de Champ- 
 divers," she said in his ear. 
 
 "I did not hear it," he answered, taking her supple 
 body in his arms and covering her wet face with 
 kisses. 
 
 A melodious chirping was audible behind, fol- 
 lowed by a beautiful chuckle, and the voice of 
 Messire de Maletroit wished his new nephew a good 
 morning. 
 
 34
 
 II 
 
 A DOUBLE-DYED DECEIVER 
 O. HENRY 
 
 THE trouble began in Laredo. It was the 
 Llano Kid's fault, for he should have con- 
 fined his habit of manslaughter to Mexicans. 
 But the Kid was past twenty; and to have only 
 Mexicans to one's credit at twenty is to blush unseen 
 on the Rio Grande border. 
 
 It happened in old Justo Valdo's gambling house. 
 There was a poker game at which sat players who 
 were not all friends, as happens often where men 
 ride in from afar to shoot Folly as she gallops. There 
 was a row over so small a matter as a pair of queens; 
 and when the smoke had cleared away it was found 
 that the Kid had committed an indiscretion, and his 
 adversary had been guilty of a blunder. For, the 
 unfortunate combatant, instead of being a Greaser, 
 was a high-blooded youth from the cow ranches, of 
 about the Kid's own age and possessed of friends and 
 champions. His blunder in missing the Kid's right 
 ear only a sixteenth of an inch when he pulled his gun 
 did not lessen the indiscretion of the better marks- 
 man. 
 
 The Kid, not being equipped with a retinue, nor 
 35
 
 Masterpieces of Adventure 
 
 bountifully supplied with personal admirers and 
 supporters on account of a rather umbrageous 
 reputation, even for the border considered it not 
 incompatible with his indisputable gameness to per- 
 form that judicious tractional act known as "pulling 
 his freight." 
 
 Quickly the avengers gathered and sought him. 
 Three of them overtook him within a rod of the 
 station. The Kid turned and showed his teeth in 
 that brilliant but mirthless smile that usually pre- 
 ceded his deeds of insolence and violence, and his 
 pursuers fell back without making it necessary for 
 him even to reach for his weapon. 
 
 But in this affair the Kid had not felt the grim 
 thirst for encounter that usually urged him on to 
 battle. It had been a purely chance row, born of the 
 cards and certain epithets impossible for a gentleman 
 to brook that had passed between the two. The Kid 
 had rather liked the slim, haughty, brown-faced 
 young chap whom his bullet had cut off in the first 
 pride of manhood. And now he wanted no more 
 blood. He wanted to get away and have a good long 
 sleep somewhere in the sun on the mesquit grass with 
 his handkerchief over his face. Even a Mexican 
 might have crossed his path in safety while he was 
 in this mood. 
 
 The Kid openly boarded the north-bound pas- 
 senger train that departed five minutes later. But 
 at Webb, a few miles out, where it was flagged to 
 take on a traveller, he abandoned that manner of 
 36
 
 A Double-Dyed Deceiver 
 
 escape. There were telegraph stations ahead; and 
 the Kid looked askance at electricity and steam. 
 Saddle and spur were his rocks of safety. 
 
 The man whom he had shot was a stranger to him. 
 But the Kid knew that he was of the Coralitos outfit 
 from Hidalgo; and that the punchers from that 
 ranch were more relentless and vengeful than Ken- 
 tucky feudists when wrong or harm was done to one 
 of them. So, with the wisdom that has characterized 
 many great fighters, the Kid decided to pile up as 
 many leagues as possible of chaparral and pear be- 
 tween himself and the retaliation of the Coralitos 
 bunch. 
 
 Near the station was a store; and near the store, 
 scattered among the mesquits and elms, stood the 
 saddled horses of the customers. Most of them 
 waited, half asleep, with sagging limbs and drooping 
 heads. But one, a long-legged roan with a curved 
 neck, snorted and pawed the turf. Him the Kid 
 mounted, gripped with his knees, and slapped gently 
 with the owner's own quirt. 
 
 If the slaying of the temerarious card-player had 
 cast a cloud over the Kid's standing as a good and 
 true citizen, this last act of his veiled his figure in 
 the darkest shadows of disrepute. On the Rio 
 Grande border if you take a man's life you sometimes 
 take trash; but if you take his horse, you take a 
 thing the loss of which renders him poor, indeed, and 
 which enriches you not if you are caught. For the 
 Kid there was no turning back now. 
 37
 
 Masterpieces of Adventure 
 
 With the springing roan under him he felt little 
 care or uneasiness. After a five-mile gallop he drew 
 in to the plainsman's jogging trot, and rode north- 
 eastward toward the Nueces River bottoms. He 
 knew the country well its most tortuous and 
 obscure trails through the great wilderness of brush 
 and pear, and its camps and lonesome ranches where 
 one might find safe entertainment. Always he bore 
 to the east; for the Kid h?d never seen the ocean, 
 and he had a fancy to lay his hand upon the mane of 
 the great gulf, the gamesome colt of the greater 
 waters. 
 
 So after three days he stood on the shore at Corpus 
 Christi, and looked out across the gentle ripples of a 
 quiet sea. 
 
 Captain Boone, of the schooner Flyaway, stood 
 near his skiff, which one of his crew was guarding in 
 the surf. When ready to sail he had discovered that 
 one of the necessaries of life, in the parallelogramma- 
 tic shape of plug tobacco, had been forgotten. A 
 sailor had been dispatched for the missing cargo. 
 Meanwhile the captain paced the sands, chewing 
 profanely at his pocket store. 
 
 A slim, wiry youth in high-heeled boots came down 
 to the water's edge. His face was boyish, but with 
 a premature severity that hinted at a man's expe- 
 rience. His complexion was naturally dark; and the 
 sun and wind of an outdoor life had burned it to a 
 coffee brown. His hair was as black and straight as 
 an Indian's; his face had not yet been upturned to 
 38
 
 A Double-Dyed Deceiver 
 
 the humiliation of a razor; his eyes were a cold and 
 steady blue. He carried his left arm somewhat away 
 from his body, for pearl-handled .4153 are frowned 
 upon by town marshals, and are a little bulky when 
 packed in the left armhole of one's vest. He looked 
 beyond Captain Boone at the gulf with the imper- 
 sonal and expressionless dignity of a Chinese em- 
 peror. 
 
 "Thinkin' of buyin' that'ar gulf, buddy?" asked 
 the captain, made sarcastic by his narrow escape 
 from the tobaccoless voyage. 
 
 "Why, no," said the Kid gently, "I reckon not. 
 I never saw it before. I was just looking at it. Not 
 thinking of selling it, are you?" 
 
 "Not this trip," said the captain. "I'll send it to 
 you C. O. D. when I get back to Buenas Tierras. 
 Here comes that capstanfooted lubber with the 
 chewin'. I ought to've weighed anchor an hour 
 ago." 
 
 "Is that your ship out there?" asked the Kid. 
 
 "Why, yes," answered the captain, "if you want 
 to call a schooner a ship, and I don't mind lyin'. But 
 you better say Miller and Gonzales, owners, and 
 ordinary plain, Billy-be-damned old Samuel K. 
 Boone, skipper." 
 
 "Where are you going to?" asked the refugee. 
 
 "Buenas Tierras, coast of South America I for- 
 got what they called the country the last time I was 
 there. Cargo lumber, corrugated iron, and ma- 
 chetes." 
 
 39
 
 Masterpieces of Adventure 
 
 "What kind of a country is it?" asked the Kid 
 "hot or cold?" 
 
 "Warmish, buddy," said the captain. "But a 
 regular Paradise Lost for elegance of scenery and 
 be-yooty of geography. Ye're wakened every morn- 
 ing by the sweet singin' of red birds with seven purple 
 tails, and the sighin' of breezes in the posies and 
 roses. And the inhabitants never work, for they can 
 reach out and pick steamer baskets of choicest 
 hothouse fruit without gettin' out of bed. And 
 there's no Sunday and no ice and no rent and no 
 troubles and no use and no nothin'. It's a great 
 country for a man to go to sleep with, and wait for 
 somethin' to turn up. The bananays and oranges 
 and hurricanes and pineapples that ye eat comes 
 from there." 
 
 "That sounds to me!" said the Kid, at last betray- 
 ing interest. " What'll the expressage be to take me 
 out there with you?" 
 
 "Twenty-four dollars," said Captain Boone; 
 "grub and transportation. Second cabin. I haven't 
 got a first cabin." 
 
 "You've got my company," said the Kid, pulling 
 out a buckskin bag. 
 
 With three hundred dollars he had gone to Laredo 
 for his regular " blowout." The duel hi Valdos's had 
 cut short his season of hilarity, but it had left him 
 with nearly $200 for aid in the flight that it had 
 made necessary. 
 
 "All right, buddy," said the captain. "I hope 
 40
 
 A Double-Dyed Deceiver 
 
 your ma won't blame me for this little childish esca- 
 pade of yours." He beckoned to one of the boat's 
 crew. "Let Sanchez lift you out to the skiff so you 
 won't get your feet wet." 
 
 Thacker, the United States consul at Buenas 
 Tierras, was not yet drunk. It was only eleven 
 o'clock; and he never arrived at his desired state of 
 beatitude a state where he sang ancient maudlin 
 vaudeville songs and pelted his screaming parrot 
 with banana peels until the middle of the afternoon. 
 So, when he looked up from his hammock at the 
 sound of a slight cough, and saw the Kid standing 
 in the door of the consulate, he was still in a condition 
 to extend the hospitality and courtesy due from the 
 representative of a great nation. "Don't disturb 
 yourself," said the Kid easily. "I just dropped in. 
 They told me it was customary to light at your camp 
 before starting in to round up the town. I just came 
 in on a ship from Texas." 
 
 "Glad to see you, Mr. ," said the consul. 
 
 The Kid laughed. 
 
 "Sprague Dalton," he said. "It sounds funny to 
 me to hear it. I'm called the Llano Kid in the Rio 
 Grande country." 
 
 "I'm Thacker," said the consul. "Take that 
 cane-bottom chair. Now if you've come to invest, 
 you want somebody to advise you. These dingies 
 will cheat you out of the gold in your teeth if you 
 don't understand their ways. Try a cigar?" 
 
 41
 
 Masterpieces of Adventure 
 
 "Much obliged," said the Kid, "but if it wasn't 
 for my corn shucks and the little bag in my back 
 pocket I couldn't live a minute." He took out his 
 "makings," and rolled a cigarette. 
 
 "They speak Spanish here," said the consul. 
 "You'll need an interpreter. If there's anything 
 I can do, why, I'd be delighted. If you're buying 
 fruit lands or looking for a concession of any sort, 
 you'll want somebody who knows the ropes to look 
 out for you." 
 
 "I speak Spanish," said the Kid, "about nine 
 times better than I do English. Everybody speaks 
 it on the range where I come from. And I'm not 
 in the market for anything." 
 
 "You speak Spanish?" said Thacker thoughtfully. 
 He regarded the Kid absorbedly. 
 
 "You look like a Spaniard, too," he continued. 
 "And you're from Texas. And you can't be more 
 than twenty or twenty-one. I wonder if you've 
 got any nerve." 
 
 "You got a deal of some kind to put through?" 
 asked the Texan, with unexpected shrewdness. 
 
 "Are you open to a proposition?" said Thacker. 
 
 "What's the use to deny it?" said the Kid. "I 
 got into a little gun frolic down in Laredo and 
 plugged a white man. There wasn't any Mexican 
 handy. And I come down to your parrot-and- 
 monkey range just for to smell the morning-glories 
 and marigolds. Now, do you sabe? " 
 
 Thacker got up and closed the door. 
 42
 
 A Double-Dyed Deceiver 
 
 "Let me see your hand," he said. 
 
 He took the Kid's left hand, and examined the 
 back of it closely. 
 
 "I can do it," he said excitedly. "Your flesh is 
 as hard as wood and as healthy as a baby's. It will 
 heal in a week." 
 
 "If it's a fist fight you want to back me for," said 
 the Kid, " don't put your money up yet. Make it 
 gun work, and I'll keep you company. But no 
 barehanded scrapping, like ladies at a tea-party, 
 for me." 
 
 "It's easier than that," said Thacker. "Just 
 step here, will you? " 
 
 Through the window he pointed to a two-story 
 white-stuccoed house with wide galleries rising 
 amid the deep-green tropical foliage on a wooded 
 hill that sloped gently from the sea. 
 
 "In that house," said Thacker, "a fine old Cas- 
 tilian gentleman and his wife are yearning to gather 
 you into their arms and fill your pockets with 
 money. Old Santos Urique lives there. He owns 
 half the gold-mines in the country." 
 
 "You haven't been eating loco weed, have you?" 
 asked the Kid. 
 
 "Sit down again," said Thacker, "and 111 tell 
 you. Twelve years ago they lost a kid. No, he 
 didn't die although most of 'em here do from drink- 
 ing the surface water. He was a wild little devil 
 even if he wasn't but eight years old. Everybody 
 knows about it. Some Americans who were through 
 43
 
 Masterpieces of Adventure 
 
 here prospecting for gold had letters to Sefior Urique, 
 and the boy was a favourite with them. They 
 filled his head with big stories about the States; and 
 about a month after they left, the kid disappeared, 
 too. He was supposed to have stowed himself away 
 among the banana bunches on a fruit steamer, and 
 gone to New Orleans. He was seen once afterward 
 in Texas, it was thought, but they never heard any- 
 thing more of him. Old Urique has spent thousands 
 of dollars having him looked for. The madam was 
 broken up worst of all. The kid was her life. She 
 wears mourning yet. But they say she believes 
 he'll come back to her some day, and never gives up 
 hope. On the back of the boy's left hand was tat- 
 tooed a flying eagle carrying a spear in his claws. 
 That's old Urique's coat of arms or something that 
 he inherited in Spain." 
 
 The Kid raised his left hand slowly and gazed at 
 it curiously. 
 
 "That's it," said Thacker, reaching behind the 
 official desk for his bottle of smuggled brandy. 
 "You're not so slow. I can do it. What was I 
 consul at Sandakan for? I never knew till now. In 
 a week I'll have the eagle bird with the frog-sticker 
 blended in so you'd think you were born with it. 
 I brought a set of the needles and ink just be- 
 cause I was sure you'd drop in some day, Mr. 
 Dalton." 
 
 "Oh, hell," said the Kid. "I thought I told you 
 my name!"
 
 A Double-Dyed Deceiver 
 
 "All right, 'Kid,' then. It won't be that long. 
 How does Senorito Urique sound, for a change? " 
 
 "I never played son any that I remember of," 
 said the Kid. "If I had any parents to mention 
 they went over the divide about the time I 
 gave my first bleat. What is the plan of your 
 round-up? " 
 
 Thacker leaned back against the wall and held 
 his glass up to the light. 
 
 "We've come now," said he, "to the question of 
 how far you're willing to go in a little matter of the 
 sort." 
 
 "I told you why I came down here, "said the Kid 
 simply. 
 
 "A good answer," said the consul. "But you 
 won't have to go that far. Here's the scheme. 
 After I get the trademark tattooed on your hand 
 I'll notify old Urique. In the meantime I'll furnish 
 you with all of the family history I can find out, 
 so you can be studying up points to talk about. 
 You've got the looks, you speak the Spanish, you 
 know the facts, you can tell about Texas, you've 
 got the tattoo mark. When I notify them that 
 the rightful heir has returned and is waiting to 
 know whether he will be received and pardoned, 
 what will happen? They'll simply rush down here 
 and fall on your neck, and the curtain goes down 
 for refreshments and a stroll in the lobby." 
 
 "I'm waiting," said the Kid. "I haven't had 
 my saddle off in your camp long, pardner, and I 
 45
 
 Masterpieces of Adventure 
 
 never met you before; but if you intend to let it go 
 at a parental blessing, why, I'm mistaken in my 
 man, that's all." 
 
 "Thanks," said the consul. "I haven't met 
 anybody in a long time that keeps up with an argu- 
 ment as well as you do. The rest of it is simple. 
 If they take you in only for a while it's long enough. 
 Don't give 'em time to hunt up the strawberry 
 mark on your left shoulder. Old Urique keeps any- 
 where from $50,000 to $100,000 in his house all the 
 time in a little safe that you could open with a shoe 
 buttoner. Get it. My skill as a tattooer is worth 
 half the boodle. We go halves and catch a tramp 
 steamer for Rio Janeiro. Let the United States go 
 to pieces if it can't get along without my services. 
 Que dice, senor? " 
 
 "It sounds to me!" said the Kid, nodding his 
 head. "I'm out for the dust." 
 
 "All right, then," said Thacker. "You'll have 
 to keep close until we get the bird on you. You can 
 live in the back room here. I do my own cooking, 
 and I'll make you as comfortable as a parsimonious 
 Government will allow me." 
 
 Thacker had set the time at a week, but it was two 
 weeks before the design that he patiently tattooed 
 upon the Kid's hand was to his notion. And then 
 Thacker called a muchacho, and dispatched this 
 note to the intended victim:
 
 A Double-Dyed Deceiver 
 
 EL SEffOR DON SANTOS URIQUE, 
 La Casa Blanca, 
 
 MY DEAR SIR: 
 
 I beg permission to inform you that there is in my house as a 
 temporary guest a young man who arrived in Buenas Tierras 
 from the United States some days ago. Without wishing to 
 excite any hopes that may not be realized, I think there is a 
 possibility of his being your long-absent son. It might be well 
 for you to call and see him. If he is, it is my opinion that his 
 intention was to return to his home, but upon arriving here, his 
 courage failed him from doubts as to how he would be received. 
 Your true servant, 
 
 THOMPSON THACKER. 
 
 Half an hour afterward quick time for Buenas 
 Tierras Senor Urique's ancient landau drove to the 
 consul's door, with the barefooted coachman beating 
 and shouting at the team of fat, awkward horses. 
 
 A tall man with a white moustache alighted, and 
 assisted to the ground a lady who was dressed and 
 veiled in unrelieved black. 
 
 The two hastened inside, and were met by Thacker 
 with his best diplomatic bow. By his desk stood a 
 slender young man with clear-cut, sunbrowned 
 features and smoothly brushed black hair. 
 
 Sefiora Urique threw back her heavy veil with a 
 quick gesture. She was past middle age, and her 
 hair was beginning to silver, but her full, proud figure 
 and clear olive skin retained traces of the beauty 
 peculiar to the Basque province. But, once you had 
 seen her eyes, and comprehended the great sadness 
 that was revealed in their deep shadows and hopeless 
 47
 
 Masterpieces of Adventure 
 
 expression, you saw that the woman lived only in 
 some memory. 
 
 She bent upon the young man a long look of the 
 most agonized questioning. Then her great black 
 eyes turned, and her gaze rested upon his left hand. 
 And then with a sob, not loud, but seeming to shake 
 the room, she cried "Hijo miol" and caught the 
 Llano Kid to her heart. 
 
 A month afterward the Kid came to the consulate 
 in response to a message sent by Thacker. 
 
 He looked the young Spanish caballero. His 
 clothes were imported, and the wiles of the jewellers 
 had not been spent upon him in vain. A more than 
 respectable diamond shone on his finger as he rolled 
 a shuck cigarette. 
 
 "What's doing?" asked Thacker. 
 
 "Nothing much," said the Kid calmly. "I eat 
 my first iguana steak to-day. They're them big 
 lizards, you sabe? I reckon, though, that frijoles 
 and side bacon would do me about as well. Do you 
 care for iguanas, Thacker?" 
 
 "No, nor for some other kinds of reptiles, " said 
 Thacker. 
 
 It was three in the afternoon, and hi another hour 
 he would be in his state of beatitude. 
 
 "It's time you were making good, sonny," he 
 went on, with an ugly look on his reddened face. 
 "You're not playing up to me square. You've been 
 the prodigal son for four weeks now, and you could 
 have had veal for every meal on a gold dish if you'd 
 48
 
 A Double-Dyed Deceiver 
 
 wanted it. Now, Mr. Kid, do you think it's right 
 to leave me out so long on a husk diet? What's the 
 trouble? Don't you get your filial eyes on any- 
 thing that looks like cash in the CasaBlanca? Don't 
 tell me you don't. Everybody knows where old 
 Urique keeps his stuff. It's U. S. currency, too; 
 he don't accept anything else. What's doing? 
 Don't say 'nothing' this time." 
 
 " Why, sure, " said the Kid, admiring his diamond, 
 "there's plenty of money up there. I'm no judge 
 of collateral in bunches, but I will undertake for to 
 say that I've seen the rise of $50,000 at a time in 
 that tin grub box that my adopted father calls his 
 safe. And he lets me carry the key sometimes just 
 to show me that he knows I'm the real little 
 Francisco that strayed from the herd a long time 
 ago." 
 
 "Well, what are you waiting for?" asked Thacker 
 angrily. "Don't you forget that I can upset your 
 apple-cart any day I want to. If old Urique knew 
 you were an impostor, what sort of things would 
 happen to you? Oh, you don't know this country, 
 Mr. Texas Kid. The laws here have got mustard 
 spread between 'em. These people here'd stretch 
 you out like a frog that had been stepped on, and 
 give you about fifty sticks at every corner of the 
 plaza. And they'd wear every stick out, too. 
 What was left of you they'd feed to alligators." 
 
 "I might as well tell you now, pardner," said the 
 Kid, sliding down low on his steamer chair, "that 
 49
 
 Masterpieces of Adventure 
 
 things are going to stay just as they are. They're 
 about right now." 
 
 "What do you mean?" asked Thacker, rattling 
 the bottom of his glass on his desk. 
 
 "The scheme's off," said the Kid. "And when- 
 ever you have the pleasure of speaking to me address 
 me as Don Francisco Urique. I'll guarantee I'll 
 answer to it. We'll let Colonel Urique keep his 
 money. His little tin safe is as good as the time- 
 locker in the First National Bank of Laredo as far 
 as you and me are concerned." 
 
 "You're going to throw me down, then, are you?" 
 said the consul. 
 
 "Sure," said the Kid cheerfully. "Throw you 
 down. That's it. And now I'll tell you why. 
 The first night I was up at the colonel's house they 
 introduced me to a bedroom. No blankets on the 
 floor a real room, with a bed and things in it. 
 And before I was asleep, in comes this artificial 
 mother of mine and tucks in the covers. 'Pan- 
 chito,' she says, 'my little lost one, God has brought 
 you back to me. I bless His name forever.' It was 
 that, or some truck like that, she said. And down 
 comes a drop or two of rain and hits me on the nose. 
 And all that stuck by me, Mr. Thacker. And it's 
 been that way ever since. And it's got to stay that 
 way. Don't you think that it's for what's in it for 
 me, either, that I say so. If you have any such 
 ideas, keep 'em to yourself. I haven't had much 
 truck with women in my life, and no mothers to 
 SO
 
 A Double-Dyed Deceiver 
 
 speak of, but here's a lady that we've got to keep 
 fooled. Once she stood it; twice she won't. I'm a 
 low-down wolf, and the devil may have sent me on 
 this trail instead of God, but I'll travel it to the end. 
 And now, don't forget that I'm Don Francisco 
 Urique whenever you happen to mention my 
 name." 
 
 "I'll expose you to-day, you you double-dyed 
 traitor, " stammered Thacker. 
 
 The Kid arose and, without violence, took Thacker 
 by the throat with a hand of steel, and shoved him 
 slowly into a corner. Then he drew from under his 
 left arm his pearl-handled .45 and poked the cold 
 muzzle of it against the consul's mouth. 
 
 "I told you why I come here," he said, with his 
 old freezing smile. "If I leave here, you'll be the 
 reason. Never forget it, pardner. Now, what is 
 my name?" 
 
 "Er Don Francisco Urique," gasped Thacker. 
 
 From outside came a sound of wheels, and the 
 shouting of some one, and the sharp thwacks of a 
 wooden whipstock upon the backs of fat horses. 
 
 The Kid put up his gun, and walked toward the 
 door. But he turned again and came back to the 
 trembling Thacker, and held up his left hand with 
 its back toward the consul. 
 
 "There's one more reason," he said slowly, "why 
 things have got to stand as they are. The fellow I 
 killed in Laredo had one of them same pictures on his 
 left hand." 
 
 51
 
 Masterpieces of Adventure 
 
 Outside, the ancient landau of Don Santos Urique 
 rattled to the door. The coachman ceased his bellow- 
 ing. Senora Urique, in a voluminous gay gown of 
 white lace and flying ribbons, leaned forward with a 
 happy look in her great soft eyes. 
 
 "Are you within, dear son?" she called, in the 
 rippling Castilian. 
 
 "Madre mia, yo vengo [mother, I come]," an- 
 swered the young Don Francisco Urique.
 
 m 
 
 THE BOLD DRAGOON 
 
 OH THE 
 
 ADVENTURE OF MY GRANDFATHER 
 
 WASHINGTON IRVING 
 
 MY grandfather was a bold dragoon, for it's a 
 profession, d'ye see, that has run in the 
 family. All my forefathers have been 
 dragoons, and died on the field of honour, except my- 
 self, and I hope my posterity may be able to say the 
 same; however, I don't mean to be vainglorious. 
 Well, my grandfather, as I said, was a bold dragoon, 
 and had served in the Low Countries. In fact, he 
 was one of that very army which, according to my 
 uncle Toby, swore so terribly in Flanders. He could 
 swear a good stick himself; and moreover was the 
 very man that introduced the doctrine Corporal 
 Trim mentions of radical heat and radical moisture; 
 or, in other words, the mode of keeping out the 
 damps of ditchwater by burnt brandy. Be that as it 
 may, it's nothing to the purport of my story. I only 
 tell it to show you that my grandfather was a man 
 not easily to be humbugged. He had seen service, 
 or, according to his own phrase, he had seen the devil 
 and that's saying every thing. 
 53
 
 Masterpieces of Adventure 
 
 Well, gentlemen, my grandfather was on his way 
 to England, for which he intended to embark from 
 Ostend bad luck to the place! for one where I was 
 kept by storms and headwinds for three long days, 
 and the devil of a jolly companion or pretty girl to 
 comfort me. Well, as I was saying, my grandfather 
 was on his way to England, or rather to Ostend 
 no matter which, it's all the same. So one evening, 
 towards nightfall, he rode jollily into Bruges. 
 Very like you all know Bruges, gentlemen; a queer 
 old-fashioned Flemish town, once, they say, a great 
 place for trade and money-making in old times, when 
 the Mynheers were in their glory; but almost as 
 large and as empty as an Irishm?r/s pocket at the 
 present day. Well, gentlemen, it was at the time 
 of the annual fair. All Bruges was crowded; and 
 the canals swarmed with Dutch boats, and the 
 streets swarmed with Dutch merchants; and there 
 was hardly any getting along for goods, wares, and 
 merchandise, and peasants in big breeches, and 
 women in half a score of petticoats. 
 
 My grandfather rode jollily along, in his easy, 
 slashing way, for he was a saucy, sunshiny fellow 
 staring about him at the motley crowd, and the old 
 houses with gable ends to the street, and storks' 
 nests in the chimneys; winking at the yafrows who 
 showed their faces at the windows, and joking the 
 women right and left in the street; all of whom 
 laughed, and took it in amazing good part; for though 
 he did not know a word of the language, yet he had 
 54
 
 The Bold Dragoon 
 
 always a knack of making himself understood among 
 the women. 
 
 Well, gentlemen, it being the time of the annual 
 fair, all the town was crowded, every inn and tavern 
 full, and my grandfather applied in vain from one 
 to the other for admittance. At length he rode up 
 to an old rickety inn, that looked ready to fall to 
 pieces, and which all the rats would have run away 
 from, if they could have found room in any other 
 house to put their heads. It was just such a queer 
 building as you see hi Dutch pictures, with a tall 
 roof that reached up into the clouds, and as many 
 garrets, one over the other, as the seven heavens of 
 Mahomet. Nothing had saved it from tumbling 
 down but a stork's nest on the chimney, which al- 
 ways brings good luck to a house in the Low Coun- 
 tries; and at the very time of my grandfather's 
 arrival, there were two of these long-legged birds of 
 grace standing like ghosts on the chimney-top. 
 Faith, but they've kept the house on its legs to this 
 very day, for you may see it any time you pass 
 through Bruges, as it stands there yet, only it is 
 turned into a brewery of strong Flemish beer, at 
 least it was so when I came that way after the battle 
 of Waterloo. 
 
 My grandfather eyed the house curiously as he 
 approached. It might not have altogether struck 
 his fancy, had he not seen in large letters over the 
 door, 
 
 HEER VERKOOPT MAN GOEDEN DRANK. 
 55
 
 Masterpieces of Adventure 
 
 My grandfather had learnt enough of the language 
 to know that the sign promised good liquor. "This 
 is the house for me," said he, stopping short before 
 the door. 
 
 The sudden appearance of a dashing dragoon was 
 an event in an old inn frequented only by the peace- 
 ful sons of traffic. A rich burgher of Antwerp, a 
 stately ample man in a broad Flemish hat, and who 
 was the great man and great patron of the establish- 
 ment, sat smoking a clean long pipe on one side of 
 the door; a fat little distiller of Geneva, from 
 Schiedam, sat smoking on the other; and the bottle- 
 nosed host stood in the door, and the comely hostess, 
 in crimped cap, beside him; and the hostess's daugh- 
 ter, a plump Flanders lass, with long gold pendants 
 in her ears, was at a side window. 
 
 "Humph!" said the rich burgher of Antwerp, with 
 sulky glance at the stranger. 
 
 "De duyvel!" said the fat little distiller of Schie- 
 dam. 
 
 The landlord saw, with the quick glance of a 
 publican, that the new guest was not at all to 
 the taste of the old ones; and, to tell the truth, 
 he did not like my grandfather's saucy eye. He 
 shook his head. "Not a garret hi the house but was 
 full." 
 
 "Not a garret!" echoed the landlady. 
 
 "Not a garret!" echoed the daughter. 
 
 The burgher of Antwerp, and the little distiller of 
 Schiedam, continued to smoke their pipes sullenly, 
 56
 
 The Bold Dragoon 
 
 eyeing the enemy askance from under their broad 
 hats, but said nothing. 
 
 My grandfather was not a man to be browbeaten. 
 He threw the reins on his horse's neck, cocked his 
 head en one side, stuck one arm akimbo, "Faith 
 and troth!" said he, "but I'll sleep in this house this 
 very night." As he said this he gave a slap on his 
 thigh, by way of emphasis the slap went to the 
 landlady's heart. 
 
 He followed up the vow by jumping off his horse, 
 and making his way past the staring Mynheers into 
 the public room. May be you've been in the bar- 
 room of an old Flemish inn faith, but a handsome 
 chamber it was as you'd wish to see; with a brick 
 floor, and a great fireplace, with the whole Bible 
 history in glazed tiles; and then the mantelpiece, 
 pitching itself head foremost out of the wall, with a 
 whole regiment of cracked teapots and earthen jugs 
 paraded on it; not to mention half a dozen great 
 Delft platters, hung about the room by way of 
 pictures; and the little bar in one corner, and the 
 bouncing bar-maid inside of it, with a red calico 
 cap, and yellow ear-drops. 
 
 My grandfather snapped his fingers over his 
 head, as he cast an eye round the room "Faith, 
 this is the very house I've been looking after," said 
 he. 
 
 There was some further show of resistance on the 
 part of the garrison; but my grandfather was an old 
 soldier, and an Irishman to boot, and not easily 
 57
 
 Masterpieces of Adventure 
 
 repulsed, especially after he had got into the fortress. 
 So he blarneyed the landlord, kissed the landlord's 
 wife, tickled the landlord's daughter, chucked the 
 bar-maid under the chin; and it was agreed on all 
 hands that it would be a thousand pities, and a 
 burning shame into the bargain, to turn such a bold 
 dragoon into the streets. So they laid their heads 
 together, that is to say, my grandfather and the 
 landlady, and it was at length agreed to accommo- 
 date him with an old chamber, that had been for 
 some time shut up. 
 
 "Some say it's haunted," whispered the landlord's 
 daughter; "but you are a bold dragoon, and I dare 
 say don't fear ghosts." 
 
 "The devil a bit!" said my grandfather, pinching 
 her plump cheek. "But if I should be troubled 
 by ghosts, I've been to the Red Sea in my time, 
 and have a pleasant way of laying them, my 
 darling." 
 
 And then he whispered something to the girl which 
 made her laugh, and give him a good-humoured box 
 on the ear. In short, there was nobody knew better 
 how to make his way among the petticoats than my 
 grandfather. 
 
 In a little while, as was his usual way, he took 
 complete possession of the house, swaggering all 
 over it; into the stable to look after his horse, into 
 the kitchen to look after his supper. He had some- 
 thing to say or do with everyone; smoked with the 
 Dutchman, drank with the Germans, slapped the 
 58
 
 The Bold Dragoon 
 
 landlord on the shoulder, romped with his daughter 
 and the bar-maid: never, since the days of Alley 
 Croaker, had such a rattling blade been seen. The 
 landlord stared at him with astonishment; the 
 landlord's daughter hung her head and giggled 
 whenever he came near; and as he swaggered along 
 the corridor, with his sword trailing by his side, the 
 maids looked after him, and whispered to one an- 
 other, "What a proper man!" 
 
 At supper, my grandfather took command of the 
 table-d'hdte as though he had been at home; helped 
 everybody, not forgetting himself; talked with 
 everyone, whether he understood their language or 
 not; and made his way into the intimacy of the rich 
 burgher of Antwerp, who had never been known to 
 be sociable with anyone during his life. In fact, 
 he revolutionised the whole establishment, and gave 
 it such a rouse, that the very house reeled with it. 
 He outsat everyone at table, excepting the little fat 
 distiller of Schiedam, who sat soaking a long time be- 
 fore he broke forth; but when he did, he was a very 
 devil incarnate. He took a violent affection for my 
 grandfather; so they sat drinking and smoking, and 
 telling stories, and singing Dutch and Irish songs, 
 without understanding a word each other said, until 
 the little Hollander was fairly swamped with his own 
 gin and water, and carried off to bed, whooping and 
 hickuping, and trolling the burden of a Low Dutch 
 love-song. 
 
 Well, gentlemen, my grandfather was shown to 
 59
 
 Masterpieces of Adventure 
 
 his quarters up a large staircase, composed of loads 
 of hewn timber; and through long rigmarole passages, 
 hung with blackened paintings of fish, and fruit, and 
 game, and country frolics, and huge kitchens, and 
 portly burgomasters, such as you see about old- 
 fashioned Flemish inns, till at length he arrived at 
 his room. 
 
 An old-time chamber it was, sure enough, and 
 crowded with all kinds of trumpery. It looked like 
 an infirmary for decayed and superannuated furni- 
 ture, where everything diseased or disabled was sent 
 to nurse or to be forgotten. Or rather it might be 
 taken for a general congress of old legitimate mova- 
 bles, where every kind and country had a represen- 
 tative. No two chairs were alike. Such high backs 
 and low backs, and leather bottoms, and worsted 
 bottoms, and straw bottoms, and no bottoms; and 
 cracked marble tables with curiously carved legs, 
 holding balls in their claws, as though they were 
 going to play at nine-pins. 
 
 My grandfather made a bow to the motley assem- 
 blage as he entered, and, having undressed himself, 
 placed his light in the fireplace, asking pardon of the 
 tongs, which seemed to be making love to the shovel 
 hi the chimney-corner, and whispering soft nonsense 
 in its ear. 
 
 The rest of the guests were by this time sound 
 
 asleep, for your Mynheers are huge sleepers. The 
 
 housemaids, one by one, crept up yawning to their 
 
 attics; and not a female head in the inn was laid on a 
 
 60
 
 The Bold Dragoon 
 
 pillow that night without dreaming of the bold 
 dragoon. 
 
 My grandfather, for his part, got into bed, and 
 drew over him one of those great bags of down, 
 under which they smother a man in the Low Coun- 
 tries; and there he lay, melting between two feather 
 beds, like an anchovy sandwich between two slices of 
 toast and butter. He was a warm complexioned 
 man, and this smothering played the very deuce 
 with him. So, sure enough, in a little time it seemed 
 as if a legion of imps were twitching at him, and all 
 the blood in his veins was in a fever heat. 
 
 He lay still, however, until all the house was 
 quiet, excepting the snoring of the Mynheers from 
 the different chambers; who answered one another 
 in all kinds of tones and cadences, like so many bull- 
 frogs in a swamp. The quieter the house became, 
 the more unquiet became my grandfather. He 
 vraxed warmer and warmer, until at length the bed 
 became too hot to hold him. 
 
 "May be the maid had warmed it too much?" 
 said the curious gentleman, inquiringly. 
 
 "I rather think the contrary," replied the Irish- 
 man. "But, be that as it may, it grew too hot for 
 my grandfather." 
 
 " Faith, there's no standing this any longer," says 
 he. So he jumped out of bed and went strolling 
 about the house. 
 
 "What for?" said the inquisitive gentleman. 
 
 "Why to cool himself, to be sure or perhaps to 
 61
 
 Masterpieces of Adventure 
 
 find a more comfortable bed or perhaps But no 
 matter what he went for he never mentioned and 
 there's no use in taking up our time in conjecturing." 
 
 Well, my grandfather had been for some time 
 absent from his room, and was returning, perfectly 
 cool, when just as he reached the door, he heard 
 a strange noise within. He paused and listened. It 
 seemed as if someone were trying to hum a tune in 
 defiance of the asthma. He recollected the report of 
 the room being haunted; but he was no believer in 
 ghosts, so he pushed the door gently open and peeped 
 in. 
 
 Egad, gentlemen, there was a gambol carrying on 
 within enough to have astonished St. Anthony him- 
 self. By the light of the fire he saw a pale weazen- 
 faced fellow, in a long flannel gown and a tall white 
 night-cap with a tassel to it, who sat by the fire with 
 a bellows under his arm by way of bagpipe, from 
 which he forced the asthmatical music that had 
 bothered my grandfather. As he played, too, he 
 kept twitching about with a thousand queer contor- 
 tions, nodding his head, and bobbing about his 
 tasselled night-cap. 
 
 My grandfather thought this very odd and mighty 
 presumptuous, and was about to demand what 
 business he had to play his wind instrument in an- 
 other gentleman's quarters, when a new cause of 
 astonishment met his eye. From the opposite side 
 of the room a long-backed, bandy-legged chair cov- 
 ered with leather, and studded all over in a cox- 
 62
 
 The Bold Dragoon 
 
 combical fashion with little brass nails, got suddenly 
 into motion, thrust out first a claw-foot, then a 
 crooked arm, and at length, making a leg, slided 
 gracefully up to an easy chair of tarnished brocade, 
 with a hole in its bottom, and led it gallantly out in 
 a ghostly minuet about the floor. 
 
 The musician now played fiercer and fiercer, and 
 bobbed his head and his night-cap about like mad. 
 By degrees the dancing mania seemed to seize upon 
 all the other pieces of furniture. The antique, long- 
 bodied chairs paired off in couples and led down a 
 country dance; a three-legged stool danced a horn- 
 pipe, though horribly puzzled by its supernumerary 
 limb; while the amorous tongs seized the shovel 
 round the waist, and whirled it about the room in a 
 German waltz. In short, all the movables got in 
 motion: pirouetting hands across, right and left, 
 like so many devils; all except a great clothes-press, 
 which kept courtesying and courtesying in a corner, 
 like a dowager, in exquisite time to the music; being 
 rather too corpulent to dance, or, perhaps at a loss 
 for a partner. 
 
 My grandfather concluded the latter to be the 
 reason; so being, like a true Irishman, devoted to 
 the sex, and at all times ready for a frolic, he bounced 
 into the room, called to the musician to strike up 
 PaddyO'Rafferty,capered up to the clothes-press,and 
 
 seized upon the two handles to lead her out: 
 
 when whirr! the whole revel was at an end. The 
 
 chairs, tables, tongs, and shovel slunk in an instant 
 
 63
 
 Masterpieces of Adventure 
 
 as quietly into their places as if nothing had hap- 
 pened, and the musician vanished up the chimney, 
 leaving the bellows behind him in his hurry. My 
 grandfather found himself seated in the middle of 
 the floor with the clothes-press sprawling before 
 him, and the two handles jerked off, and in his hands. 
 
 "Then, after all, this was a mere dream!" said the 
 inquisitive gentleman. 
 
 "The divil a bit of a dream !" replied the Irishman. 
 "There never was a truer fact in this world. Faith, 
 I should have liked to see any man tell my grand- 
 father it was a dream." 
 
 Well, gentlemen, as the clothes-press was a mighty 
 heavy body, and my grandfather likewise, particu- 
 larly in rear, you may easily suppose that two such 
 heavy bodies coming to the ground would make a bit 
 of a noise. Faith, the old mansion shook as though 
 it had mistaken it for an earthquake. The whole 
 garrison was alarmed. The landlord, who slept be- 
 low, hurried up with a candle to inquire the cause, 
 but with all his haste his daughter had arrived at 
 the scene of uproar before him. The landlord was 
 followed by the landlady, who was followed by the 
 bouncing bar-maid, who was followed by the simper- 
 ing chambermaids, all holding together, as well as 
 they could, such garments as they first laid hands on; 
 but all in a terrible hurry to see what the deuce was to 
 pay in the chamber of the bold dragoon. 
 
 My grandfather related the marvellous scene he 
 had witnessed, and the broken handles of the pros- 
 64
 
 The Bold Dragoon 
 
 trate clothes-press bore testimony to the fact. There 
 was no contesting such evidence; particularly with 
 a lad of my grandfather's complexion, who seemed 
 able to make good every word either with sword or 
 shillelah. So the landlord scratched -his head and 
 looked silly, as he was apt to do when puzzled. The 
 landlady scratched no, she did not scratch her head 
 but she knit her brow, and did not seem half pleased 
 with the explanation. But the landlady's daughter 
 corroborated it by recollecting that the last person 
 who had dwelt in that chamber was a famous juggler 
 who died of St. Vitus's dance, and had no doubt 
 infected all the furniture. 
 
 This set all things to rights, particularly when the 
 chambermaids declared that they had all witnessed 
 strange carryings on in that room; and as they 
 declared this "upon their honours," there could not 
 remain a doubt upon the subject. 
 
 "And did your grandfather go to bed again in that 
 room?" said the inquisitive gentleman. 
 
 "That's more than I can tell. Where he passed 
 the rest of the night was a secret he never disclosed. 
 In fact, though he had seen much service, he was but 
 indifferently acquainted with geography, and apt to 
 make blunders in his travels about inns at night, 
 which it would have puzzled him sadly to account 
 for in the morning." 
 
 "Was he ever apt to walk in his sleep?" said the 
 knowing old gentleman. 
 
 "Never that I heard of." 
 65
 
 IV 
 
 THE BET* 
 
 ANTON CHEKHOV 
 
 IT was a dark autumn night. The old banker 
 was pacing from corner to corner of his study, 
 recalling to his mind the party he gave in the 
 autumn fifteen years ago. There were many clever 
 people at the party and much interesting conversa- 
 tion. They talked among other things of capital 
 punishment. The guests, among them not a 
 few scholars and journalists, for the most part dis- 
 approved of capital punishment. They found it 
 obsolete as a means of punishment, unfitted to a 
 Christian state and immoral. Some of them 
 thought that capital punishment should be replaced 
 universally by life-imprisonment. 
 
 "I don't agree with you," said the host. "I 
 myself have experienced neither capital punishment 
 nor life-imprisonment, but if one may judge a priori, 
 then in my opinion capital punishment is more 
 moral and more humane than imprisonment. Execu- 
 tion kills instantly, life-imprisonment kills by degrees. 
 Who is the more humane executioner, one who kills 
 
 *Reprinted by permission of John W. Luce and Company. 
 66
 
 The Bet 
 t 
 you in a few seconds or one who draws the lif e out of 
 
 you incessantly, for years?" 
 
 "They're both equally immoral, " remarked one 
 of the guests, " because their purpose is the same, to 
 take away life. The state is not God. It has no 
 right to take away that which it cannot give back, 
 if it should so desire." 
 
 Among the company was a lawyer, a young man 
 of about twenty-five. On being asked his opinion, 
 he said: 
 
 "Capital punishment and life-imprisonment are 
 equally immoral; but if I were offered the choice 
 between them, I would certainly choose the second. 
 It's better to live somehow than not to live 
 at all." 
 
 There ensued a lively discussion. The banker 
 who was then younger and more nervous suddenly 
 lost his temper, banged his fist on the table, and 
 turning to the young lawyer, cried out: 
 
 "It's a lie. I bet you two millions you wouldn't 
 stick in a cell even for five years." 
 
 "If that's serious," replied the lawyer, "then 
 I bet I'll stay not five but fifteen." 
 
 "Fifteen! Done!" cried the banker. "Gentle- 
 men, I stake two millions." 
 
 "Agreed. You stake two millions, I my free- 
 dom, " said the lawyer. 
 
 So this wild, ridiculous bet came to pass. The 
 banker, who at that time had too many millions to 
 count, spoiled and capricious, was beside himself 
 67
 
 Masterpieces of Adventure 
 
 with rapture. During supper lie said to the lawyer 
 jokingly: 
 
 "Come to your senses, young man, before it's 
 too late. Two millions are nothing to me, but you 
 stand to lose three or four of the best years of your 
 life. I say three or four, because you'll never stick 
 it out any longer. Don't forget either, you un- 
 happy man, that voluntary is much heavier than 
 enforced imprisonment. The idea that you have 
 the right to free yourself at any moment will poison 
 the whole of your life in the cell. I pity you." 
 *" And now the banker pacing from corner to corner 
 recalled all this and asked himself : 
 
 "Why did I make this bet? What's the good? 
 The lawyer loses fifteen years of his lif e and I throw 
 away two millions. Will it convince people thai" 
 capital punishment is worse or better than imprison- 
 ment for life? No, No! all stuff and rubbish. On 
 my part, it was the caprice of a well-fed man; on the 
 lawyer's, pure greed of gold." 
 
 He recollected further what happened after the 
 evening party. It was decided that the lawyer 
 must undergo his imprisonment under the strictest 
 observation, in a garden-wing of the banker's house. 
 It was agreed that during the period he would be 
 deprived of the right to cross the threshold, to see 
 living people, to hear human voices, and to receive 
 letters and newspapers. He was permitted to have 
 a musical instrument, to read books, to write letters, 
 to_drink wine and smoke tobacco. By the agree- 
 68
 
 The Bet 
 
 ment he could communicate, but only in silence 
 with the outside world through a little window 
 specially constructed for this purpose. Every- 
 thing necessary, books, music, wine, he could re- 
 ceive in any quantity by sending a note through the 
 window. The agreement provided for all the 
 minutest details, which made the confinement strictly 
 solitary, and it obliged the lawyer to remain exactly 
 fifteen years from twelve o'clock of November i4th 
 1870 to twelve o'clock of November i4th 1885. The 
 least attempt on his part to violate the conditions, 
 to escape if only for two minutes before the time 
 freed the banker from the obligation to pay him 
 the two millions. 
 
 During the first year of imprisonment, the lawyer, 
 as far as it was possible to judge from his short 
 notes, suffered terribly from loneliness and boredom. 
 From his wing day and night came the sound of the 
 piano. He rejected wine and tobacco. "Wine," 
 he wrote, "excites desires, and desires are the chief 
 foes of a prisoner; besides, nothing is more boring 
 than to drink good wine alone," and tobacco spoils 
 the air in his room. During the first year the 
 lawyer was sent books of a light character; novels 
 with a complicated love interest, stories of crime 
 and fantasy, comedies, and so on. 
 
 In the second year the piano was heard no longer 
 
 and the lawyer asked only for classics. In the 
 
 fifth year music was heard again, and the prisoner 
 
 asked for wine. Those who watched him said that 
 
 69
 
 Masterpieces of Adventure 
 
 during the whole of that year he was only eating, 
 drinking, and lying on his bed. He yawned often 
 and talked angrily to himself. Books he did not read. 
 Sometimes at nights he would sit down to write. He 
 would write for a long time and tear it all up in the 
 morning. More than once he was heard to weep. 
 
 In the second half of the sixth year, the prisoner 
 began zealously to study languages, philosophy, and 
 history. He fell on these subjects so hungrily that 
 the banker hardly had time to get books enough for 
 him. In the space of four years about six hundred 
 volumes were bought at his request. It was while 
 that passion lasted that the banker received the 
 following letter from the prisoner: "My dear 
 gaoler, I am writing these lines in six languages. 
 Show them to experts. Let them read them. If 
 they do not find one single mistake, I beg you to 
 give orders to have a gun fired off in the garden. 
 By the noise I shall know that my efforts have not 
 been in vain. The geniuses of all ages and coun- 
 tries speak in different languages; but in them all 
 burns the same flame. Oh, if you knew my heavenly 
 happiness now that I can understand them!" The 
 prisoner's desire was fulfilled. Two shots were fired 
 in the garden by the banker's order. 
 
 Later on, after the tenth year, the lawyer sat 
 immovable before his table and read only the New 
 Testament. The banker found it strange that a 
 man who in four years had mastered six hundred 
 erudite volumes, should have spent nearly a year in 
 70
 
 The Bet 
 
 reading one book, easy to understand and by no 
 means thick. The New Testament was then re- 
 placed by the history of religions and theology. 
 
 During the last two years of his confinement the 
 prisoner read an extraordinary amount, quite hap- 
 hazard. Now he would apply himself to the natural 
 sciences, then would read Byron or Shakespeare. 
 Notes used to come from him in which he asked to be 
 sent at the same time a book on chemistry, a text- 
 book of medicine, a novel, and some treatise on 
 philosophy or theology. He read as though he were 
 swimming in the sea among the broken pieces of 
 wreckage, and in his desire to save his life was 
 eagerly grasping one piece after another. 
 
 n 
 
 The banker recalled all this, and thought: 
 "To-morrow at twelve o'clock he receives his 
 freedom. Under the agreement, I shall have to 
 pay him two millions. If I pay, it's all over with 
 me. I am ruined for ever. . . ." 
 
 Fifteen years before he had too many millions to 
 count, but now he was afraid to ask himself which 
 he had more of, money or debts. Gambling on the 
 Stock-Exchange, risky speculation, and the reck- 
 lessness of which he could not rid himself even in 
 old age, had gradually brought his business to decay; 
 and the fearless, self-confident, proud man of busi- 
 ness had become an ordinary banker, trembling at 
 every rise and fall in the market. 
 71
 
 Masterpieces of Adventure 
 
 "That cursed bet, " murmured the old man, clutch- 
 ing his head in despair. . . . "Why didn't the 
 man die? He's only forty years old. He will take 
 away my last farthing, marry, enjoy lif e, gamble on 
 the Exchange, and I will look on like an envious 
 beggar and hear the same words from him every 
 day: 'I'm obliged to you for the happiness of my 
 life. Let me help you.' No, it's too much! The 
 only escape from bankruptcy and disgrace is that 
 the man should die." 
 
 The clock had just struck three. The banker 
 was listening. In the house everyone was asleep, 
 and one could hear only the frozen trees whining 
 outside the windows. Trying to make no sound, 
 he took out of his safe the key of the door which had 
 not been opened for fifteen years, put on his over- 
 coat, and went out of the house. The garden was 
 dark and cold. It was raining. A keen damp wind 
 hovered howling over all the garden and gave the 
 trees no rest. Though he strained his eyes, the 
 banker could see neither the ground, nor tiie white 
 statues, nor trie garden-wing, nor the trees. Ap- 
 proaching the place where the garden wing stood, 
 he called the watchman twice. There was no 
 answer. Evidently the watchman had taken shelter 
 from the bad weather and was now asleep somewhere 
 in the kitchen or the greenhouse. 
 
 "If I have the courage to fulfil my intention," 
 thought the old man, "the suspicion will fall on the 
 watchman first of all." 
 
 72
 
 The Bet 
 
 In the darkness he groped for the stairs and the 
 door and entered the hall of the garden-wing, then 
 poked his way into a narrow passage and struck a 
 match. Not a soul was there. Someone's bed, 
 with no bedclothes on it, stood there, and an 
 iron stove was dark in the corner. The seals on 
 the door that led into the prisoner's room were 
 unbroken. 
 
 When the match went out, the old man, trembling 
 from agitation, peeped into the little window. 
 
 In the prisoner's room a candle was burning dim. 
 The prisoner himself sat by the table. Only his 
 back, the hair on his head and his hands were visible. 
 On the table, the two chairs, and the carpet by the 
 table open books were strewn. 
 
 Five minutes passed and the prisoner never once 
 stirred. Fifteen years' confinement had taught him 
 to sit motionless. The banker tapped on the win- 
 dow with his finger, but the prisoner gave no move- 
 ment hi reply. Then the banker cautiously tore 
 the seals from the door and put the key into the lock. 
 The rusty lock gave a hoarse groan and the door 
 creaked. The banker expected instantly to hear a 
 cry of surprise and the sound of steps. Three 
 minutes passed and it was as quiet behind the door 
 as it had been before. He made up his mind to 
 enter. 
 
 Before the table sat a man, unlike an ordinary 
 human being. It was a skeleton, with tight-drawn 
 skin, with a woman's long curly hair, and a shaggy 
 73
 
 Masterpieces of Adventure 
 
 beard. The colour of his face was yellow, of an 
 earthy shade; the cheeks were sunken, the back 
 long and narrow, and the hand upon which he 
 leaned his hairy head was so lean and skinny that 
 it was painful to look upon. His hair was already 
 silvering with grey, and no one who glanced at 
 the senile emaciation of the face would have 
 believed that he was only forty years old. On 
 the table, before his bended head, lay a sheet of 
 paper on which something was written in a tiny 
 hand. 
 
 "Poor devil," thought the banker, "he's asleep 
 and probably seeing millions in his dreams. I have 
 only to take and throw this half-dead thing on the 
 bed, smother him a moment with the pillow, and the 
 most careful examination will find no trace of un- 
 natural death. But, first, let us read what he has 
 written here." 
 
 The banker took the sheet from the table and 
 read: 
 
 "To-morrow at twelve o'clock midnight, I shall 
 obtain my freedom and the right to mix with people. 
 But before I leave this room and see the sun I think 
 it necessary to say a few words to you. On my own 
 clear conscience and before God who sees me I 
 declare to you that I despise freedom, life, health, 
 and all that your books call the blessings of the 
 world. 
 
 "For fifteen years I have diligently studied 
 earthly life. True, I saw neither the earth nor the 
 74
 
 The Bet 
 
 people, but in your books I drank fragrant wine, 
 sang songs, hunted deer and wild boar in the forests, 
 loved women. . . . And beautiful women, like 
 clouds ethereal, created by the magic of your poets' 
 genius, visited me by night and whispered me 
 wonderful tales, which made my head drunken. 
 In your books I climbed the summits of Elbruz and 
 Mont Blanc and saw from thence how the sun rose 
 in the morning, and in the evening overflowed the 
 sky, the ocean, and the mountain ridges with a 
 purple gold. I saw from thence how above me 
 lightnings glimmered cleaving the clouds; I saw 
 green forests, fields, rivers, lakes, cities; I heard 
 syrens singing, and the playing of the pipes of Pan; 
 I touched the wings of beautiful devils who came 
 flying to me to speak of God. ... In your 
 books I cast myself into bottomless abysses, worked 
 miracles, burned cities to the ground, preached new 
 religions, conquered whole countries. . . . 
 
 "Your books gave me wisdom. All that un- 
 wearying human thought created in the centuries 
 is compressed to a little lump in my skull. I know 
 that I am more clever than you all. 
 
 "And I despise your books, despise all worldly 
 blessings and wisdom. Everything is void, frail, 
 visionary and delusive like a mirage. Though you 
 be proud and wise and beautiful, yet will death 
 wipe you from the face of the earth like the mice 
 underground; and your posterity, your history, and 
 the immortality of your men of genius will be as 
 75
 
 Masterpieces of Adventure 
 
 frozen slag, burnt down together with the terrestrial 
 globe. 
 
 "You are mad, and gone the wrong way. You 
 take lie for truth and ugliness for beauty. You 
 would marvel if by certain conditions there should 
 suddenly grow on apple and orange trees, instead of 
 fruit, frogs and lizards, and if roses should begin to 
 breathe the odour of a sweating horse. So do I 
 marvel at you, who have bartered heaven for earth. 
 I do not want to understand you. 
 
 "That I may show you in deed my contempt for 
 that by which you live, I waive the two millions of 
 which I once dreamed as of paradise, and which I 
 now despise. That I may deprive myself of my right 
 to them, I shall come out from here five minutes 
 before the stipulated term, and thus shall violate the 
 agreement." 
 
 When he had read, the banker put the sheet on 
 the table, kissed the head of the strange man, and 
 began to weep. He went out of the wing. Never 
 at any other time, not even after his terrible losses 
 on the Exchange, had he felt such contempt for 
 himself as now. Coming home, he lay down on his 
 bed, but agitation and tears kept him long from 
 sleep. . . . 
 
 The next morning the poor watchman came 
 running to him and told him that they had seen 
 the man who lived in the wing climbing through 
 the window into the garden. He had gone to the 
 gate and disappeared. Together with his servants 
 76
 
 The Bet 
 
 the banker went instantly to the wing and estab- 
 lished the escape of his prisoner. To avoid un- 
 necessary rumours he took the paper with the re- 
 nunciation from the table and, on his return, locked 
 it in his safe. 
 
 77
 
 V 
 
 LA GRANDE BRETECHE* 
 HONORS DE BALZAC 
 
 "AH! Madame," replied Doctor Horace Bian- 
 r\ chon to the lady at whose house he was 
 supping, " it is true that I have many terrible 
 histories in my repertory; but every tale has its due 
 hour in a conversation, according to the clever say- 
 ing reported by Chamfort and said to the Due de 
 Fronsac: 'There are ten bottles of champagne 
 between your joke and the present moment.' " 
 
 "But it is past midnight; what better hour could 
 you have?" said the mistress of the house. 
 
 "Yes, tell us, Monsieur Bianchon," urged the 
 assembled company. 
 
 At a gesture from the complying doctor, silence 
 reigned. 
 
 "About a hundred yards from Venddme, " he said, 
 "on the banks of the Loire, is an old brown house, 
 covered with very steep roofs, and so completely 
 isolated that there is not so much as an evil-smelling 
 tannery, nor a shabby inn such as you see at the en- 
 
 * Translated by Katherine Prescott Wormeley. Reprinted by per- 
 mission of Little, Brown, and Company. 
 
 73
 
 La Grande Breteche 
 
 trance of all little towns, in its neighbourhood. In 
 front of this dwelling is a garden overlooking the 
 river, where the box edgings, once carefully clipped, 
 which bordered the paths, now cross them and 
 straggle as they fancy. A few willows with their 
 roots in the Loire have made a rapid growth, like the 
 enclosing hedge, and together they half hide the 
 house. Plants which we call weeds drape the bank 
 toward the river with their beautiful vegetation. 
 Fruit-trees, neglected for half a score of years, no 
 longer yield a product, and their shoots and suckers 
 have formed an undergrowth. The espaliers are 
 like a hornbeam hedge. The paths, formerly grav- 
 elled, are full of purslain; so that, strictly speaking, 
 there are no paths at all. 
 
 " From the crest of the mountain, on which hang 
 the ruins of the old castle of Vend6me (the only spot 
 whence the eye can look down into this enclosure) we 
 say to ourselves that at an earlier period, now 
 difficult to determine, this corner of the earth was 
 the delight of some gentleman devoted to roses and 
 tulips, in a word, to horticulture, but above all 
 possessing a keen taste for good fruits. An arbour 
 is still standing) or rather the remains of one, and 
 beneath it is a table which time has not yet com- 
 pletely demolished. 
 
 " From the aspect of this garden, now no more, the 
 
 negative joys of the peaceful life of the provinces can 
 
 be inferred, just as we infer the life of some worthy 
 
 from the epitaph on his tomb. To complete the sad 
 
 79
 
 Masterpieces of Adventure 
 
 and tender ideas which take possession of the soul, a 
 sundial on the wall bears this inscription, Christian 
 yet bourgeois, 'ULTTMAM COGITA.' The roofs are 
 dilapidated, the blinds always closed, the balconies 
 are filled with swallows' nests, the gates are locked. 
 Tall herbs and grasses trace in green lines the chinks 
 and crevices of the stone portico; the locks are 
 rusty. Sun and moon, summer and winter and 
 snow have rotted the wood, warped the planks, and 
 worn away the paint. The gloomy silence is un- 
 broken save by the birds, the cats, the martens, the 
 rats, the mice, all free to scamper or fly, and to 
 fight, and to eat themselves up. 
 
 "An invisible hand has written the word 'MYS- 
 TERY' everywhere. If, impelled by curiosity, you 
 wish to look at this house, on the side toward the 
 road you will see a large gate with an arched top, in 
 which the children of the neighbourhood have made 
 large holes. This gate, as I heard later, had been 
 disused for ten years. Through these irregular holes 
 you can observe the perfect harmony which exists 
 between the garden side and the courtyard side of 
 the premises. The same neglect everywhere. Lines 
 of grass surround the paving-stones. Enormous 
 cracks furrow the walls, the blackened eaves of 
 which are festooned with pellitory. The steps of 
 the portico are disjointed, the rope of the bell is 
 rotten, the gutters are dropping apart. What fire 
 from heaven has fallen here? What tribunal has 
 ordained that salt be cast upon this dwelling? Has 
 80
 
 La Grande Breteche 
 
 God been mocked here; or France betrayed? These 
 are the questions we ask as we stand there; the rep- 
 tiles crawl about but they give no answer. 
 
 "This empty and deserted house is a profound 
 enigma, whose solution is known to none. It was 
 formerly a small fief, and is called La Grande 
 Breteche. During my stay at Vend6me, where 
 Desplein had sent me in charge of a rich patient, the 
 sight of this strange dwelling was one of my keenest 
 pleasures. It was better than a ruin. A ruin pos- 
 sesses memories of positive authenticity; but this 
 habitation, still standing, though slowly demolished 
 by an avenging hand, contained some secret, some 
 mysterious thought, it betrayed at least a strange 
 caprice. 
 
 "More than once of an evening I jumped the 
 hedge, now a tangle, which guarded the enclosure. 
 I braved the scratches; I walked that garden with- 
 out a master, that property which was neither public 
 nor private; for hours I stayed there contemplating 
 its decay. Not even to obtain the history which 
 underlay (and to which no doubt was due) this 
 strange spectacle would I have asked a single ques- 
 tion of any gossiping countryman. Standing there 
 I invented enchanting tales; I gave myself up to 
 debauches of melancholy which fascinated me. Had 
 I known the reason, perhaps a common one, for this 
 strange desertion, I should have lost the unwritten 
 poems with which I intoxicated myself. To me this 
 sanctuary evoked the most varied images of human 
 81
 
 Masterpieces of Adventure 
 
 life darkened by sorrows; sometimes it was a cloister 
 without the nuns; sometimes a graveyard and its 
 peace, without the dead who talk to you in epitaphs; 
 to-day the house of the leper, to-morrow that of the 
 Atrides; but above all was it the provinces with their 
 composed ideas, their hour-glass life. 
 
 "Often I wept there, but I never smiled. More 
 than once an involuntary terror seized me, as I heard 
 above my head the muffled whirr of a ringdove's 
 wings hurrying past. The soil is damp; care must 
 be taken against the lizards, the vipers, the frogs, 
 which wander about with the wild liberty of nature; 
 above all, it is well not to fear cold, for there are 
 moments when you feel an icy mantle laid upon your 
 shoulders like the hand of the Commander on the 
 shoulder of Don Juan. One evening I shuddered; 
 the wind had caught and turned a rusty vane. Its 
 creak was like a moan issuing from the house; at a 
 moment, too, when I was ending a gloomy drama in 
 which I explained to myself the monumental dolor 
 of that scene. 
 
 "That night I returned to my inn, a prey to 
 gloomy thoughts. After I had supped the landlady 
 entered my room with a mysterious air, and said to 
 me, 'Monsieur, Monsieur Regnault is here.' 
 
 " 'Who is Monsieur Regnault?' 
 
 " 'Is it possible that monsieur doesn't know Mon- 
 sieur Regnault? Ah, how funny!' she said, leaving 
 the room. 
 
 "Suddenly I beheld a long, slim man, clothed in 
 82
 
 La Grande Breteche 
 
 black, holding his hat in his hand, who presented 
 himself, much like a ram about to leap on a rival, and 
 showed me a retreating forehead, a small, pointed 
 head and a livid face, in colour somewhat like a glass 
 of dirty water. You would have taken him for the 
 usher of a minister. This unknown personage wore 
 an old coat much worn in the folds, but he had a 
 diamond in the frill of his shirt, and gold earrings 
 in his ears. 
 
 " ' Monsieur, to whom have I the honour of speak- 
 ing? 'I said. 
 
 "He took a chair, sat down before my fire, laid 
 his hat on my table and replied, rubbing his hands: 
 'Ah! it is very cold. Monsieur, I am Monsieur Reg- 
 nault.' 
 
 " I bowed, saying to myself: f ll bondo canil seek!' 
 
 " 'I am,' he said, 'the notary of Vend6me.' 
 
 " 'Delighted, monsieur,' I replied, 'but I am not 
 in the way of making my will, for reasons, alas, too 
 well-known to me.' 
 
 " 'One moment!' he resumed, raising his hand as 
 if to impose silence; 'Permit me, monsieur, permit 
 me! I have learned that you sometimes enter the 
 garden of La Grande Breteche and walk there ' 
 
 " 'Yes, monsieur.' 
 
 " 'One moment!' he said, repeating his gesture. 
 'That action constitutes a misdemeanor. Monsieur, 
 I come in the name and as testamentary executor of 
 the late Comtesse de Merret to beg you to discon- 
 tinue your visits. One moment! I am not a Turk; 
 83
 
 Masterpieces of Adventure 
 
 I do not wish to impute a crime to you. Besides, it 
 is quite excusable that you, a stranger, should be 
 ignorant of the circumstances which compel me to 
 let the handsomest house in Vend6me go to ruin. 
 Nevertheless, monsieur, as you seem to be a person 
 of education, you no doubt know that the law forbids 
 trespassers on enclosed property. A hedge is the 
 same as a wall. But the state hi which that house is 
 left may well excuse your curiosity. I should be only 
 too glad to leave you free to go and come as you liked 
 there, but charged as I am to execute the wishes of 
 the testatrix, I have the honour, monsieur, to request 
 that you do not again enter that garden. I myself, 
 monsieur, have not, since the reading of the will, set 
 foot in that house, which, as I have already had the 
 honour to tell you, I hold under the will of Madame 
 de Merret. We have only taken account of the 
 number of the doors and windows so as to assess the 
 taxes which I pay annually from the funds left by 
 the late countess for that purpose. Ah, monsieur, 
 that will made a great deal of noise in Venddme!' 
 
 "There the worthy man paused to blow his nose. 
 I respected his loquacity, understanding perfectly 
 that the testamentary bequest of Madame de 
 Merret had been the most important event of his 
 life, the head and front of his reputation, his glory, 
 his Restoration. So then, I must bid adieu to my 
 beautiful reveries, my romances! I was not so re- 
 bellious as to deprive myself of getting the truth, as 
 it were officially, out of the man of law, so I said, 
 84
 
 La Grande Breteche 
 
 " 'Monsieur, if it is not indiscreet, may I ask the 
 reason of this singularity?' 
 
 "At these words a look which expressed the pleas- 
 ure of a man who rides a hobby passed over Monsieur 
 Regnault's face. He pulled up his shirt-collar with a 
 certain conceit, took out his snuff-box, opened it, 
 offered it to me, and on my refusal, took a strong 
 pinch himself. He was happy. A man who hasn't a 
 hobby doesn't know how much can be got out of life. 
 A hobby is the exact medium between a passion and 
 a monomania. At that moment I understood 
 Sterne's fine expression to its fullest extent, and I 
 formed a complete idea of the joy with which my 
 Uncle Toby Trim assisting bestrode his war- 
 horse. 
 
 " 'Monsieur,' said Monsieur Regnault, 'I was 
 formerly head-clerk to Maitre Roguin in Paris. An 
 excellent lawyer's office of which you have doubtless 
 heard? No! And yet a most unfortunate failure 
 made it, I may say, celebrated. Not having the 
 means to buy a practice in Paris at the price to which 
 they rose in 1816, 1 came here to Venddme, where I 
 have relations, among them a rich aunt, who gave 
 me her daughter in marriage.' 
 
 "Here he made a slight pause, and then re- 
 sumed: 
 
 " 'Three months after my appointment was rati- 
 fied by Monseigneur the Keeper of the Seals, I was 
 sent for one evening just as I was going to bed (I 
 was not then married) by Madame la Comtesse de 
 85
 
 Masterpieces of Adventure 
 
 Merret, then living in her chateau at Merret. Her 
 lady's-maid, an excellent girl who is now serving in 
 this inn, was at the door with the countess's carriage. 
 Ah ! one moment ! I ought to tell you, monsieur, that 
 Monsieur le Comte de Merret had gone to die in Paris 
 abbut two months before I came here. He died a 
 miserable death from excesses of all kinds, to which 
 he gave himself up. You understand? Well, the 
 day of his departure Madame la Comtesse left La 
 Grande Breteche, and dismantled it. They do say 
 that she even burned the furniture, and the carpets, 
 and all appurtenances whatsoever and wheresoever 
 contained on the premises leased to the said 
 Ah! beg pardon; what am I saying? I thought I 
 was dictating a lease. Well, monsieur, she burned 
 everything, they say, in the meadow at Merret. 
 Were you ever at Merret, monsieur?' 
 
 "Not waiting for me to speak, he answered for me: 
 'No. Ah! it is a fine spot? For three months, or 
 thereabouts,' he continued, nodding his head, 'Mon- 
 sieur le Comte and Madame la Comtesse had been 
 living at La Grande Breteche in a very singular way. 
 They admitted no one to the house ; madame lived on 
 the ground-floor, and monsieur on the first floor. 
 After Madame la Comtesse was left alone she never 
 went to church. Later, in her own chateau she re- 
 fused to see the friends who came to visit her. She 
 changed greatly after she left La Grande Breteche 
 and came to Merret. That dear woman (I say dear, 
 though I never saw her but once, because she gave 
 86
 
 La Grande Breteche 
 
 me this diamond), that good lady was very fll; no 
 doubt she had given up all hope of recovery, for she 
 died without calling in a doctor; in fact, some of our 
 ladies thought she was not quite right in her mind. 
 Consequently, monsieur, my curiosity was greatly 
 excited when I learned tiuit Madame de Merret need- 
 ed my services; and I was not the only one deeply 
 interested; that very night, though it was late, the 
 whole town knew I had gone to Merret.' 
 
 "The good man paused a moment to arrange his 
 facts, and then continued: 'The lady's maid an- 
 swered rather vaguely the questions which I put to 
 her as we drove along; she did, however, tell me 
 that her mistress had received the last sacraments 
 that day from the curate of Merret, and that she was 
 not likely to live through the night. I reached the 
 chateau about eleven o'clock. I went up the grand 
 staircase. After passing through a number of dark 
 and lofty rooms, horribly cold and damp, I entered 
 the state bedroom where Madame la Comtesse was 
 lying. In consequence of the many stories that were 
 told about this lady (really, monsieur, I should never 
 end if I related all of them) I expected to find her a 
 fascinating coquette. Would you believe it, I could 
 scarcely see her at all in the huge bed in which she 
 lay. It is true that the only light in that vast room, 
 with friezes of the old style powdered with dust 
 enough to make you sneeze on merely looking at 
 them, was one Argand lamp. Ah! but you say you 
 have never been at Merret. Well, monsieur, the bed 
 87
 
 Masterpieces of Adventure 
 
 was one of those old-time beds with a high tester 
 covered with flowered chintz. A little night-table 
 stood by the bed, and on it I noticed a copy of the 
 "Imitation of Christ." 
 
 " 'Allow me a parenthesis,' he said, interrupting 
 himself. 'I bought that book subsequently, also the 
 lamp, and presented them to my wife. In the room 
 was a large sofa for the woman who was taking care 
 of Madame de Merret, and two chairs. That was all. 
 No fire. The whole would not have made ten lines 
 of an inventory. Ah! my dear monsieur, could you 
 have seen her as I saw her then, in that vast room 
 hung with brown tapestry, you would have imagined 
 you were in the pages of a novel. It was glacial, 
 better than that, funereal/ added the worthy man, 
 raising his arm theatrically and making a pause. 
 Presently he resumed: 
 
 " 'By dint of peering round and coming close to 
 the bed I at length saw Madame de Merret, thanks 
 to the lamp which happened to shine on the pillows. 
 Her face was as yellow as wax, and looked like two 
 hands joined together. Madame la Comtesse wore 
 a lace cap, which, however, allowed me to see her 
 fine hair, white as snow. She was sitting up in the 
 bed, but apparently did so with difficulty. Her large 
 black eyes, sunken no doubt with fever, and almost 
 lifeless, hardly moved beneath the bones where the 
 eyebrows usually grow. Her forehead was damp. 
 Her fleshless hands were like bones covered with 
 thin skin; the veins and muscles could all be seen. 
 88
 
 La Grande Breteche 
 
 She must once have been very handsome, but now 
 I was seized with I couldn't tell you what feeling, 
 as I looked at her. Those who buried her said after- 
 ward that no living creature had ever been as wasted 
 as she without dying. Well, it was awful to see. 
 Some mortal disease had eaten up that woman till 
 there was nothing left of her but a phantom. Her 
 lips, of a pale violet, seemed not to move when she 
 spoke. Though my profession had familiarised me 
 with such scenes, in bringing me often to the bedside 
 of the dying, to receive their last wishes, I must say 
 that the tears and the anguish of families and 
 friends which I have witnessed were as nothing com- 
 pared to this solitary woman in that vast building. 
 I did not hear the slightest noise, I did not see the 
 movement which the breathing of the dying woman 
 would naturally give to the sheet that covered her; 
 I myself remained motionless, looking at her hi a 
 sort of stupor. Indeed, I fancy I am there still. At 
 last her large eyes moved; she tried to lift her right 
 hand, which fell back upon the bed; then these 
 words issued from her lips like a breath, for her 
 voice was no longer a voice, 
 
 " ' "I have awaited you with impatience." 
 " 'Her cheeks coloured. The effort to speak was 
 great. The old woman who was watching her here 
 rose and whispered in my ear: "Don't speak; 
 Madame la Comtesse is past hearing the slightest 
 sound; you would only agitate her." I sat down. 
 A few moments later Madame de Merret collected 
 89
 
 Masterpieces of Adventure 
 
 all her remaining strength to move her right arm 
 and put it, not without great difficulty, under her 
 bolster. She paused an instant; then she made a 
 last effort and withdrew her hand which now held a 
 sealed paper. Great drops of sweat rolled from her 
 forehead. 
 
 "'"I give you my will," she said. "Oh, my 
 God! Oh!" 
 
 " ' That was all. She seized a crucifix which lay on 
 her bed, pressed it to her lips, and died. The ex- 
 pression of her fixed eyes still makes me shudder 
 when I think of it. I brought away the will. When 
 it was opened I found that Madame de Merret had 
 appointed me her executor. She bequeathed her 
 whole property to the hospital of Vend6me, save 
 and excepting certain bequests. The following 
 disposition was made of La Grande Breteche. I 
 was directed to leave it in the state in which it was 
 at the tune of her death for a period of fifty years 
 from the date of her decease; I was to forbid all 
 access to it, by any- and everyone, no matter who; 
 to make no repairs, and to put by from her estate 
 a yearly sum to pay watchers, if they were neces- 
 sary, to insure the faithful execution of these inten- 
 tions. At the expiration of that time the estate 
 was, if the testatrix's will had been carried out in all 
 particulars, to belong to my heirs (because, as mon- 
 sieur is doubtless well aware, notaries are forbidden 
 by law to receive legacies); if otherwise, then La 
 Grande Breteche was to go to whoever might estab- 
 90
 
 La Grande Breteche 
 
 lish a right to it, but on condition of fulfilling certain 
 orders contained in a codicil annexed to the will and 
 not to be opened until the expiration of the fifty years. 
 The will has never been attacked, consequently * 
 
 "Here the oblong notary, without finishing his 
 sentence, looked at me triumphantly. I made him 
 perfectly happy with a few compliments. 
 
 " 'Monsieur,' I said, hi conclusion, 'you have so 
 deeply impressed that scene upon me that I seem to 
 see the dying woman, whiter than the sheets; those 
 glittering eyes horrify me; I shall dream of her all 
 night. But you must have formed some conjectures 
 as to the motive of that extraordinary will.' 
 
 " ' Monsieur,' he replied, with comical reserve, 'I 
 never permit myself to judge of the motives of those 
 who honour me with the gift of a diamond.' 
 
 " However, I managed to unloose the tongue of the 
 scrupulous notary so far that he told me, not without 
 long digressions, certain opinions on the matter 
 emanating from the wise-heads of both sexes whose 
 judgments made the social law of Vend6me. But 
 these opinions and observations were so contradic- 
 tory, so diffuse, that I well-nigh went to sleep in spite 
 of the interest I felt in this authentic story. The 
 heavy manner and monotonous accent of the notary, 
 who was no doubt in the habit of listening to himself 
 and making his clients and compatriots listen to 
 him, triumphed over my curiosity. Happily, he 
 did at last go away. 
 
 " 'Ha, ha! monsieur,' he said to me at the head of 
 91
 
 Masterpieces of Adventure 
 
 the stairs, 'many persons would like to live their 
 forty-five years longer, but, one moment!' here he 
 laid the forefinger of his right hand on his nose as if 
 he meant to say, Now pay attention to this! 'in 
 order to do that, to do that, they ought to skip the 
 sixties.' 
 
 "I shut my door, the notary's jest, which he 
 thought very witty, having drawn me from my 
 apathy; then I sat down in my armchair and put 
 both feet on the andirons. I was plunged in a 
 romance a la Radclifife, based on the notarial dis- 
 closures of Monsieur Regnault, when my door, 
 softly opened by the hand of a woman, turned noise- 
 lessly on its hinges. 
 
 " I saw my landlady, a jovial, stout woman, with a 
 fine, good-humoured face, who had missed her true 
 surroundings; she was from Flanders, and might 
 have stepped out of a picture by Teniers. 
 
 " 'Well, monsieur,' she said, 'Monsieur Regnault 
 has no doubt recited to you his famous tale of La 
 Grande Breteche?' 
 
 " 'Yes, Madame Lepas/ 
 
 "'What did he tell you?' 
 
 "I repeated in a few words the dark and chilling 
 story of Madame de Merret as imparted to me by 
 the notary. At each sentence my landlady ran out 
 her chin and looked at me with the perspicacity of 
 an inn-keeper, which combines the instinct of a 
 policeman, the astuteness of a spy, and the cunning 
 of a shopkeeper. 
 
 92
 
 La Grande Breteche 
 
 " 'My dear Madame Lepas,' I added, in conclu- 
 sion, 'you evidently know more than that. If not, 
 why did you come up here to me?' 
 
 " 'On the word, now, of an honest woman, just as 
 true as my name is Lepas ' 
 
 " 'Don't swear, for your eyes are full of the secret 
 You knew Monsieur de Merret. What sort of man 
 was he?' 
 
 " 'Goodness! Monsieur de Merret? well, you see, 
 he was a handsome man, so tall you never could see 
 the top of him, a very worthy gentleman from 
 Picardy, who had, as you may say, a temper of 
 his own; and he knew it. He paid everyone in 
 cash so as to have no quarrels. But, I tell you, 
 he could be quick. Our ladies thought him very 
 pleasant.' 
 
 " ' Because of his temper?* I asked. 
 
 " 'Perhaps,' she replied. *You know, monsieur, a 
 man must have something to the fore, as they say, to 
 marry a lady like Madame de Merret, who, without 
 disparaging others, was the handsomest and the rich- 
 est woman in Vend6me. She had an income of 
 nearly twenty thousand francs. All the town was 
 at the wedding. The bride was so dainty and capti- 
 vating, a real little jewel of a woman. Ah! they were 
 a fine couple in those days!' 
 
 " 'Was their home a happy one?' 
 
 " 'Hum, hum! yes and no, so far as anyone can 
 say; for you know well enough that the like of us 
 don't live hand and glove with the like of them. 
 93
 
 Masterpieces of Adventure 
 
 Madame de Merret was a good woman and very 
 charming, who no doubt had to bear a good deal 
 from her husband's temper; we all liked her though 
 she was rather haughty. Bah ! that was her bringing 
 up, and she was bom so. When people are noble 
 don't you see?' 
 
 " ' Yes, but there must have been some terrible 
 catastrophe, for Monsieur and Madame de Merret 
 to separate violently.' 
 
 " 'I never said there was a catastrophe, monsieur; 
 I know nothing about it.' 
 
 " 'Very good; now I am certain that you know 
 all.' 
 
 " 'Well, monsieur, I'll tell you all I do know. 
 When I saw Monsieur Regnault coming after you I 
 knew he would tell you about Madame de Merret 
 and La Grande Breteche; and that gave me the idea 
 of consulting monsieur, who seems to be a gentleman 
 of good sense, incapable of betraying a poor woman 
 like me, who has never done harm to anyone, but 
 who is, somehow, troubled in her conscience. I have 
 never dared to say a word to the people about here, 
 for they are all gossips, with tongues like steel blades. 
 And there's never been a traveller who has stayed as 
 long as you have, monsieur, to whom I could tell all 
 about the fifteen thousand francs 
 
 " 'My dear Madame Lepas,' I replied, trying to 
 stop the flow of words, 'if your confidence is of a 
 nature to compromise me, I wouldn't hear it for 
 worlds.' 
 
 94
 
 La Grande Breteche 
 
 " 'Oh, don't be afraid,' she said, interrupting me. 
 'You'll see' 
 
 "This haste to tell made me quite certain I was 
 not the first to whom my good landlady had com- 
 municated the secret of which I was to be the sole 
 repository, so I listened. 
 
 " 'Monsieur,' she said, 'when the Emperor sent 
 the Spanish and other prisoners of war to Venddme 
 I lodged one of them (at the cost of the government), 
 a young Spaniard on parole. But in spite of his 
 parole he had to report every day to the sub-prefect. 
 He was a grandee of Spain, with a name that ended 
 in os and in dia, like all Spaniards Bagos de Feredia. 
 I wrote his name on the register, and you can see it 
 if you like. Oh, he was a handsome young fellow 
 for a Spaniard, who, they tell me, are all ugly. He 
 wasn't more than five feet two or three inches, but 
 he was well made. He had pretty little hands which 
 he took care of ah, you should just have seen him! 
 He had as many brushes for those hands as a woman 
 has for her head. He had fine black hah-, a fiery eye, 
 a rather copper-coloured skin, but it was pleasant to 
 look at all the same. He wore the finest linen I ever 
 saw on anyone, and I have lodged princesses, and, 
 among others, General Bertrand, the Due and Duch- 
 esse d'Abrantes, Monsieur Decazes, and the King of 
 Spain. He didn't eat much; but he had such polite 
 manners and was always so amiable that I couldn't 
 find fault with him. Oh! I did really love him, 
 though he never said four words a day to me; if 
 95
 
 Masterpieces of Adventure 
 
 anyone spoke to him, he never answered, that's 
 an oddity those grandees have, a sort of mania, so 
 I'm told. He read his breviary like a priest, and he 
 went to mass and to all the services regularly. Where 
 do you think he sat? close to the chapel of Madame 
 de Merret. But as he took that place the first time 
 he went to church nobody attached any importance 
 to the fact, though it was remembered later. Be- 
 sides, he never took his eyes off his prayer-book, 
 poor young man!' 
 
 "My jovial landlady paused a moment, over- 
 come with her recollections; then she continued 
 her tale: 
 
 " 'From that time on, monsieur, he used to walk 
 up the mountain every evening to the ruins of the 
 castle. It was his only amusement, poor man! and I 
 dare say it recalled his own country; they say Spain 
 is all mountains. From the first he was always late 
 at night in coming in. I used to be uneasy at never 
 seeing him before the stroke of midnight; but we 
 got accustomed to his ways and gave him a key to 
 the door, so that we didn't have to sit up. It so 
 happened that one of our grooms told us that one 
 evening when he went to bathe his horses he thought 
 he saw the grandee in the distance, swimming hi the 
 river like a fish. When he came in I told him he had 
 better take care not to get entangled in the sedges; 
 he seemed annoyed that anyone had seen him in the 
 water. Well, monsieur, one day, or rather, one 
 morning, we did not find him in his room; he had 
 96
 
 La Grande Breteche 
 
 not come in. He never returned. I looked about 
 and into everything, and at last I found a writing in 
 a table drawer where had put away fifty of those 
 Spanish gold coins called "portugaise," which bring 
 a hundred francs apiece; there were also diamonds 
 worth ten thousand francs sealed up in a little box. 
 The paper said that in case he should not return some 
 day, he bequeathed to us the money and the dia- 
 monds, with a request to found masses of thanksgiv- 
 ing to God for his escape and safety. In those days 
 my husband was living, and he did everything he 
 could to find the young man. But, it was the queer- 
 est thing! he found only the Spaniard's clothes under 
 a big stone in a sort of shed on the banks of the river, 
 on the castle side, just opposite to La Grande 
 Breteche. My husband went so early in the morning 
 that no one saw him. He burned the clothes after 
 we had read the letter, and gave out, as Comte 
 Feredia requested, that he had fled. The sub-prefect 
 sent the whole gendarmerie on his traces, but bless 
 your heart! they never caught him. Lepas thought 
 the Spaniard had drowned himself. But, monsieur, 
 I never thought so. I think he was somehow mixed 
 up, hi Madame de Merret's trouble; and I'll tell you 
 why. Rosalie has told me that her mistress had a 
 crucifix she valued so much that she was buried with 
 it, and it was made of ebony and silver; now when 
 Monsieur de Feredia first came to lodge with us he 
 had just such a crucifix, but I soon missed it. Now, 
 monsieur, what do you say? isn't it true that I need 
 97
 
 Masterpieces of Adventure 
 
 have no remorse about those fifteen thousand francs? 
 are not they rightfully mine?' 
 
 " 'Of course they are. But how is it you have 
 never questioned Rosalie?' I said. 
 
 " 'Oh, I have, monsieur; but I can get nothing out 
 of her. That girl is a stone wall. She knows some- 
 thing, but there is no making her talk.' 
 
 "After a few more remarks, my landlady left me, 
 a prey to a romantic curiosity, to vague and darkling 
 thoughts, to a religious terror that was something 
 like the awe which comes upon us when we enter by 
 night a gloomy church and see in the distance be- 
 neath the arches a feeble light; a formless figure 
 glides before us, the sweep of a robe of priest or 
 woman is heard; we shudder. La Grande Breteche, 
 with its tall grasses, its shuttered windows, its rusty 
 railings, its barred gates, its deserted rooms, rose 
 fantastically and suddenly before me. I tried to 
 penetrate that mysterious dwelling and seek the 
 knot of this most solemn history, this drama which 
 had killed three persons. 
 
 "Rosalie became to my eyes the most interesting 
 person in Venddme. Examining her, I discovered 
 the traces of an ever-present inward thought. In 
 spite of the health which bloomed upon her dimpled 
 face, there was in her some element of remorse, or of 
 hope; her attitude bespoke a secret, like that of 
 devotees who pray with ardour, or that of a girl who 
 has killed her child and forever after hears its cry. 
 And yet her postures were naive, and even vulgar; 
 98
 
 La Grande Breteche 
 
 her silly smile was surely not criminal; you would 
 have judged her innocent if only by the large necker- 
 chief of blue and red squares which covered her 
 vigorous bust, clothed, confined, and set off by a 
 gown of purple and white stripes. 'No/ thought I; 
 'I will not leave Venddme without knowing the his- 
 tory of La Grande Breteche. I'll even make love to 
 Rosalie, if it is absolutely necessary.' 
 
 " 'Rosalie!' I said to her one day. 
 
 " 'What is it, monsieur?' 
 
 " 'You are not married, are you?' 
 
 She trembled slightly. 
 
 " 'Oh! when the fancy takes me to be unhappy 
 there'll be no lack of men,' she said, laughing. 
 
 "She recovered instantly from her emotion, what- 
 ever it was; for all women, from the great lady to 
 the chambermaid of an inn, have a self-possession of 
 their own. 
 
 " 'You are fresh enough and taking enough to 
 please a lover,' I said, watching her. 'But tell me, 
 Rosalie, why did you take a place at an inn after you 
 left Madame de Merret? Didn't she leave you an 
 annuity?' 
 
 " 'Oh, yes, she did. But, monsieur, my place is 
 the best in all Venddme.' 
 
 "This answer was evidently what judges and 
 lawyers call 'dilatory.' Rosalie's position in this 
 romantic history was like that of a square on a 
 checkerboard; she was at the very centre, as it were, 
 of its truth and its interest; she seemed to me to be 
 99
 
 Masterpieces of Adventure 
 
 tied into the knot of it. The last chapter of the tale 
 was in her, and, from the moment that 1 realized 
 this, Rosalie became to me an object of attraction. 
 By dint of studying the girl I came to find in her, as 
 we do in every woman whom we make a principal 
 object of our attention, that she had a host of good 
 qualities. She was clean, and careful of herself, 
 and therefore handsome. Some two or three weeks 
 after the notary's visit I said to her, suddenly: 
 'Tell me all you know about Madame de Merret.' 
 
 " 'Oh, no!' she replied, in a tone of terror, 'don't 
 ask me that, monsieur.' 
 
 " I persisted in urging her. Her pretty face dark- 
 ened, her bright colour faded, her eyes lost their 
 innocent, liquid light. 
 
 " 'Well!' she said, after a pause, 'if you will have 
 it so, I will tell you; but keep the secret.' 
 
 " 'I'll keep it with the faithfulness of a thief, 
 which is the most loyal to be found anywhere.' 
 
 " 'If it is the same to you, monsieur, I'd rather 
 you kept it with your own.' 
 
 "Thereupon, she adjusted her neckerchief and 
 posed herself to tell the tale; for it is very certain 
 that an attitude of confidence and security is desir- 
 able in order to make a narration. The best tales 
 are told at special hours, like that in which we are 
 now at table. No one ever told a story well, stand- 
 ing or fasting. 
 
 "If I were to reproduce faithfully poor Rosalie's 
 diffuse eloquence, a whole volume would scarce 
 100
 
 La Grande Breteche 
 
 suffice. But as the event of which she now gave me 
 a hazy knowledge falls into place between the facts 
 revealed by the garrulity of the notary, and that of 
 Madame Lepas, as precisely as the mean terms of an 
 arithmetical proposition lie between its two ex- 
 tremes, all I have to do is to tell it to you in few 
 words. I therefore give a summary of what I 
 heard from Rosalie. 
 
 "The chamber which Madame de Merret occupied 
 at La Grande Breteche was on the ground-floor. A 
 small closet about four feet in depth was made in the 
 wall, and served as a wardrobe. Three months 
 before the evening when the facts I am about to 
 relate to you happened, Madame de Merret had 
 been so seriously unwell that her husband left her 
 alone in her room and slept himself in a chamber on 
 the first floor. By one of those mere chances which 
 it is impossible to foresee, he returned, on the even- 
 ing in question, two hours later than usual from the 
 club where he went habitually to read the papers 
 and talk politics with the inhabitants of the town. 
 His wife thought him at home and in bed and asleep. 
 But the invasion of France had been the subject of a 
 lively discussion; the game of billiards was a heated 
 one; he had lost forty francs, an enormous sum 
 for Vendome, where everybody hoards his money, 
 and where manners and customs are restrained 
 within modest limits worthy of all praise, which 
 may, perhaps, be the source of a certain true happi- 
 ness which no Parisian cares anything at all about. 
 101
 
 Masterpieces of Adventure 
 
 "For some time past Monsieur de Merret had 
 been in the habit of asking Rosalie, when he came 
 in, if his wife were in bed. Being told, invariably, 
 that she was, he at once went to his own room with 
 the contentment that comes of confidence and 
 custom. This evening, on returning home, he took 
 it into his head to go to Madame de Merret's 
 room and tell her his ill-luck, perhaps to be con- 
 soled for it. During dinner he had noticed 
 that his wife was coquettishly dressed; and as 
 he came from the club the thought crossed his 
 mind that she was no longer ill, that her conval- 
 escence had made her lovelier than ever, a fact 
 he perceived, as husbands are wont to perceive 
 things, too late. 
 
 "Instead of calling Rosalie, who at that moment 
 was hi the kitchen watching a corrplicated game of 
 'brisque,' at which the cook and the coachman were 
 playing, Monsieur de Merret went straight to his 
 wife's room by the light of his lantern, which he had 
 placed on the first step of the stairway. His step, 
 which was easily recognized, resounded under the 
 arches of the corridor. Just as he turned the handle 
 of his wife's door he fancied he heard the door of 
 the closet, which I mentioned to you, shut; but when 
 he entered, Madame de Merret was alone, standing 
 before the fireplace. The husband thought to 
 himself that Rosalie must be in the closet; and yet a 
 suspicion, which sounded in his ears like the ringing 
 of bells, made him distrustful. He looked at his 
 102
 
 La Grande Breteche 
 
 wife, and fancied he saw something wild and troubled 
 in her eyes. 
 
 ' 'You are late in coming home,' she said. That 
 voice, usually so pure and gracious, seemed to him 
 slightly changed. 
 
 "Monsieur de Merret made no answer, for at that 
 moment Rosalie entered the room. Her appearance 
 was a thunderbolt to him. He walked up and down 
 the room with his arms crossed, going from one 
 window to another with a uniform movement. 
 
 "'Have you heard anything to trouble you?' 
 asked his wife, timidly, while Rosalie was undressing 
 her. He made no answer. 
 
 "'You can leave the room,' said Madame de 
 Merret to the maid. 'I will arrange my hair my- 
 self.' 
 
 "She guessed some misfortune at the mere sight of 
 her husband's face, and wished to be alone with him. 
 
 "When Rosalie was gone, or supposed to be gone, 
 for she went no further than the corridor, Monsieur 
 de Merret came to his wife and stood before her. 
 Then he said, coldly: 
 
 " ' Madame, there is someone in your closet.' 
 
 "She looked at her husband with a calm air, and 
 answered, 'No, monsieur.' 
 
 "That 'no' agonised Monsieur de Merret, for he 
 did not believe it. And yet his wife had never 
 seemed purer nor more saintly than she did at that 
 moment. He rose and went toward the closet to 
 open the door; Madame de Merret took him by the 
 103
 
 Masterpieces of Adventure 
 
 hand and stopped him; she looked at him with a sad 
 air and said, in a voice that was strangely shaken: 
 'If you find no one, remember that all is over be- 
 tween us.' 
 
 "The infinite dignity of his wife's demeanour 
 restored her husband's respect for her, and suddenly 
 inspired him with one of those resolutions which 
 need some wider field to become immortal. 
 
 " 'No, Josephine,' he said, 'I will not look there. 
 In either case we should be separated forever. 
 Listen to me: I know the purity of your soul, I 
 know that you lead a saintly life; you would not 
 commit a mortal sin to save yourself from 
 death.' 
 
 "At these words, Madame de Merret looked at 
 her husband with a haggard eye. 
 
 " 'Here is your crucifix,' he went on. 'Swear to 
 me before God that there is no one in that closet and 
 I will believe you; I will not open that door.' 
 
 "Madame de Merret took the crucifix and said, 
 'I swear it.' 
 
 " 'Louder!' said her husband; 'repeat after me, 
 I swear before God that there is no person in that 
 closet.' 
 
 "She repeated the words composedly. 
 
 " 'That is well,' said Monsieur de Merret, coldly. 
 After a moment's silence he added, examining the 
 ebony crucifix inlaid with silver, 'That is a beautiful 
 thing; I did not know you possessed it; it is very 
 artistically wrought.' 
 
 ;104
 
 La Grande Breteche 
 
 " 'I found it at Duvivier's,' she replied; 'he bought 
 it of a Spanish monk when those prisoners-of-war 
 passed through Vend6me last year.' 
 
 "'Ah!' said Monsieur de Merret, replacing the 
 crucifix on the wall. He rang the bell. Rosalie was 
 not long in answering it. Monsieur de Merret went 
 quickly up to her, took her into the recess of a 
 window on the garden side, and said to her in a low 
 voice: 
 
 " 'I am told that Gorenflot wants to marry you, 
 and that poverty alone prevents it, for you have told 
 him you will not be his wife until he is a master- 
 mason. Is that so?' 
 
 " 'Yes, monsieur.' 
 
 " 'Well, go and find him; tell him to come here at 
 once and bring his trowel and other tools. Take 
 care not to wake anyone at his house but himself; 
 he will soon have enough money to satisfy you. No 
 talking to anyone when you leave this room, mind, 
 or' 
 
 "He frowned. Rosalie left the room. He called 
 her back; 'Here, take my pass-key,' he said. 
 
 "Monsieur de Merret, who had kept his wife in 
 view while giving these orders, now sat down beside 
 her before the fire and began to tell her of his game of 
 billiards, and the political discussions at the club. 
 When Rosalie returned she found Monsieur and 
 Madame de Merret talking amicably. 
 
 "The master had lately had the ceilings of all the 
 reception rooms on the lower floor restored. Plaster 
 105
 
 Masterpieces of Adventure 
 
 is very scarce at Venddme, and the carriage of it 
 makes it expensive. Monsieur de Merret had there- 
 fore ordered an ample quantity for his own wants, 
 knowing that he could readily find buyers for what 
 was left. This circumstance inspired the idea that 
 now possessed him. 
 
 " 'Monsieur, Gorenflot has come,' said Rosalie. 
 
 " 'Bring him in,' said her master. 
 
 "Madame de Merret turned slightly pale when she 
 saw the mason. 
 
 "'Gorenflot,' said her husband, 'fetch some 
 bricks from the coach-house, enough to wall up 
 that door; use the plaster that was left over to 
 cover the wall.' 
 
 "Then he called Rosalie and the mason to the end 
 of the room, and, speaking in a low voice, added, 
 'Listen to me, Gorenflot; after you have done this 
 work you will sleep in the house; and to-morrow 
 morning I will give you a passport into a foreign 
 country, and six thousand francs for the journey. 
 Go through Paris where I will meet you. There, I 
 will secure to you legally another six thousand 
 francs, to be paid to you at the end of ten years if 
 you still remain out of France. For this sum, I 
 demand absolute silence on what you see and do 
 this night. As for you, Rosalie, I give you a dowry 
 of ten thousand francs, on condition that you marry 
 Gorenflot, and keep silence, if not ' 
 
 "'Rosalie,' said Madame de Merret, 'come and 
 brush my hair.' 
 
 106
 
 La Grande Breteche 
 
 "The husband walked up and down the room, 
 watching the door, the mason, and his wife, but 
 without allowing the least distrust or misgiving to 
 appear in his manner. Gorenflot's work made some 
 noise; under cover of it Madame de Merret said 
 hastily to Rosalie, while her husband was at the 
 farther end of the room: 'A thousand francs 
 annuity if you tell Gorenflot to leave a crevice at the 
 bottom;' then aloud she added, composedly, 'Go 
 and help the mason.' 
 
 "Monsieur and Madame de Merret remained 
 silent during the whole time it took Gorenflot to 
 wall up the door. The silence was intentional on 
 the part of the husband to deprive his wife of all 
 chance of saying words with a double meaning which 
 might be heard within the closet; with Madame de 
 Merret it was either prudence or pride. 
 
 "When the wall was more than half up, the 
 mason's tool broke one of the panes of glass in the 
 closet door; Monsieur de Merret's back was at that 
 moment turned away. The action proved to 
 Madame de Merret that Rosalie had spoken to the 
 mason. In that one instant she saw the dark face 
 of a man with black hair and fiery eyes. Before 
 her husband turned the poor creature had time to 
 make a sign with her head which meant ' Hope.' 
 
 "By four o'clock, just at dawn, for it was in the 
 month of September, the work was done. Monsieur 
 de Merret remained that night in his wife's room. 
 The next morning, on rising, he^said, carelessly: 
 
 107 
 
 ft
 
 Masterpieces of Adventure 
 
 'Ah! I forgot, I must go to the mayor's office about 
 that passport.' 
 
 " He put on his hat, made three steps to the door, 
 then checked himself, turned back, and took the 
 crucifix. 
 
 "His wife trembled with joy; 'He will go to Duvi- 
 vier's,' she thought. 
 
 "The moment her husband had left the house she 
 rang for Rosalie. 'The pick-axe!' she cried, 'the 
 pick-axe! I watched how Gorenflot did it; we shall 
 have time to make a hole and close it again.' 
 
 "In an instant Rosalie had brought a sort of 
 cleaver, and her mistress, with a fury no words can 
 describe, began to demolish the wall. She had 
 knocked away a few bricks, and was drawing back 
 to strike a still more vigorous blow with all her 
 strength, when she saw her husband behind her. 
 She fainted. 
 
 " 'Put madame on her bed,' said her husband, 
 coldly. 
 
 " Foreseeing what would happen, he had laid this 
 trap for his wife; he had written to the mayor, and 
 sent for Duvivier. The jeweller arrived just as the 
 room had been again put in order. 
 
 "'Duvivier,' said Monsieur de Merret, 'I think 
 you bought some crucifixes of those Spaniards who 
 were here last year? ' 
 
 " ' No, monsieur, I did not/ 
 
 " 'Very good; thank you,' he said, with a tigerish 
 glance at his wife. ' Jean, ' he added to the f ootmaiv 
 
 108
 
 La Grande Breteche 
 
 'serve my meals in Madame de Merret's bedroom; 
 she is very ill, and I shall not leave her till she 
 recovers.' 
 
 "For twenty days that man remained beside his 
 wife. During the first hours, when sounds were 
 heard behind the walled door, and Josephine tried 
 to implore mercy for the dying stranger, he an- 
 swered, without allowing her to utter a word: 
 
 " 'You swore upon the cross that no one was 
 there.'" 
 
 As the tale ended the women rose from table, and 
 the spell under which Bianchon had held them was 
 broken. Nevertheless, several of them were con- 
 scious of a cold chill as they recalled the last words. 
 
 109
 
 VI 
 
 THE MASQUE OF THE RED DEATH 
 EDGAR ALLAN POE 
 
 THE "Red Death" had long devastated the 
 country. No pestilence had ever been so 
 fatal, or so hideous. Blood was its Avatar 
 and its seal the redness and the horror of blood. 
 There were sharp pains, and sudden dizziness, and 
 then profuse bleeding at the pores, with dissolution. 
 The scarlet stains upon the body, and especially upon 
 the face of the victim, were the pest ban which shut 
 him out from the aid and from the sympathy of his 
 fellow-men. And the whole seizure, progress, and 
 termination of the disease were the incidents of half- 
 an-hour. 
 
 But the Prince Prospero was happy and dauntless 
 and sagacious. When his dominions were half 
 depopulated, he summoned to his presence a thou- 
 sand hale and light-hearted friends from among the 
 knights and dames of his court, and with these 
 retired to the deep seclusion of one of his castellated 
 abbeys. This was an extensive and magnificent 
 structure, the creation of the prince's own eccentric 
 yet august taste. A strong and lofty wall girdled it 
 110
 
 The Masque of the Red Death 
 
 in. This wall had gates of iron. The courtiers, 
 having entered, brought furnaces and massy ham- 
 mers and welded the bolts. They resolved to leave 
 means neither of ingress or egress to the sudden im- 
 pulses of despair or of frenzy from within. The 
 abbey was amply provisioned. With such precau- 
 tions the courtiers might bid defiance to contagion. 
 The external world could take care of itself. In the 
 meantime it was folly to grieve, or to think. The 
 prince had provided all the appliances of pleasure. 
 There were buffoons, there were improvisatori, there 
 were ballet-dancers, there were musicians, there was 
 beauty, there was wine. All these and security were 
 within. Without was the "Red Death." 
 
 It was toward the close of the fifth or sixth montk 
 of his seclusion, and while the pestilence raged most 
 furiously abroad, that the Prince Prospero enter- 
 tained his thousand friends at a masked ball of the 
 most unusual magnificence. 
 
 It was a voluptuous scene, that masquerade. But 
 first let me tell of the rooms in which it was held. 
 There were seven an imperial suite. In many 
 palaces, however, such suites form a long and straight 
 vista, while the folding doors slide back nearly to 
 the walls on either hand, so that the view of the 
 whole extent is scarcely impeded. Here the case was 
 very different, as might have been expected from the 
 duke's love of the bizarre. The apartments were so 
 irregularly disposed that the vision embraced but 
 little more than one at a time. There was a sharp 
 111
 
 Masterpieces of Adventure 
 
 turn at every twenty or thirty yards, and at each 
 turn a novel effect. To the right and left, in the 
 middle of each wall, a tall and narrow Gothic window 
 looked out upon a closed corridor which pursued the 
 windings of the suite. These windows were of 
 stained glass, whose colour varied in accordance 
 with the prevailing hue of the decorations of the 
 chamber into which it opened. That at the eastern 
 extremity was hung, for example, in blue and 
 vividly blue were its windows. The second chamber 
 was purple in its ornaments and tapestries, and here 
 the panes were purple. The third was green through- 
 out, and so were the casements. The fourth was 
 furnished and lighted with orange the fifth with 
 white the sixth with violet. The seventh apart- 
 ment was closely shrouded in black velvet tapestries 
 that hung all over the ceiling and down the walls, 
 falling in heavy folds upon a carpet of the same 
 material and hue. But in this chamber only the 
 colour of the windows failed to correspond with the 
 decorations. The panes here were scarlet a deep 
 blood colour. Now in no one of the seven apart- 
 ments was there any lamp or candelabrum, amid the 
 profusion of golden ornaments that lay scattered to 
 and fro, or depended from the roof. There was no 
 light of any kind emanating from lamp or candle 
 within the suite of chambers. But in the corridors 
 that followed the suite, there stood, opposite to 
 each window, a heavy tripod, bearing a brazier of 
 fire, that projected its rays through the tinted glass, 
 112
 
 The Masque of the Red Death 
 
 and so glaringly illumined the room. And thus were 
 produced a multitude of gaudy and fantastic appear- 
 ances. But in the western or black chamber the 
 effect of the firelight that streamed upon the dark 
 hangings through the blood-tinted panes, was 
 ghastly hi the extreme, and produced so wild a look 
 upon the countenances of those who entered, that 
 there were few of the company bold enough to set 
 foot within its precincts at all. 
 
 It was in this apartment, also, that there stood 
 against the western wall a gigantic clock of ebony. 
 Its pendulum swung to and fro with a dull, heavy, 
 monotonous clang; and when the minute-hand made 
 the circuit of the face, and the hour was to be strick- 
 en, there came from the brazen lungs of the clock a 
 sound which was clear and loud and deep and ex- 
 ceedingly musical; but of so peculiar a note and 
 emphasis that, at each lapse of an hour, the musi- 
 cians of the orchestra were constrained to pause, 
 momentarily, in their performance, to hearken to 
 the sound; and thus the waltzers perforce ceased 
 their evolutions; and there was a brief disconcert of 
 the whole gay company; and, while the chimes of 
 the clock yet rang, it was observed that the giddiest 
 grew pale, and the more aged and sedate passed their 
 hands over their brows as if in confused reverie or 
 meditation. But when the echoes had fully ceased, 
 a light laughter at once pervaded the assembly; the 
 musicians looked at each other and smiled as if at 
 their own nervousness and folly, and made whisper- 
 113
 
 Masterpieces of Adventure 
 
 ing vows, each to the other, that the next chiming of 
 the clock should produce in them no similar emotion; 
 and then, after the lapse of sixty minutes (which 
 embrace three thousand and six hundred seconds of 
 the Time that flies), there came yet another chiming 
 of the clock, and then were the same disconcert and 
 tremulousness and meditation as before. 
 
 But, hi spite of these things, it was a gay and 
 magnificent revel. The tastes of the duke were 
 peculiar. He had a fine eye for colours and effects. 
 He disregarded the decora of mere fashion. His plans 
 were bold and fiery, and his conceptions glowed with 
 barbaric lustre. There are some who would have 
 thought him mad. His followers felt that he was not. 
 It was necessary to hear and see and touch him to be 
 sure that he was not. 
 
 He had directed, hi great part, the movable em- 
 bellishments of the seven chambers, upon occasion 
 of this great fete; and it was his own guiding taste 
 which had given character to the masqueraders. Be 
 sure they were grotesque. There were much glare 
 and glitter and piquancy and phantasm much of 
 what has been since seen in "Hernani." There were 
 arabesque figures with unsuited limbs and appoint- 
 ments. There were delirious fancies as the madman 
 fashions. There were much of the beautiful, much 
 of the wanton, much of the bizarre, something of the 
 terrible, and not a little of that which might have 
 excited disgust. To and fro in the seven chambers 
 there stalked, in fact, a multitude of dreams. And 
 114
 
 The Masque of the Red Death 
 
 these the dreams writhed in and about, taking 
 hue from the rooms, and causing the wild music of 
 the orchestra to seem as the echo of their steps. And, 
 anon, there strikes the ebony clock which stands in 
 the hall of the velvet. And then, for a moment, all 
 is still, and all is silent save the voice of the clock. 
 The dreams are stiff-frozen as they stand. But the 
 echoes of the chime die away they have endured 
 but an instant and a light, half-subdued laughter 
 floats after them as they depart. And now again 
 the music swells, and the dreams live, and writhe to 
 and fro more merrily than ever, taking hue from the 
 many tinted windows through which stream the rays 
 from the tripods. But to the chamber which lies 
 most westwardly of the seven, there are now none of 
 the maskers who venture; for the night is waning 
 away; and there flows a ruddier light through the 
 blood-coloured panes; and the blackness of the sable 
 drapery appals; and to him whose foot falls upon the 
 sable carpet, there comes from the near clock of 
 ebony a muffled peal more solemnly emphatic than 
 any which reaches their ears who indulge in the more 
 remote gaieties of the other apartments. 
 
 But these other apartments were densely crowded, 
 and in them beat feverishly the heart of life. And 
 the revel went whirlingly on, until at length there 
 commenced the sounding of midnight upon the 
 clock. And then the music ceased, as I have told; 
 and the evolutions of the waltzers were quieted; and 
 there was an uneasy cessation of all things as before. 
 115
 
 Masterpieces of Adventure 
 
 But now there were twelve strokes to be sounded by 
 the bell of the clock; and thus it happened, perhaps, 
 that more of thought crept, with more of time, into 
 the meditations of the thoughtful among those who 
 revelled. And thus, too, it happened, perhaps, that 
 before the last echoes of the last chime had utterly 
 sunk into silence, there were many individuals in the 
 crowd who had found leisure to become aware of the 
 presence of a masked figure which had arrested the 
 attention of no single individual before. And the 
 rumour of this new presence having spread itself 
 whisperingly around, there arose at length from the 
 whole company a buzz, or murmur, expressive of dis- 
 approbation and surprise then, finally, of terror, of 
 horror, and of disgust. 
 
 In an assembly of phantasms, such as I have 
 painted, it may well be supposed that no ordinary 
 appearance could have excited such sensation. In 
 truth the masquerade license of the night was nearly 
 unlimited; but the figure in question had out-Herod- 
 ed Herod, and gone beyond the bounds of even the 
 prince's indefinite decorum. There are chords in the 
 hearts of the most reckless which cannot be touched 
 without emotion. Even with the utterly lost, to 
 whom life and death are equally jests, there are 
 matters of which no jests can be made. The whole 
 company, indeed, seemed now deeply to feel that in 
 the costume and bearing of the stranger neither wit 
 nor propriety existed. The figure was tall and gaunt, 
 and shrouded from head to foot in the habiliments of 
 116
 
 The Masque of the Red Death 
 
 the grave. The mask which concealed the visage 
 was made so nearly to resemble the countenance of 
 a stiffened corpse that the closest scrutiny must have 
 had difficulty in detecting the cheat. And yet all 
 this might have been endured, if not approved, by 
 the mad revellers around. But the mummer had 
 gone so far as to assume the type of the Red Death. 
 His vesture was dabbled in blood and his broad 
 brow, with all the features of the face, was besprink- 
 led with the scarlet horror. 
 
 When the eyes of Prince Prospero fell upon this 
 spectral image (which with a slow and solemn move- 
 ment, as if more fully to sustain its rdle, stalked to 
 and from among the waltzers), he was seen to be con- 
 vulsed, in the first moment, with a strong shudder 
 either of terror or distaste; but, in the next, his brow 
 reddened with rage. 
 
 "Who dares?" he demanded hoarsely of the cour- 
 tiers who stood near him " who dares insult us with 
 this blasphemous mockery? Seize him and unmask 
 him that we may know whom we have to hang at 
 sunrise from the battlements!" 
 
 It was hi the eastern or blue chamber in which 
 stood the Prince Prospero as he uttered these words. 
 They rang throughout the seven rooms loudly and 
 clearly for the prince was a bold and robust man, 
 and the music had become hushed at the waving of 
 his hand. 
 
 It was in the blue room where stood the prince 
 with a group of pale courtiers by his side. At first, 
 117
 
 Masterpieces of Adventure 
 
 as he spoke, there was a slight rushing movement of 
 this group in the direction of the intruder, who, at 
 the moment, was also near at hand, and now, with 
 deliberate and stately step, made closer approach to 
 the speaker. But from a certain nameless awe with 
 which the mad assumptions of the mummer had in- 
 spired the whole party, there were found none who 
 put forth hand to seize him; so that, unimpeded, he 
 passed within a yard of the prince's person; and 
 while the vast assembly, as if with one impulse, 
 shrank from the centres of the rooms to the walls, he 
 made his way uninterruptedly, but with the same 
 solemn and measured step which had distinguished 
 him from the first, through the blue chamber to the 
 purple through the purple to the green through 
 the green to the orange through this again to the 
 white and even thence to the violet, ere a decided 
 movement had been made to arrest him. It was 
 then, however, that the Prince Prospero, maddened 
 with rage and the shame of his own momentary 
 cowardice, rushed hurriedly through the six cham- 
 bers, while none followed him on account of a deadly 
 terror that had seized upon all. He bore aloft a 
 drawn dagger, and had approached, in rapid im- 
 petuosity, to within three or four feet of the retreat- 
 ing figure, when the latter, having attained the 
 extremity of the velvet apartment, turned suddenly 
 and confronted his pursuer. There was a sharp cry 
 and the dagger dropped gleaming upon the sable 
 carpet, upon which, instantly afterward, fell pros- 
 118
 
 The Masque of the Red Death 
 
 trate in death the Prince Prospero. Then, summon- 
 ing the wild courage of despair, a throng of the 
 revellers at once threw themselves into the black 
 apartment, and, seizing the mummer, whose tall 
 figure stood erect and motionless within the shadow 
 of the ebony clock, gasped in unutterable horror at 
 finding the grave cerements and corpse-like mask 
 which they handled with so violent a rudeness, un- 
 tenanted by any tangible form. 
 
 And now was acknowledged the presence of the 
 Red Death. He had come like a thief in the night. 
 And one by one dropped the revellers in the blood- 
 bedewed halls of their revel, and died each in the 
 despairing posture of his fall. And the life of the 
 ebony clock went out with that of the last of the gay. 
 And the flames of the tripods expired. And Dark- 
 ness and Decay and the Red Death held illimitable 
 dominion over alL 
 
 119
 
 vn 
 
 DR. MANETTE'S MANUSCRIPT 
 CHARLES DICKENS 
 
 "T ALEXANDRE MANETTE, unfortunate 
 physician, native of Beauvais, and afterward 
 9 resident in Paris, write this melancholy paper 
 in my doleful cell in the Bastille, during the last 
 month of the year, 1767. I write it at stolen in- 
 tervals, under every difficulty. I design to secrete 
 it in the wall of the chimney, where I have slowly 
 and laboriously made a place of concealment for it. 
 Some pitying hand may find it there, when I and my 
 sorrows are dust. 
 
 "These words are formed by the rusty iron point 
 with which I write with difficulty in scrapings of 
 soot and charcoal from the chimney, mixed with 
 blood, in the last month of the tenth year of my 
 captivity. Hope has quite departed from my 
 breast. I know from terrible warnings I have noted 
 in myself that my reason will not long remain un- 
 impaired, but I solemnly declare that I am at this 
 time in the possession of my right mind that my 
 memory is exact and circumstantial and that I 
 
 120
 
 Dr. Manette's Manuscript 
 
 write the truth as I shall answer for these my last 
 recorded words, whether they be ever read by men 
 or not, at the Eternal Judgment-seat. 
 
 "One cloudy moonlight night, in the third week of 
 December (I think the twenty-second of the month) 
 in the year 1757, I was walking on a retired part of 
 the quay by the Seine for the refreshment of the 
 frosty air, at an hour's distance from my place of 
 residence in the Street of the School of Medicine, 
 when a carriage came along behind me, driven very 
 fast. As I stood aside to let that carriage pass, 
 apprehensive that it might otherwise run me down, a 
 head was put out at the window, and a voice called 
 to the driver to stop. 
 
 "The carriage stopped as soon as the driver could 
 rein in his horses, and the same voice called to me 
 by my name. I answered. The carriage was then 
 so far in advance of me that two gentlemen had time 
 to open the door and alight before I came up with it. 
 I observed that they were both wrapped hi cloaks, 
 and appeared to conceal themselves. As they stood 
 side by side near the carriage door, I also observed 
 that they both looked of about my own age, or 
 rather younger, and that they were greatly alike, in 
 stature, manner, voice, and (as far as I could see) 
 ace too. 
 
 " 'You are Doctor Manette?' said one. 
 
 " 'lam.' 
 
 " 'Doctor Manette, formerly of Beauvais,' said 
 the other; 'the young physician, originally an expert 
 121
 
 Masterpieces of Adventure 
 
 surgeon, who within the last year or two has made a 
 rising reputation in Paris? ' 
 
 " 'Gentlemen,' I returned, 'I am that Doctor 
 Manette of whom you speak so graciously.' 
 
 " 'We have been to your residence,' said the first, 
 'and not being so fortunate as to find you there, and 
 being informed that you were probably walking in 
 this direction, we followed, in the hope of over- 
 taking you. Will you please to enter the carriage?' 
 
 "The manner of both was imperious, and they 
 both moved, as these words were spoken, so as to 
 place me between themselves and the carriage door. 
 They were armed. I was not. 
 
 " 'Gentlemen,' said I, 'pardon me; but I usually 
 inquire who does me the honour to seek my assist- 
 ance, and what is the nature of the case to which I 
 am summoned.' 
 
 "The reply to this was made by him who had 
 spoken second. 'Doctor, your clients are people 
 of condition. As to the nature of the case, our 
 confidence hi your skill assures us that you will 
 ascertain it for yourself better than we can describe 
 it. Enough. Will you please to enter the carriage?' 
 
 "I could do nothing but comply, and I entered 
 it in silence. They both entered after me the last 
 springing in, after putting up the steps. The carri- 
 age turned about, and drove on at its former speed. 
 
 "I repeat this conversation exactly as it occurred. 
 I have no doubt that it is, word for word, the same. I 
 describe everything exactly as it took place, con- 
 122
 
 Dr. Manette's Manuscript 
 
 straining my mind not to wander from the task. 
 Where I make the broken marks that follow here, I 
 leave off for the time, and put my paper in its hiding- 
 place. * * * * 
 
 "The carriage left the streets behind, passed the 
 North Barrier, and emerged upon the country road. 
 At two-thirds of a league from the Barrier I did 
 not estimate the distance at that time, but after- 
 ward when I traversed it it struck out of the main 
 avenue, and presently stopped at a solitary house. 
 We all three alighted, and walked, by a damp soft 
 footpath in a garden where a neglected fountain had 
 overflowed, to the door of the house. It was not 
 opened immediately, in answer to the ringing of the 
 bell, and one of my two conductors struck the man 
 who opened it, with his heavy riding glove, across 
 the face. 
 
 "There was nothing in this action to attract my 
 particular attention, for I had seen common people 
 struck more commonly than dogs. But, the other 
 of the two, being angry likewise, struck the man in 
 like manner with his arm; the look and bearing of 
 the brothers were then so exactly alike, that I then 
 first perceived them to be twin brothers. 
 
 " From the tune of our alighting at the outer gate 
 (which we found locked, and which one of the 
 brothers had opened to admit us, and had relocked), 
 I had heard cries proceeding from an upper chamber. 
 I was conducted to this chamber straight, the cries 
 growing louder as we ascended the stairs, and I 
 123
 
 Masterpieces of Adventure 
 
 found a patient in a high fever of the brain, lying 
 on a bed. 
 
 "The patient was a woman of great beauty, and 
 young; assuredly not much past twenty. Her hair 
 was torn and ragged, and her arms were bound to her 
 sides with sashes and handkerchiefs. I noticed 
 that these bonds were all portions of a gentleman's 
 dress. On one of them, which was a fringed scarf 
 for a dress of ceremony, I saw the armorial bearings 
 of a Noble, and the letter E. 
 
 "I saw this, within the first minute of my con- 
 templation of the patient; for, in her restless striv- 
 ings she had turned over on her face on the edge of 
 the bed, had drawn the end of the scarf into her 
 mouth, and was in danger of suffocation. My first 
 act was to put out my hand to relieve her breathing; 
 and in moving the scarf aside, the embroidery in the 
 corner caught my sight. 
 
 "I turned her gently over, placed my hands upon 
 her breast to calm her and keep her down, and 
 looked into her face. Her eyes were dilated and 
 wild, and she constantly uttered piercing shrieks, 
 and repeated the words, 'My husband, my father, 
 and my brother!' and then counted up to twelve, 
 and said, 'Hush!' For an instant, and no more, 
 she would pause to listen, and then the piercing 
 shrieks would begin again, and she would repeat the 
 cry, 'My husband, my father, and my brother!' and 
 would count up to twelve, and say, 'Hush!' There 
 was no variation in the order, or the manner. There 
 124
 
 Dr. Manette's Manuscript 
 
 was no cessation, but the regular moment's pause 
 in the utterance of these sounds. 
 
 " 'How long,' I asked, 'has this lasted?' 
 
 "To distinguish the brothers, I will call them the 
 elder and the younger; by the elder, I mean him 
 who exercised the most authority. It was the elder 
 who replied, ' Since about this hour last night.' 
 
 " ' She has a husband, a father, and a brother? ' 
 
 "'A brother.' 
 
 " 'I do not address her brother?' 
 
 "He answered with great contempt, 'No.' 
 
 " ' She has some recent association with the number 
 twelve? ' 
 
 "The younger brother impatiently rejoined, 
 'With twelve o'clock.' 
 
 " 'See, gentlemen,' said I, still keeping my hands 
 upon her breast, 'how useless I am, as you have 
 brought me! If I had known what I was coming to 
 see, I could have come provided. As it is, time 
 must be lost. There are no medicines to be obtained 
 in this lonely place.' 
 
 "The elder brother looked to the younger, who 
 said haughtily, 'There is a case of medicines here;' 
 and brought it from a closet, and put it on the 
 table. * * * * 
 
 "I opened some of the bottles, smelt them, and 
 put the stoppers to my lips. If I had wanted to use 
 anything save narcotic medicines that were poisons 
 in themselves, I would not have administered any 
 of those. 
 
 125
 
 Masterpieces of Adventure 
 
 "Do you doubt them?' asked the younger 
 brother. 
 
 " 'You see, monsieur, I am going to use them,' I 
 replied, and said no more. 
 
 " I made the patient swallow, with great difficulty, 
 and after many efforts, the dose that I desired to 
 give. As I intended tc repeat it after a while, and 
 as it was necessary to watch its influence, I then sat 
 down by the side of the bed. There was a timid and 
 suppressed woman in attendance (wife of the man 
 downstairs), who had retreated into a comer. 
 The house was damp and decayed, indifferently 
 furnished evidently, recently occupied and tempo- 
 rarily used. Some thick old hangings had been 
 nailed up before the windows, to deaden the sound 
 of the shrieks. They continued to be uttered in their 
 regular succession, with the cry, 'My husband, my 
 father, and my brother!' the counting up to twelve, 
 and 'Hush!' The frenzy was so violent, that I had 
 not unfastened the bandages restraining the arms; 
 but, I had looked to them, to see that they were not 
 painful. The only spark of encouragement in the 
 case, was, that my hand upon the sufferer's breast 
 had this much soothing influence, that for minutes 
 at a time it tranquillised the figure. It had no effect 
 upon the cries; no pendulum could be more regular. 
 
 "For the reason that my hand had this effect 
 (I assume), I had sat by the side of the bed for hah* 
 an hour, with the two brothers looking on, before 
 the elder said: 
 
 126
 
 Dr. Manette's Manuscript 
 
 " 'There is another patient.' 
 
 "I was startled, and asked, 'Is it a pressing case?' 
 
 '"You had better see,' he carelessly answered; 
 and took up a light. * * * * 
 
 "The other patient lay hi a back room across a 
 second staircase, which was a species of loft over a 
 stable. There was a low plastered ceiling to a part 
 of it; the rest was open, to the ridge of the tiled roof, 
 and there were beams across. Hay and straw were 
 stored in that portion of the place, fagots for firing, 
 and a heap of apples in sand. I had to pass through 
 that part to get at the other. My memory is 
 circumstantial and unshaken. I try it with these 
 details, and I see them all, in this my cell in the 
 Bastille, near the close of the tenth year of my 
 captivity, as I saw them all that night. 
 
 " On some hay on the ground, with a cushion thrown 
 under his head, lay a handsome peasant boy a boy 
 of not more than seventeen at the most. He lay on 
 his back, with his teeth set, his right hand clenched 
 on his breast, and his glaring eyes looking straight 
 upward. I could not see where his wound was, as I 
 kneeled on one knee over him; but, I could see that 
 he was dying of a wound from a sharp point. 
 
 '"I am a doctor, my poor fellow,' said I. 'Let me 
 examine it.' 
 
 " 'I do not want it examined,' he answered; 'let 
 it be.' 
 
 "It was under his hand, and I soothed him to let 
 me move his hand away. The wound was a sword- 
 127
 
 Masterpieces of Adventure 
 
 thrust, received from twenty to twenty-four hours 
 before, but no skill could have saved him if it had 
 been looked to without delay. He was then dying 
 fast. As I turned my eyes to the elder brother, I saw 
 him looking down at this handsome boy whose life was 
 ebbing out, as if he were a wounded bird, or hare, or 
 rabbit; not at all as if he were a fellow-creature. 
 
 " 'How has this been done, monsieur?' said I. 
 
 " 'A crazed young common dog! A serf ! Forced 
 my brother to draw upon him, and has fallen by my 
 brother's sword like a gentleman.' 
 
 "There was no touch of pity, sorrow, or kindred 
 humanity in this answer. The speaker seemed to 
 acknowledge that it was inconvenient to have that 
 different order of creature dying there, and that it 
 would have been better if he had died in the usual 
 obscure routine of his vermin kind. He was quite 
 incapable of any compassionate feeling about the 
 boy, or about his fate. 
 
 "The boy's eyes had slowly moved to him as he 
 had spoken, and they now slowly moved to me. 
 
 " 'Doctor, they are very proud, these Nobles; 
 but we common dogs are proud too, sometimes. 
 They plunder us, outrage us, beat us, kill us; but 
 we have a little pride left, sometimes. She have 
 you seen her, Doctor?' 
 
 "The shrieks and the cries were audible there, 
 though subdued by the distance. He referred to 
 them, as if she were lying in our presence. 
 
 "I said, 'I have seen her.' 
 128
 
 Dr. Marietta's Manuscript 
 
 " ' She is my sister, Doctor. They have had their 
 shameful rights, these Nobles, in the modesty and 
 virtue of our sisters, many years, but we have had 
 good girls among us. I know it, and have heard my 
 father say so. She was a good girl. She was be- 
 trothed to a good young man, too: a tenant of his. 
 We were all tenants of his that man's who stands 
 there. The other is his brother, the worst of a bad 
 race.' 
 
 "It was with the greatest difficulty that the boy 
 gathered bodily force to speak; but, his spirit spoke 
 with a dreadful emphasis. 
 
 " 'We were so robbed by that man who stands 
 there, as all we common dogs are by those superior 
 Beings taxed by him without mercy, obliged to 
 work for him without pay, obliged to grind our corn 
 at his mill, obliged to feed scores of his tame birds 
 on our wretched crops, and forbidden for our lives 
 to keep a single tame bird of our own, pillaged and 
 plundered to that degree that when we chanced to 
 have a bit of meat^ we ate it in fear, with the door 
 barred and the shutters closed, that his people should 
 not see it and take it from us I say, we were so 
 robbed, and hunted, and were made so poor, that 
 our father told us it was a dreadful thing to bring a 
 child into the world, and that what we should most 
 pray for was, that our women might be barren and 
 our miserable race die out!' 
 
 "I had never before seen the sense of being op- 
 pressed bursting forth like a fire. I had supposed 
 129
 
 Masterpieces of Adventure 
 
 that it must be latent in the people somewhere; but, 
 I had never seen it break out, until I saw it in the 
 dying boy. 
 
 " 'Nevertheless, Doctor, my sister married. He 
 was ailing at that time, poor fellow, and she married 
 her lover, that she might tend and comfort him in 
 our cottage our dog-hut, as that man would call it. 
 She had not been married many weeks, when that 
 man's brother saw her and admired her, and asked 
 that man to lend her to him for what are husbands 
 among us! He was willing enough, but my sister 
 was good and virtuous, and hated his brother with 
 a hatred as strong as mine. What did the two then, 
 to persuade her husband to use his influence with her, 
 to make her willing?' 
 
 "The boy's eyes, which had been fixed on mine, 
 slowly turned to the looker-on, and I saw in the two 
 faces that all he said was true. The two opposing 
 kinds of pride confronting one another, I can see, 
 even in this Bastille; the gentleman's, all negligent 
 indifference; the peasant's, all trodden-down senti- 
 ment, and passionate revenge. 
 
 " 'You know, Doctor, that it is among the Rights 
 of these Nobles to harness us common dogs to carts, 
 and drive us. They so harnessed him and drove 
 him. You know that it is among their Rights to 
 keep us in their grounds all night, quieting the frogs, 
 in order that their noble sleep may not be disturbed. 
 They kept him out in the unwholesome mists at 
 night and ordered him back into his harness in the 
 
 130
 
 Dr. Manette's Manuscript 
 
 day. But he was not persuaded. No! Taken out 
 of harness one day at noon, to feed if he could find 
 food he sobbed twelve times, once for every stroke 
 of the bell, and died on her bosom.' 
 
 "Nothing human could have held life in the boy 
 but his determination to tell all his wrong. He forced 
 back the gathering shadows of death, as he forced 
 his clenched right hand to remain clenched, and to 
 cover his wound. 
 
 " 'Then, with that man's permission and even with 
 his aid, his brother took her away; in spite of what 
 I know she must have told his brother and what 
 that is, will not be long unknown to you, Doctor, if 
 it is now his brother took her away for his 
 pleasure and diversion, for a little while. I saw her 
 pass me on the road. When I took the tidings home, 
 our father's heart burst; he never spoke one of the 
 words that filled it. I took my young sister (for I 
 have another) to a place beyond the reach of this 
 man, and where, at least, she will never be his vassal. 
 Then, I tracked the brother here, and last night 
 climbed in a common dog, but sword in hand. 
 Where is the loft window? It was somewhere here?' 
 
 "The room was darkening to his sight; the world 
 was narrowing around him. I glanced about me, 
 and saw that the hay and straw were trampled over 
 the floor, as if there had been a struggle. 
 
 " 'She heard me, and ran in. I told her not to 
 come near us till he was dead. He came in and first 
 tossed me some pieces of money; then struck at me 
 131
 
 Masterpieces of Adventure 
 
 with a whip. But I, though a common dog, so 
 struck at him as to make him draw. Let him break 
 into as many pieces as he will, the sword that he 
 stained with my common blood; he drew to defend 
 himself thrust at me with all his skill for his 
 life.' 
 
 "My glance had fallen, but a few moments before, 
 on the fragments of a broken sword, lying among 
 the hay. That weapon was a gentleman's. In 
 another place, lay an old sword that seemed to have 
 been a soldier's. 
 
 " 'Now, lift me up, Doctor; lift me up. Where is 
 he?' 
 
 " 'He is not here,' I said, supporting the boy, and 
 thinking that he referred to the brother. 
 
 '"He! Proud as these nobles are, he is afraid to 
 see me. Where is the man who was here? Turn my 
 face to him.' 
 
 "I did so, raising the boy's head against my knee. 
 But, invested for the moment with extraordinary 
 power, he raised himself completely: obliging me 
 to rise too, or I could not have still supported him. 
 
 " 'Marquis,' said the boy, turned to him with his 
 eyes opened wide, and his right hand raised, 'in the 
 days when all these things are to be answered for, I 
 summon you and yours, to the last of your bad race, 
 to answer for them. I mark this cross of blood upon 
 you, as a sign that I do it. In the days when all 
 these things are to be answered for, I summon your 
 brother, the worst of the bad race, to answer for 
 132
 
 Dr. Manette's Manuscript 
 
 them separately. I mark this cross of blood upon 
 him, as a sign that I do it.' 
 
 "Twice, he put his hand to the wound in his 
 breast, and with his forefinger drew a cross in the air. 
 He stood for an instant with the finger yet raised, 
 and as it dropped, he dropped with it, and I laid 
 him down dead. * * * * 
 
 "When I returned to the bedside of the young 
 woman, I found her raving in precisely the same 
 order of continuity. I knew that this might last for 
 many hours, and that it would probably end in the 
 silence of the grave. 
 
 "I repeated the medicines I had given her, and I 
 sat. at the side of the bed until the night was far 
 advanced. She never abated the piercing quality 
 of her shrieks, never stumbled in the distinctness 
 or order of her words. They were always 'My hus- 
 band, my father, and my brother! One, two, three, 
 four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve. 
 Hush!' 
 
 "This lasted twenty-six hours from the time when 
 I first saw her. I had come and gone twice, and was 
 again sitting by her, when she began to falter. I 
 did what little could be done to assist that oppor- 
 tunity, and by-and-bye she sank into a lethargy, and 
 lay like the dead. 
 
 "It was as if the wind and rain had lulled at last, 
 after a long and fearful storm. I released her arms, 
 and called the woman to assist me to compose her 
 figure and the dress she had torn. It was then that 
 
 133
 
 Masterpieces of Adventure 
 
 I knew her condition to be that of one in whom the 
 first expectations of being a mother have arisen; and 
 it was then that I lost the little hope I had had of her. 
 
 " 'Is she dead?' asked the Marquis, whom I will 
 still describe as the elder brother, coming booted into 
 the room from his horse. 
 
 " 'Not dead,' said I; <but like to die.' 
 
 " 'What strength there is in these common bodies!' 
 he said, looking down at her with some curiosity. 
 
 " 'There is prodigious strength,' I answered him, 
 'in sorrow and despair.' 
 
 "He first laughed at my words, and then frowned 
 at them. He moved a chair with his foot near to 
 mine, ordered the woman away, and said in a sub- 
 dued voice, 
 
 " 'Doctor, finding my brother in this difficulty 
 with these hinds, I recommend that your aid should 
 be invited. Your reputation is high, and, as a young 
 man with your fortune to make, you are probably 
 mindful of your interest. The things that you see 
 here are things to be seen, and not spoken of.' 
 
 "I listened to the patient's breathing, and avoided 
 answering. 
 
 " 'Do you honour me with your attention, Doc- 
 tor?' 
 
 " 'Monsieur,' said I, 'in my profession, the com- 
 munications of patients are always received in con- 
 fidence.' I was guarded in my answer, for I was 
 troubled in my mind with what I had heard and 
 seen. 
 
 134
 
 Dr. Manette's Manuscript 
 
 "Her breathing was so difficult to trace, that I 
 carefully tried the pulse and the heart. There was 
 life, and no more. Looking round as I resumed 
 my seat, I found both the brothers intent upon 
 me. * * * * 
 
 "I write with so much difficulty, the cold is so 
 severe, I am so fearful of being detected and con- 
 signed to an underground cell and total darkness, 
 that I must abridge this narrative. There is no 
 confusion or failure in my memory; I can recall, and 
 could detail, every word that was ever spoken be- 
 tween me and those brothers. 
 
 "She lingered for a week. Toward the last, I 
 could understand some few syllables that she said 
 to me, by placing my ear close to her lips. She 
 asked me where she was, and I told her; who I was, 
 and I told her. It was hi vain that I asked her for 
 her family name. She faintly shook her head 
 upon the pillow and kept her secret, as the boy 
 had done. 
 
 " I had no opportunity of asking her any question, 
 until I had told the brothers she was sinking fast, 
 and could not live another day. Until then, though 
 no one was ever presented to her consciousness save 
 the woman and myself, one or the other of them had 
 always jealously sat behind the curtain at the head 
 of the bed when I was there. But when it came to 
 that, they seemed careless what communication I 
 might hold with her; as if the thought passed 
 through my mind I were dying too. 
 135
 
 Masterpieces of Adventure 
 
 "I always observed that their pride bitterly re- 
 sented the younger brother's (as I call him) having 
 crossed swords with a peasant, and that peasant a 
 boy. The only consideration that appeared to affect 
 the mind of either of them was the consideration that 
 this was highly degrading to the family, and was 
 ridiculous. As often as I caught the younger broth- 
 er's eyes, their expression reminded me that he dis- 
 liked me deeply, for knowing what I knew from the 
 boy. He was smoother and more polite to me than 
 the elder; but I saw this. I also saw that I was an 
 incumbrance in the mind of the elder, too. 
 
 "My patient died, two hours before midnight 
 at a time, by my watch, answering almost to the 
 minute when I had first seen her. I was alone with 
 her, when her forlorn young head drooped gently 
 on one side, and all her earthly wrongs and sorrows 
 ended. 
 
 "The brothers were waiting in a room downstairs, 
 impatient to ride away. I had heard them, alone at 
 the bedside, striking their boots with their riding- 
 whips, and loitering up and down. 
 
 " 'At last she is dead?' said the elder, when I went 
 in. 
 
 " 'She is dead,' said I. 
 
 " 'I congratulate you, my brother,' were his words 
 as he turned round. 
 
 "He had before offered me money, which I had 
 postponed taking. He now gave me a rouleau of 
 gold. I took it from his hand, but laid it on the table. 
 136
 
 . Dr. Manette's Manuscript 
 
 I had considered the question, and had resolved to 
 accept nothing. 
 
 " 'Pray excuse me,' said I. 'Under the circum- 
 stances, no.' 
 
 "They exchanged looks, but bent their heads to 
 me as I bent mine to them, and we parted without 
 another word on either side. * * * * 
 
 "I am weary, weary, weary worn down by 
 misery. I cannot read what I have written with 
 this gaunt hand. 
 
 "Early in the morning, the rouleau of gold was 
 left at my door in a little box, with my name on the 
 outside. From the first, I had anxiously considered 
 what I ought to do. I decided, that day, to write 
 privately to the Minister, stating the nature of the 
 two cases to which I had been summoned, and the 
 place to which I had gone: in effect, stating all the 
 circumstances. I knew what Court influence was, 
 and what the immunities of the Nobles were, and 
 I expected that the matter would never be heard of; 
 but, I wished to relieve my own mind. I had kept 
 the matter a profound secret, even from my wife; 
 and this, too, I resolved to state in my letter. I had 
 no apprehension whatever of my real danger; but I 
 was conscious that there might be danger for others, 
 if others were compromised by possessing the knowl- 
 edge that I possessed. 
 
 "I was much engaged that day, and could not 
 complete my letter that night. I rose long before 
 my usual time next morning to finish it. It was the 
 137
 
 Masterpieces of Adventure 
 
 last day of the year. The letter was lying before 
 me just completed, when I was told that a lady 
 waited, who wished to see me. 
 
 " I am growing more and more unequal to the task 
 I have set myself. It is so cold, so dark, my senses 
 are so benumbed, and the gloom upon me is so dread- 
 ful. 
 
 "The lady was young, engaging, and handsome, 
 but not marked for long life. She was in great agita- 
 tion. She presented herself to me as the wife of the 
 Marquis St. Evremonde. I connected the tide by 
 which the boy had addressed the elder brother, with 
 the initial letter embroidered on the scarf, and had 
 no difficulty in arriving at the conclusion that I had 
 seen that nobleman very lately. 
 
 "My memory is still accurate, but I cannot write 
 the words of our conversation. I suspect that I am 
 watched more closely than I was, and I know not 
 at what times I may be watched. She had in part 
 suspected, and in part discovered, the main facts of 
 the cruel story, of her husband's share in it, and my 
 being resorted to. She did not know that the girl 
 was dead. Her hope had been, she said in great dis- 
 tress, to show her, in secret, a woman's sympathy. 
 Her hope had been to avert the wrath of Heaven 
 from a House that had long been hateful to the 
 suffering many. 
 
 "She had reasons for believing that there was a 
 young sister living, and her greatest desire was, to 
 help that sister. I could tell her nothing but that 
 138
 
 Dr. Manette's Manuscript 
 
 there was such a sister; beyond that, I knew noth- 
 ing. Her inducement to come to me, relying on my 
 confidence, had been the hope that I could tell her 
 the name and place of abode. Whereas, to this 
 wretched hour I am ignorant of both. * * * * 
 
 "These scraps of paper fail me. One was taken 
 from me, with a warning, yesterday. I must finish 
 my record to-day. 
 
 "She was a good, compassionate lady, and not 
 happy in her marriage. How could she be! The 
 brother distrusted and disliked her, and his influence 
 was all opposed to her; she stood in dread of him, 
 and in dread of her husband too. When I handed 
 her down to the door, there was a child, a pretty boy 
 from two to three years old, in her carriage. 
 
 " 'For his sake, Doctor,' she said, pointing to him 
 in tears, 'I would do all I can to make what poor 
 amends I can. He will never prosper in his inherit- 
 ance otherwise. I have a presentiment that if no 
 other innocent atonement is made for this, it will one 
 day be required of him. What I have left to call my 
 own it is little beyond the worth of a few jewels 
 I will make it the first charge of his life to bestow, 
 with the compassion and lamentation of his dead 
 mother, on this injured family, if the sister can be 
 discovered.' 
 
 "She kissed the boy, and said, caressing him, 'It 
 
 is for thine own dear sake. Thou wilt be faithful, 
 
 little Charles?' The child answered her bravely, 
 
 'Yes!' I kissed her hand, and she took him hi her 
 
 139
 
 Masterpieces of Adventure 
 
 arms, and went away caressing him. I never saw 
 her more. 
 
 "As she had mentioned her husband's name in 
 the faith that I knew it, I added no mention of it to 
 my letter. I sealed my letter, and, not trusting it 
 out of my own hands, delivered it myself that day. 
 
 "That night, the last night of the year, toward 
 nine o'clock, a man in a black dress rang at my gate, 
 demanded to see me, and softly followed my servant, 
 Ernest Defarge, a youth, up-stairs. When my ser- 
 vant came into the room where I sat with my wife 
 O my wife, beloved of my heart! My fair young 
 English wife! we saw the man, who was supposed to 
 be at the gate, standing silent behind him. 
 
 "An urgent case in the Rue St. Honore, he said. 
 It would not detain me, he had a coach in waiting. 
 
 " It brought me here, it brought me to my grave. 
 When I was clear of the house, a black muffler was 
 drawn tightly over my mouth from behind, and my 
 arms were pinioned. The two brothers crossed the 
 road from a dark corner, and identified me with a 
 single gesture. The Marquis took from his pocket 
 the letter f had written, showed it me, burnt it in 
 the light of a lantern that was held, and extinguished 
 the ashes with his foot. Not a word was spoken. I 
 was brought here, I was brought to my living grave. 
 
 " If it had pleased GOD to put it in the hard heart 
 
 of either of the brothers, in all these frightful years, 
 
 to grant me any tidings of my dearest wife so 
 
 much as to let me know by a word whether alive or 
 
 140
 
 Dr. Manette's Manuscript 
 
 dead I might have thought that He had not quite 
 abandoned them. But, now I believe that the mark 
 of the red cross is fatal to them, and that they have 
 no part in His mercies. And them and their de- 
 scendants, to the last of their race, I, Alexandre 
 Manette, unhappy prisoner, do this last night of the 
 year 1767, in my unbearable agony, denounce to 
 the times when all these things shall be answered for. 
 I denounce them to Heaven and to earth."
 
 vin 
 
 SILENCE* 
 
 LEONIDAS ANDREIYEFF 
 
 ONE moonlight night in May, while the night- 
 ingales sang, Father Ignatius' wife entered 
 his chamber. Her countenance expressed 
 suffering, and the little lamp she held in her hand 
 trembled. Approaching her husband, she touched 
 his shoulder, and managed to say between her sobs: 
 
 "Father, let us go to Verochka." 
 
 Without turning his head, Father Ignatius glanced 
 severely at his wife over the rims of his spectacles, 
 and looked long and intently, till she waved her un- 
 occupied hand and dropped on a low divan. 
 
 "That one toward the other be so pitiless!" she 
 pronounced slowly, with emphasis on the final syl- 
 lables, and her good plump face was distorted with a 
 grimace of pain and exasperation, as if in this manner 
 she wished to express what stern people they were 
 her husband and daughter. 
 
 Father Ignatius smiled and arose. Closing his 
 book, he removed his spectacles, placed them in the 
 
 * Reprinted by permission of Nicholas L. Brown, Publisher. 
 142
 
 Silence 
 
 case, and meditated. His long, black beard, 
 inwoven with silver threads, lay dignified on his 
 breast, and it slowly heaved at every deep breath. 
 
 "Well, let us go!" said he. 
 
 Olga Stepanovna quickly arose and entreated 
 in an appealing, timid voice: 
 
 "Only don't revile her, father! You know the 
 sort she is." 
 
 Vera's chamber was in the attic, and the narrow, 
 wooden stair bent and creaked under the heavy 
 tread of Father Ignatius. Tall and ponderous, he 
 lowered his head to avoid striking the floor of the 
 upper story, and frowned disdainfully when the 
 white jacket of his wife brushed his face. Well he 
 knew that nothing would come of then- talk with 
 Vera. 
 
 "Why do you come?" asked Vera, raising a 
 bared arm to her eyes. The other arm lay on top 
 of a white summer blanket hardly distinguishable 
 from the fabric, so white, translucent, and cold was 
 its aspect. 
 
 "Verochka!" began her mother, but sobbing, 
 she grew silent. 
 
 "Vera!" said her father, making an effort to 
 soften his dry and hard voice. "Vera, tell us, what 
 troubles you? " 
 
 Vera was silent. 
 
 "Vera, do not we, your mother and I, deserve 
 your confidence? Do we not love you? And is 
 there someone nearer to you than we? Tell us 
 143
 
 Masterpieces of Adventure 
 
 about your sorrow, and, believe me, you'll feel better 
 for it. And we too. Look at your aged mother, 
 how much she suffers!" 
 
 "Verochka!" 
 
 "And I ..." The dry voice trembled, 
 truly something had broken in it. "And I . . 
 do you think I find it easy? As if I did not see 
 that some sorrow is gnawing at you and what is 
 it? And I, your father, do not know what it is. 
 Is it right that it should be so? " 
 
 Vera was silent. Father Ignatius very cau- 
 tiously stroked his beard, as if afraid that his fingers 
 would enmesh themselves involuntarily in it, and 
 continued: 
 
 "Against my wish you went to St. Petersburg 
 did I pronounce a curse upon you, you who dis- 
 obeyed me? Or did I not give you money? Or, 
 you'll say, I have not been kind? Well, why then 
 are you silent? There, you've had your St. Peters- 
 burg!" 
 
 Father Ignatius became silent, and an image 
 arose before him of something huge, of granite, 
 and terrible, full of invisible dangers and strange 
 and indifferent people. And there, alone and 
 weak, was his Vera and there they had lost her. An 
 awful hatred against that terrible and mysterious 
 city grew in the soul of Father Ignatius, and an 
 anger against his daughter who was silent, obsti- 
 nately silent. 
 
 "St. Petersburg has nothing to do with it," said 
 144
 
 Silence 
 
 Vera, morosely, and closed her eyes. "And nothing 
 is the matter with me. Better go to bed, it is late." 
 
 "Verochka," whimpered her mother. "Little 
 daughter, do confess to me." 
 
 "Akh, mamma!" impatiently Vera interrupted 
 her. 
 
 Father Ignatius sat down on a chair and laughed. 
 
 "Well, then it's nothing?" he inquired, ironically. 
 
 "Father," sharply put in Vera, raising herself 
 from the pillow, "you know that I love you and 
 mother. Well, I do feel a little weary. But that 
 will pass. Do go to sleep, and I also wish to sleep. 
 And to-morrow, or some other time, we'll have a 
 chat." 
 
 Father Ignatius impetuously arose so that the 
 chair hit the wall, and took his wife's hand. 
 
 "Let us go." 
 
 "Verochka!" 
 
 "Let us go, I tell you!" shouted Father Ignatius. 
 "If she has forgotten God, shall we . . ." 
 
 Almost forcibly he led Olga Stepanovna out of 
 the room, and when they descended the stairs, his 
 wife, decreasing her gait, said in a harsh whisper: 
 
 "It was you, priest, who have made her such. 
 From you she learnt her ways. And you'll answer 
 for it. Akh, unhappy creature that I am!" 
 
 And she wept, and, as her eyes filled with tears, 
 her foot, missing a step, would descend with a 
 sudden jolt, as if she were eager to fall into some 
 existent abyss below. 
 
 145
 
 Masterpieces of Adventure 
 
 From that day Father Ignatus ceased to speak 
 with his daughter, but she seemed not to notice 
 it. As before she lay in her room, or walked about, 
 continually wiping her eyes with the palms of her 
 hands as if they contained some irritating foreign 
 substance. And crushed between these two silent 
 people, the jolly, fun-loving wife of the priest 
 quailed and seemed lost, not knowing what to say 
 or do. 
 
 Occasionally Vera took a stroll. A week following 
 the interview she went out in the evening, as was her 
 habit. She was not seen alive again, as on this 
 evening she threw herself under the train, which 
 cut her in two. 
 
 Father Ignatius himself directed the funeral. 
 His wife was not present in church, as at the news 
 of Vera's death she was prostrated by a stroke. 
 She lost control of her feet, hands, and tongue, and 
 she lay motionless in the semi-darkened room when 
 the church bells rang out. She heard the people, as 
 they issued out of church and passed the house, 
 intone the chants, and she made an effort to raise 
 her hand, and to make a sign of the cross, but her 
 hand refused to obey; she wished to say: "Fare- 
 well, Vera!" but the tongue lay in her mouth huge 
 and heavy. And her attitude was so calm, that it 
 gave one an impression of restfulness or sleep. Only 
 her eyes remained open. 
 
 At the funeral, in church, were many people who 
 knew Father Ignatius, and many strangers, and all 
 
 146
 
 Silence 
 
 bewailed Vera's terrible death, and tried to find in 
 the movements and voice of Father Ignatius tokens 
 of a deep sorrow. They did not love Father Igna- 
 tius because of his severity and proud manners, his 
 scorn of sinners, for his unforgiving spirit, his envy 
 and covetousness, his habit of utilising every oppor- 
 tunity to extort money from his parishioners. They 
 all wished to see him suffer, to see his spirit broken, 
 to see him conscious in his two-fold guilt for the 
 death of his daughter as a cruel father and a bad 
 priest incapable of preserving his own flesh from 
 sin. They cast searching glances at him, and he, 
 feeling these glances directed toward his back, 
 made efforts to hold erect its broad and strong ex- 
 panse, and his thoughts were not concerning his 
 dead daughter, but concerning his own dignity. 
 
 "A hardened priest!" said, with a shake of his 
 head, Karzenoff, a carpenter, to whom Father 
 Ignatius owed five roubles for frames. 
 
 And thus, hard and erect, Father Ignatius reached 
 the burial ground, and in the same manner he re- 
 turned. Only at the door of his wife's chamber 
 did his spine relax a little, but this may have been 
 due to the fact that the height of the door was inade- 
 quate to admit his tall figure. The change from 
 broad daylight made it difficult for him to dis- 
 tinguish the face of his wife, but, after scrutiny, he 
 was astonished at its calmness and because the eyes 
 showed no tears. And there was neither anger, 
 nor sorrow in the eyes they were dumb, and they 
 147
 
 Masterpieces of Adventure 
 
 kept silent with difficulty, reluctantly, as did the 
 entire plump and helpless body, pressing against 
 the feather bedding. 
 
 "Well, how do you feel?" inquired Father 
 Ignatius. 
 
 The lips, however, were dumb; the eyes also 
 were silent. Father Ignatius laid his hand on 
 her forehead; it was cold and moist, and Olga Step- 
 anovna did not show in any way that she had felt 
 the hand's contact. When Father Ignatius re- 
 moved his hand there gazed at him, immobile, two 
 deep grey eyes, seeming almost entirely dark from 
 the dilated pupils, and there was neither sadness 
 in them, nor anger. 
 
 "I am going into my own room," said Father 
 Ignatius, who began to feel cold and terror. 
 
 He passed through the drawing-room, where 
 everything appeared neat and in order, as usual, 
 and where, attired in white covers, stood tall chairs, 
 like corpses in their shrouds. Over one window 
 hung an empty wire cage, with the door open. 
 
 "Nastasya!" shouted Father Ignat s, and his 
 voice seemed to him coarse, and he fel : U at ease 
 because he raised his voice so high in these silent 
 rooms, so soon after his daughter's funeral. "Nas- 
 tasya!" he called out in a lower tone of voice, "where 
 is the canary?" 
 
 "She flew away, to be sure." 
 
 "Why did you let it out?" 
 
 Nastasya began to weep, and wiping her face 
 148
 
 Silence 
 
 with the edges of her calico headkerchief, said 
 through her tears: 
 
 "It was my young mistress's soul. Was it right 
 to hold it?" 
 
 And it seemed to Father Ignatius that the yellow, 
 happy little canary, always singing with inclined 
 head, was really the soul of Vera, and if it had not 
 flown away it wouldn't have been possible to say 
 that Vera had died. He became even more in- 
 censed at the maid-servant, and shouted: 
 
 "Off with you!" 
 
 And when Nastasya did not find the door at once 
 he added: 
 
 "Fool!" 
 
 From the day of the funeral silence reigned in 
 the little house. It was not stillness, for stillness 
 is merely the absence of sounds; it was silence, 
 because it seemed that they who were silent could 
 say something but would not. So thought Father 
 Ignatius each time he entered his wife's chamber 
 and met that obstinate gaze, so heavy in its aspect 
 that it seemed to transform the very air into lead, 
 which bore down one's head and spine. So thought 
 he, examining his daughter's music sheets, which 
 bore imprints of her voice, as well as her books and 
 her portrait, which she brought with her from 
 St. Petersburg. Father Ignatius was accustomed 
 to scrutinise the portrait in established order: 
 149
 
 Masterpieces of Adventure 
 
 First, he would gaze on the cheek upon which a 
 strong light was thrown by the painter; in his fancy 
 he would see upon it a slight wound, which he had 
 noticed on Vera's cheek in death, and the source of 
 which he could not understand. Each time he 
 would meditate upon causes; he reasoned that if it 
 was made by the train the entire head would have 
 been crushed, whereas the head of Vera remained 
 wholly untouched. It was possible that some- 
 one did it with his foot when the corpse was re- 
 moved, or accidentally with a finger nail. 
 
 To contemplate at length upon the details of 
 Vera's death taxed the strength of Father Ignatius, 
 so that he would pass on to the eyes. These were 
 dark, handsome, with long lashes, which cast deep 
 shadows beneath, causing the whites to seem particu- 
 larly luminous, both eyes appearing to be inclosed 
 in black, mourning frames. A strange expression 
 was given them by the unknown but talented artist; 
 it seemed as if in the space between the eyes and the 
 object upon which they gazed there lay a thin, 
 transparent film. It resembled somewhat the effect 
 obtained by an imperceptible layer of dust on the 
 black top of a piano, softening the shine of polished 
 wood. And no matter how Father Ignatius placed 
 the portrait, the eyes insistently followed him, but 
 there was no speech in them, only silence; and this 
 silence was so clear that it seemed it could be heard. 
 And gradually Father Ignatius began to think that 
 he heard silence. 
 
 150
 
 Silence 
 
 Every morning after breakfast Father Ignatius 
 would enter the drawing-room, throw a rapid 
 glance at the empty cage and the other familiar 
 objects, and seating himself in the armchair would 
 close his eyes and listen to the silence of the house. 
 There was something grotesque about this. The 
 cage kept silence, stilly and tenderly, and in this 
 silence were felt sorrow and tears, and distant dead 
 laughter. The silence of his wife, softened by the 
 walls, continued insistent, heavy as lead, and terrible, 
 so terrible that on the hottest day Father Ignatius 
 would be seized by cold shivers. Continuous 
 and cold as the grave, and mysterious as death, 
 was the silence of his daughter. The silence itself 
 seemed to share this suffering and struggled, as it 
 were, with the terrible desire to pass into speech; 
 however, something strong and cumbersome, as a 
 machine, held it motionless and stretched it out as a 
 wire. And somewhere at the distant end, the wire 
 would begin to agitate and resound subduedly, 
 feebly, and plaintively. With joy, yet with terror, 
 Father Ignatius would seize upon this engendered 
 sound, and resting with his arms upon the arms 
 of the chair, would lean his head forward, awaiting 
 the sound to reach him. But the sound would 
 break and pass into silence. 
 
 " How stupid ! " muttered Father Ignatius, angrily, 
 
 arising from the chair, still erect and tall. Through 
 
 the window he saw, suffused with sunlight, the 
 
 street, which was paved with round, even-sized 
 
 151
 
 Masterpieces of Adventure 
 
 stones, and directly across, the stone wall of a long, 
 windowless shed. On the corner stood a cab-driver, 
 resembling a clay statue, and it was difficult to 
 understand why he stood there, when for hours 
 there was not a single passer-by. 
 
 ra 
 
 Father Ignatius had occasion for considerable 
 speech outside his house. There was talking to 
 be done with the clergy, with the members of his 
 flock, while officiating at ceremonies, sometimes 
 with acquaintances at social evenings; yet, upon his 
 return he would feel invariably that the entire day 
 he had been silent. This was due to the fact that 
 with none of those people he could talk upon that 
 matter which concerned him most,and upon which he 
 would contemplate each night: Why did Vera die? 
 
 Father Ignatius did not seem to understand that 
 now this could not be known, and still thought it 
 was possible to know. Each night all his nights 
 had become sleepless he would picture that minute 
 when he and his wife, in dead midnight, stood near 
 Vera's bed, and he entreated her: "Tell us! " And 
 when in his recollection, he would reach these words, 
 the rest appeared to him not as it w,as in reality. 
 His closed eyes, preserving in their darkness a live 
 and undimmed picture of that night, saw how Vera 
 raised herself in her bed, smiled and tried to say 
 something. And what was that she tried to say? 
 That unuttered word of Vera's, which should have 
 152
 
 Silence 
 
 solved all, seemed so near, that if one only had bent 
 his ear and suppressed the beats of his heart, one 
 could have heard it, and at the same time it was so 
 infinitely, so hopelessly distant. Father Ignatius 
 would arise from his bed, stretch forth his joined 
 hands and, wringing them, would exclaim: 
 
 "Vera!" 
 
 And he would be answered by silence. 
 
 One evening Father Ignatius entered the chamber 
 of Olga Stepanovna, whom he had not come to see 
 for a week, seated himself at her head, and turning 
 away from that insistent, heavy gaze, said: 
 
 "Mother! I wish to talk to you about Vera. 
 Do you hear? " 
 
 Her eyes were silent, and Father Ignatius raising 
 his voice, spoke sternly and powerfully, as he was 
 accustomed to speak with penitents: 
 
 "I am aware that you are under the impression 
 that I have been the cause of Vera's death. Reflect, 
 however, did I love her less than you loved her? 
 You reason absurdly. I have been stern; did that 
 prevent her from doing as she wished? I have 
 forfeited the dignity of a father, I humbly bent my 
 neck, when she defied my malediction and departed 
 hence. And you did you not entreat her to remain, 
 until I commanded you to be silent. Did I beget 
 cruelty in her? Did I not teach her about God, 
 about humility, about love? " 
 
 Father Ignatius quickly glanced into the eyes of 
 his wife, and turned away. 
 153
 
 Masterpieces of Adventure 
 
 "What was there for me to do when she did not 
 wish to reveal her sorrow? Did I not command 
 her? Did I not entreat her? I suppose, in your 
 opinion, I should have dropped on my knees before 
 the maid, and cried like an old woman! How 
 should I know what was going on in her head! 
 Cruel, heartless daughter!" 
 
 Father Ignatius hit his knees with his fist. 
 
 "There was no love hi her that's what! As 
 far as I'm concerned, that's settled, of course I'm 
 a tyrant! Perhaps she loved you you, who wept 
 and humbled yourself? " 
 
 Father Ignatius gave a hollow laugh. 
 
 "There's love for you! And as a solace for you, 
 what a death she chose! A cruel, ignominious 
 death. She died in the dust, in the dirt as a 
 d-dog who is kicked in the jaw." 
 
 The voice of Father Ignatius sounded low and 
 hoarse: 
 
 "I feel ashamed! Ashamed to go out in the 
 street ! Ashamed before the altar ! Ashamed before 
 God! Cruel, undeserving daughter! Accurst in 
 thy grave!" 
 
 When Father Ignatius glanced at his wife she 
 was unconscious, and revived only after several 
 hours. When she regained consciousness her eyes 
 were silent, and it was impossible to tell whether 
 or not she remembered what Father Ignatius had 
 said. 
 
 That very night it was a moonlit, calm, warm 
 154
 
 Silence 
 
 and deathly-still night in May Father Ignatius, 
 proceeding on his tip-toes, so as not to be over- 
 heard by his wife and the sick-nurse, climbed up the 
 stairs and entered Vera's room. The window in the 
 attic had remained closed since the death of Vera r 
 and the atmosphere was dry and warm, with a light 
 odour of burning that comes from heat generated 
 during the day hi the iron roof. The air of lifeless- 
 ness and abandonment permeated the apartment, 
 which for a long time had remained unvisited, and 
 where the timber of the walls, the furniture, and 
 other objects gave forth a slight odour of continued 
 putrescence. A bright streak of moonlight fell on 
 the window-sill, and on the floor, and, reflected by 
 the white, carefully washed boards, cast a dim light 
 into the room's corners, while the white, clean bed, 
 with two pillows, one large and one small, seemed 
 phantom-like and aerial. Father Ignatius opened 
 the window, causing to pour into the room a con- 
 siderable current of fresh air, smelling of dust, of 
 the nearby river, and the blooming linden. An 
 indistinct sound as of voices in chorus also entered 
 occasionally; evidently young people rowed and 
 sang. 
 
 Quietly treading with naked feet, resembling a 
 white phanton, Father Ignatius made his way to 
 the vacant bed, bent his knees and fell face down 
 on the pillows, embracing them on that spot 
 where should have been Vera's face. Long he lay 
 thus; the song grew louder, then died out; but he 
 155
 
 Masterpieces of Adventure 
 
 still lay there, while his long, black hair spread over 
 his shoulders and the bed. 
 
 The moon had changed its position, and the 
 room grew darker, when Father Ignatius raised 
 his head and murmured, putting into his voice 
 the entire strength of his long-suppressed and 
 unconscious love and hearkening to his own 
 words, as if it were not he who was listening, but 
 Vera. 
 
 " Vera, daughter mine! Do you understand what 
 you are to me, daughter? Little daughter! My 
 heart, my blood, and my life. Your father your 
 old father is already grey, and also feeble." 
 
 The shoulders of Father Ignatius shook and the 
 entire burdened figure became agitated. Suppressing 
 his agitation, Father Ignatius murmured tenderly, 
 as to an infant: 
 
 "Your old father entreats you. No, little Vera, 
 he supplicates. He weeps. He never has wept be- 
 fore. Your sorrow, little child, your sufferings 
 they are also mine. Greater than mine." 
 
 Father Ignatius shook his head. 
 
 "Greater, Verochka. What is death to an old 
 man like me? But you if you only knew how 
 delicate and weak and timid you are! Do you recall 
 how you bruised your finger once and the blood 
 trickled and you cried a little? My child! I know 
 that you love me, love me intensely. Every morning 
 you kiss my hand. Tell me, do tell me, what grief 
 troubles your little head, and I with these hands 
 156
 
 Silence 
 
 shall smother your grief. They are still strong, Vera, 
 these hands." 
 
 The hair of Father Ignatius shook. 
 
 "Tell me!" 
 
 Father Ignatius fixed his eyes on the wall, and 
 wrung his hands. 
 
 "Tell me!" 
 
 Stillness prevailed in the room, and from afar was 
 heard the prolonged and broken whistle of a loco- 
 motive. 
 
 Father Ignatius, gazing out of his dilated eyes, as 
 if there had arisen suddenly before him the frightful 
 phantom of the mutilated corpse, slowly raised 
 himself from his knees, and with a credulous motion 
 reached for his head with his hand, with spread and 
 tensely stiffened fingers. Making a step toward the 
 door, Father Ignatius whispered brokenly: 
 
 "Tell me!" 
 
 And he was answered by silence. 
 
 IV 
 
 The next day, after an early and lonely dinner, 
 Father Ignatius went to the graveyard, the first 
 time since his daughter's death. It was warm, 
 deserted and still; it seemed more like an illumined 
 night. Following habit, Father Ignatius, with 
 effort, straightened his spine, looked severely about 
 him, and thought that he was the same as formerly; 
 he was conscious neither of the new, terrible weak- 
 ness in his legs, nor that his long beard had become 
 157
 
 Masterpieces of Adventure 
 
 entirely white as if a hard frost had hit it. The road 
 to the graveyard led through a long, direct street, 
 slightly on an upward incline, and at its termination 
 loomed the arch of the graveyard gate, resembling a 
 dark, perpetually open mouth, edged with glistening 
 teeth. 
 
 Vera's grave was situated in the depth of the 
 grounds, where the sandy little pathways terminated, 
 and Father Ignatius, for a considerable time, was 
 obliged to blunder along the narrow footpaths, which 
 led in a broken line between green mounds, by all 
 forgotten and abandoned. Here and there appeared, 
 green with age, sloping tombstones, broken railings, 
 and large, heavy stones planted in the ground, and 
 seemingly crushing it with some cruel, ancient spite. 
 Near one such stone was the grave of Vera. It was 
 covered with fresh turf, turned yellow; around, 
 however, all was in bloom. Ash embraced maple 
 tree; and the widely spread hazel bush stretched out 
 over the grave its bending branches with their 
 downy, shaggy foliage. Sitting down on a neighbour- 
 ing grave and catching his breath, Father Ignatius 
 looked around him, throwing a glance upon the 
 cloudless, desert sky, where in complete immov- 
 ability hung the glowing sun disk and here he only 
 felt that deep, incomparable stillness which reigns in 
 graveyards, when the wind is absent and the slum- 
 bering foliage has ceased its rustling. And anew 
 the thought came to Father Ignatius that this was 
 not a stillness but a silence. It extended to the very 
 158
 
 Silence 
 
 brick walls of the graveyard, crept over them and 
 occupied the city. And it terminated only in those 
 grey, obstinate and reluctantly silent eyes. 
 
 Father Ignatius' shoulders shivered, and he 
 lowered his eyes upon the grave of Vera. He gazed 
 long upon the little tufts of grass uprooted together 
 with the earth from some open, wind-swept field and 
 not successful in adapting themselves to a strange 
 soil; he could not imagine that there, under this 
 grass, only a few feet from him, lay Vera. And this 
 nearness seemed incomprehensible and brought con- 
 fusion into the soul and a strange agitation. She, 
 of whom Father Ignatius was accustomed to think 
 of as one passed away forever into the dark depths 
 of eternity, was here, close by and it was hard to 
 understand that she, nevertheless, was no more and 
 never again would be. And in the mind's fancy of 
 Father Ignatius it seemed that if he could only utter 
 some word, which was almost upon his lips, or if he 
 could make some sort of movement, Vera would 
 issue forth from her grave and arise to the same 
 height and beauty that was once hers. And not 
 alone would she arise, but all corpses, intensely sensi- 
 tive in their solemnly-cold silence. 
 
 Father Ignatius removed his wide-brimmed black 
 hat, smoothed down his disarranged hair, and 
 whispered: 
 
 "Vera!" 
 
 Father Ignatius felt ill at ease, fearing to be over- 
 heard by a stranger, and stepping on the grave he 
 159
 
 Masterpieces of Adventure 
 
 gazed around him. No one was present, and this 
 time he repeated loudly: 
 
 "Vera!" 
 
 It was the voice of an aged man, sharp and de- 
 manding, and it was strange that a so powerfully 
 expressed desire should remain without answer. 
 
 "Vera!" 
 
 Loudly and insistently the voice called, and when 
 it relapsed into silence, it seemed for a moment that 
 somewhere from underneath came an incoherent 
 answer. And Father Ignatius, clearing his ear of 
 his long hair, pressed it to the rough, prickly turf. 
 
 "Vera, tell me!" 
 
 With terror, Father Ignatius felt pouring into his 
 ear something cold as of the grave, which froze his 
 marrow; Vera seemed to be speaking speaking, 
 however, with the same unbroken silence. This 
 feeling became more racking and terrible, and when 
 Father Ignatius forced himself finally to tear away 
 his head, his face was pale as that of a corpse, and 
 he fancied that the entire atmosphere trembled and 
 palpitated from a resounding silence, and that this 
 terrible sea was being swept by a wild hurricane. 
 The silence strangled him; with icy waves it rolled 
 through his head and agitated the hair; it smote 
 against his breast, which groaned under the blows. 
 Trembling from head to foot, casting around him 
 sharp and sudden glances, Father Ignatius slowly 
 raised himself and with a prolonged and torturous 
 effort attempted to straighten his spine and to give 
 160
 
 Silence 
 
 proud dignity to his trembling body. He succeeded 
 in this. With measured protractiveness, Father 
 Ignatius shook the dirt from his knees, put on his 
 hat, made the sign of the cross three times over the 
 grave, and walked away with an even and firm gait, 
 not recognising, however, the familiar burial ground 
 and losing his way. 
 
 "Well, here I've gone astray!" smiled Father 
 Ignatius, halting at the branching of the footpaths. 
 
 He stood there for a moment, and, unreflecting 
 turned to the left, because it was impossible to stand 
 and wait. The silence drove him on. It arose 
 from the green graves; it was the breath issuing 
 from the grey, melancholy crosses; in thin, stifling 
 currents it came from all pores of the earth, satiated 
 with the dead. Father Ignatius increased his stride. 
 Dizzy, he circled the same paths, jumped over 
 graves, stumbled across railings, clutching with his 
 hands the prickly, metallic garlands, and tearing 
 the soft material of his dress into tatters. His sole 
 thought was to escape. He fled from one place to 
 another, and finally broke into a dead run, seeming 
 very tall and unusual in the flowing cassock, with his 
 hair streaming in the wind. A corpse arisen from 
 the grave could not have frightened a passer-by 
 more than this wild figure of a man, running and 
 leaping, and waving his arms, his face distorted and 
 insane, and the open mouth breathing with a dull, 
 hoarse sound. With one long leap, Father Ignatius 
 landed on a little street, at one end of which appeared 
 161
 
 Masterpieces of Adventure 
 
 the small church attached to the graveyard. At the 
 entrance, on a low bench, dozed an old man, seem- 
 ingly a distant pilgrim, and near him, assailing each 
 other, were two quarrelling old beggar women, filling 
 the air with their oaths. 
 
 When Father Ignatius reached his home, it was 
 already dusk, and there was light in Olga Stepanov- 
 na's chamber. Not undressing and without remov- 
 ing his hat, dusty and tattered, Father Ignatius 
 approached his wife and fell on his knees. "Mother 
 . . . Olga . . . have pity on me!" he wept. 
 "I shall go mad." 
 
 He dashed his head against the edge of the table 
 and he wept with anguish, as one who was weeping 
 for the first time. Then he raised his head, confident 
 that a miracle would come to pass, that his wife 
 would speak and would pity him. 
 
 "My love!" 
 
 With his entire big body he drew himself toward 
 his wife and met the gaze of those grey eyes. 
 There was neither compassion in them, nor anger. 
 It was possible his wife had forgiven him, but in her 
 eyes there was neither pity, nor anger. They were 
 dumb and silent. 
 
 
 
 And silent was the entire dark, deserted house. 
 
 END 
 
 162
 
 UC SOUTHERN REGIONAL LIBRARY FACILITY 
 
 A A 000337253 9