Stories by
 
 THE LIBRARY 
 
 OF 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY 
 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 IRVINE 
 
 FROM THE LIBRARY OF 
 R. BENNETT WEAVER
 
 a*t
 
 STORIES BY 
 HONORS DE BALZAC
 
 ttbe "Oorl&'s Storg 
 
 'uniform in size and style with this volume. 
 
 STORIES BY GAUTIER 
 STORIES BY HOFFMANN 
 STORIES BY BALZAC 
 STORIES BY STEELE 
 STORIES BY ADDISON 
 STORIES BY GOLDSMITH 
 STORIES BY CHATEAUBRIAND 
 STORIES BY POE 
 STORIES BY NASH 
 STORIES BY TOLSTOY 
 STORIES BY BOCCACCIO 
 STORIES BY MALORY 
 
 And from ' Arabian Nights,' the 
 ' Gesta Romanorum," etc. 
 
 Others in Preparation.
 
 THE WORLD'S STORY TELLERS 
 EDITED BY ARTHUR RANSOME 
 
 STORIES 
 
 BY 
 
 HONORE DE BALZAC 
 
 NEW YORK: E. P. DUTTON AND COMPANY 
 1909
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 SUMMARISED CHRONOLOGY . . ix 
 
 INTRODUCTORY ESSAY . . . . . xi 
 
 THE UNKNOWN MASTERPIECE .... I 
 THE ATHEIST'S MASS . 4 1 
 
 AN EPISODE OF THE REIGN OF TERROR , 69 
 
 FACING CANE . .98 
 LA GRANDE BRETECHK I2O
 
 SUMMARISED CHRONOLOGY 
 
 Honors de Balzac was born at Tours on May 20, 1799, the 
 son of a barrister, whose princip.il passion seems to have been 
 for a longevity that would let him reap the benefit of a 
 tontine. Balzac went to school at Venddme, but he was a 
 delicate, rather slow child, and had to be removed. Later, 
 when his family came to Paris, he studied law at the 
 Sor bonne, and then worked in a notary's office. In 1820 his 
 family returned to the country, and Balzac, who had 
 rebelled from the law and was writing in a garret on the 
 smallest conceivable allowance, remained, to make himself 
 a novelist. Until 1829 he had published nothing worth 
 reading, but had spent his time writing second-rate stories 
 something after the manner of Scott. In 1829 he published 
 Les Chouans, the first book he signed, and from that time on 
 his writings count in the Works of the Balzac we know. 
 He fell in love with a Countess Hanska, and, even in 
 his busiest periods, was ready to make journeys half across 
 Europe to see her for a moment. After her husband died 
 she hesitated a little and married Balzac, after an engage- 
 ment that had lasted many years, five months before his 
 death on August 20, 1850. Among the most famous of his 
 novels in his huge series La Comedie Humaine, are La 
 Peau de Chagrin, 1831 ; Le Me*decin de Campagne, 1833 ; 
 
 iz
 
 x SUMMARISED CHRONOLOGY 
 
 Eugenie Grandet, 1834 ; La Recherche de PAbsolu, 1834; 
 Le Pere Goriot, 1835; La Cousine Bette, 1846; Le 
 Cousin Pons, 1847. The series contains over fifty stories 
 illustrating Private, Provincial, Parisian, Military and 
 Political Life, as well as stories that he classified as 
 philosophic and analytical studies. He also wrote a number 
 of plays, not at all successful, and three volumes of Contes 
 Drolatiques in the French of the sixteenth century, pre- 
 serving not only the indecency but the more generally 
 admirable qualities that belonged to story-tellers of that 
 time.
 
 INTRODUCTORY ESSAY 
 
 BALZAC used to tell a story of his father, who, when 
 asked to carve a partridge, not knowing how to set 
 about it, rolled up his sleeves, gripped his knife and 
 fork, and cut it in four with such energy as to cleave 
 the plate at the same time and embed the knife in the 
 table. That was the manner of setting about things 
 natural to Balzac himself. He was a ' joyous wild boar ' 
 of a man, with the build and strength of a navvy. He 
 was never ill. Gautier tells us that the habitual ex- 
 pression of that powerful face was a kind of Rabelaisian 
 glee. Now a man who could write the Comedie 
 Humaine, and look aside from it with a Rabelaisian 
 glee was perhaps the only kind of man who could have 
 attempted such a task without being turned, willy nilly, 
 into a pedant. 
 
 There was a logic, a completeness in the groundwork 
 of the scheme, that would have sterilised the imagina- 
 tion of a man with less exuberant vitality. Compare 
 for a moment the Comedie Humaine with the novels of 
 Sir Walter Scott. Scott meant to Balzac what Maria 
 Edgeworth had meant to himself. He had seen in her 
 an attempt to paint Irish country and character, and
 
 xii INTRODUCTORY ESSAY 
 
 had decided to do the same for Scotland. Balzac 
 after those ten years of bad mediaeval stories, those ten 
 years of labour for the Rachel of his own soul, saw in 
 him an attempt to paint Scottish country and character, 
 and decided to do the same for France. But, whereas 
 Scott had been brought up on the ' Reliques of English 
 Poetry,' and in the country of purple heather, grey rock 
 and leaping stream, Balzac was nourished on philosophy 
 and science, and spent his youth in a Paris lodging. 
 Scott saw men rather than kinds of man. Bailie 
 Nicol Jarvie is more Nicol Jarvie than Bailie. Balzac 
 comes at life in a much more scientific spirit. 
 ' Does not Society make of man,' he asks, { as 
 many different men as there are varieties in zoology? 
 The differences between a soldier, a labourer, an 
 administrator, an idler, a savant, a statesman, a mer- 
 chant, a sailor, a poet, a pauper, a priest, are, though 
 more difficult to seize, as considerable as those that 
 distinguish the wolf, the lion, the ass, the crow, the 
 shark, the sea calf, the goat, etc.' Balzac made up 
 his mind to collect specimens of the social species, 
 not pressed and dried, like the old 'Characters' of 
 the seventeenth century, but exhibited alive and in 
 their natural surroundings. He was to make a world 
 with the colour of contemporary France, an ' august lie, 
 true in its details,' a world complete in itself, a world in 
 which all the characters were to show the impress of 
 that state of life to which it should please Balzac to call 
 them. That was the idea that turned the Waverley
 
 INTRODUCTORY ESSAY xiii 
 
 Novels into the Comldie Humaine, that the idea whose 
 exposition by a less full-blooded professor would have 
 been so readily precise, so readily dull in its precision. 
 
 Now there are few harder tasks for a man of over- 
 flowing physical energy than this, of covering innumer- 
 able sheets of paper with wriggling precise lines traced 
 with the end of a pen. It is likely to become a 
 torment ; the feet cross and uncross, the fingers itch, 
 the inkpot flies across the room, and the energy 
 defeats itself. There is the legend of Scott's hand, 
 covering sheet after sheet so swiftly and with such 
 regularity that it was painful to watch it ; but Scott's 
 was not the bomb-like brute energy of Balzac. Balzac, 
 to give life to his scientific ideas, needed a more fiery 
 vitality than Scott's, who began and ended with 
 merely human notions. The actual writing of his 
 books was proportionately more difficult for him. 
 There was no mere eccentricity in his habit of getting 
 the sketches for his books set up in type, and enlarg- 
 ing them from proofs in the middle of large sheets of 
 paper, covering the vast margins with the additions 
 that were to make the books themselves. It was a 
 wise attempt to give himself the same physical outlet 
 as that enjoyed by the painter or sculptor, to give 
 himself something to pull about, something actual, 
 something that could be attacked, anything rather than 
 the terrible silkworm spinning of a single endless fibre. 
 His energy would have been wasted in a hundred ways 
 unless, so far as was possible, he had fitted his work to
 
 xiv INTRODUCTORY ESSAY 
 
 himself and himself to his work. Giant of concentra- 
 tion as he was, he added cubits to his stature by taking 
 thought. He made his writing hours different from 
 every one else's, wore a white frock something like a 
 monk's habit, and found in the drinking of enormous 
 quantities of coffee a stimulant as much theatrical as 
 medicinal. These things meant much to him, and his 
 use of them was an action similar to that of Poe's 
 schoolboy, who, when guessing odd or even the 
 marbles in his playmate's hand, would imitate the 
 expression of his adversary's face and see what thoughts 
 arose in his mind. The paraphernalia of work were 
 likely to induce the proper spirit. When all his 
 fellow Parisians were in bed, Balzac, gathering the 
 voluminous white folds about his sturdy person, and 
 glancing at the coffee stewing on the fire, sat down 
 to his writing-table with the conviction of an alderman 
 sitting down to a city dinner. There could never be 
 a doubt in his mind as to the purpose for which he 
 was there. 
 
 This navvy-work of production had its influence on 
 the character of his writing. But it was never in 
 Balzac's nature to have understood Gautier's craftsman's 
 delight in the polishing and chasing of diminutive 
 things. Balzac, the working machine, was simply 
 enormous energy so coaxed and trained as to produce 
 an enormous output. The raw material of his rich 
 humanity passed through violent processes. It had 
 but small chance of any very delicate finish. Balzac
 
 INTRODUCTORY ESSAY xv 
 
 thought in books and in cycles of books, never in 
 pages, paragraphs or sentences. Although he was 
 much preoccupied with ' style/ envying the men whose 
 writing would be charming to the ear even if it meant 
 nothing to the mind, the best of his own prose is un- 
 beautiful, rugged, fiercely energetic, peculiarly his own, 
 and therefore not to be grumbled at. He would 
 have liked to write finely, just as he would have liked 
 la vie splendide. But his mind, delivering pickaxe 
 blows, or furiously wrestling with great masses of 
 material, could not clothe itself in stately periods. 
 Always, out of any splendour that he made for it, 
 shows a brown, brawny arm, and the splendour be- 
 comes an impertinence. He had ideas on art, as he 
 had ideas on science, but his was too large a humanity 
 to allow itself to be subordinate to either. He was 
 too full-blooded a man to be withered by a theory. 
 He was too eager to say what he had in his mouth 
 to be patient in the modulation of his voice. He 
 was almost too much of a man to be an artist. To 
 think of that man fashioning small perfect poems, 
 who avowed that he wrote his Contes Drblatiques 
 because he happened to notice the fall in the French 
 birth rate, is to think of a Colossus tinkering at the 
 mechanism of a watch. 
 
 Then, too, he had been too close to life to think of 
 art for art's sake. During the years that followed his 
 setting up author in a garret, he had watched the 
 existence of those who are so near starvation that they
 
 xvi INTRODUCTORY ESSAY 
 
 seem to make a living by sweeping the doorstep of 
 Death. And, at the same time that, walking out in 
 the evenings, and following a workman and his wife 
 on their way home, he had been able to feel their rags 
 upon his back, and to walk with their broken shoes 
 upon his feet, he had also had his glimpses of la vie sphn- 
 dide t the more vivid, no doubt, for their contrast with 
 the sober realities he knew. To this man, however great 
 a writer he might become, life would always mean more 
 than books. It always did. He could cut short other 
 people's lamentations by saying, ' Well, but let us talk 
 of real things ; let us talk of Eugenie Grandet,' but 
 Eugenie Grandet, the miser's daughter, interested him 
 much more than the mere novel of that name. His 
 people never existed for the sake of his books, but 
 always his books for the sake of his people. He makes 
 a story one-legged or humpbacked without scruple, so 
 long as by doing so he can make his readers see a 
 man and his circumstances exactly as they appeared to 
 himself. He was not, like a pure artist, an instru- 
 ment on which life played, producing beautiful things. 
 His concern with life was always positive. His world 
 was not a world of dream and patterned imagery, but, 
 according to his mood, was an elaborate piece of 
 mechanism and he an impassioned mechanician, or a 
 zoological garden and he an impassioned zoologist. 
 It is almost matter for wonder that such a man should 
 choose to express himself in narrative. 
 
 And yet the novel, as he conceived it, gave him the
 
 INTRODUCTORY ESSAY xvii 
 
 best of opportunities for putting his results before the 
 world. If we allow ourselves to set all our attention 
 on politics and finance and social theory, we lose in 
 life all but the smell of blue-books, and the grey 
 colour of Stock Exchange returns. If Balzac had 
 written science, and not stories, we should have only 
 had the ideas of his novels without that passionate 
 presentment of concrete things that gives those ideas 
 their vitality. Indeed, the novels are far greater than 
 the ideas, just as the poetic, seeing man in Balzac was 
 greater than the scientist. Weariless in distinguishing 
 man from man, type from type, specimen from specimen, 
 by the slightest indication of the clay, he was able in 
 novels, as he could never have done in works of science, 
 to give the colour of each man's life expressed in his 
 actions, in his talk, in his choice of clothes, in the 
 furniture of his room. The action of all novels, like 
 that of all plays, is performed in the brain of the 
 reader or spectator. The novelists' and dramatists' 
 characters are like pieces on a chessboard, symbols of 
 possibilities not obviously expressed. In older fiction 
 these possibilities were left so vague that the reader 
 could adopt any part he chose, without in the least 
 interfering with the story, independent as that was of 
 personal character. Never before Balzac made them 
 had the chessmen assumed so much of human detail. 
 In his books they are no longer pegs of wood, depend- 
 ing for their meanings on the reader's generosity, for 
 their adventures on the ingenuity of the author. They 
 
 B
 
 xviii INTRODUCTORY ESSAY 
 
 make their moves in their own rights. The hero of a 
 Balzac novel is not the reader, in borrowed clothes, 
 undergoing a series of quite arbitrary experiences. He 
 cannot be made to do what the author requires, but 
 fills his own suits, and has a private life. Balzac knows 
 and makes his reader feel that his characters have not 
 leapt ready-made into the world to eat and drink 
 through a couple of hundred pages and vanish whence 
 they came. They have left their mark on things, and 
 things have left their mark on them. They have lived 
 in pages where he has not seen them, and Balzac never 
 drags them to take a part in existences to which they 
 do not belong. I can remember no case where Balzac 
 uses a stock scene, a room, or a garden, or a valley 
 that would do for anything. There was only one room, 
 one valley, one garden, where the characters could 
 have said those words, lost that money, or kissed those 
 kisses, and Balzac's stupendous energy is equal not 
 only to pouring life into his people, but also to forcing 
 the particular scene upon his canvas with such vivid 
 strokes that every cobble seems to have a heart, and 
 every flower in a pot to sway its blossoms with the 
 sun. Even in the short stories, where he often follows 
 gods that are not his own, writing of madness like a 
 Hoffman, and of intrigue like a Boccaccio, his peculiar 
 genius is apparent in the environments. How care- 
 fully, in The Atheisfs Mass, he works out the condi- 
 tions of life that made the story possible for its actors. 
 And, in the longer novels, there is scarcely a sentence
 
 INTRODUCTORY ESSAY xix 
 
 unweighted with evidence that is of real import to 
 him who would truly understand the characters and 
 happenings of the book. How much does not the 
 story of Eugtnie Grandet owe to that description of 
 the little money-getting, vine-growing town of Saumur, 
 with its cobbled streets, its old houses, its greedy faces 
 watching the weather from the house doors, the only 
 proper setting for the narrow power of Goodman 
 Grandet, and the leaden monotony of his daughter's 
 life? 
 
 Balzac's fierce determination that his lies should be 
 true in their details has often been remarked in claim- 
 ing him as the first of the French realists. And, 
 indeed, other of his characteristics, his interest in life 
 as it is, the scientific bias that found its parody in 
 Zola, his fearlessness in choice of subject, his entire 
 freedom from classical ideals, are certainly attributes 
 of realism. Realism is ready, like Balzac, to deal with 
 stock exchanges and bakeries and all the side shops 
 of 'civilisation ; realism finds Greek Greek and not an 
 Elixir of Life; realism tries to see life as it is. But 
 realism (an impossible ideal) needs for its approximate 
 attainment a man of ordinary energy ; and this Balzac 
 was not. Balzac used Thor's hammer, not one from the 
 carpenter's shop. He lived like ten men and so do his 
 characters. A crossing sweeper in a story by Balzac 
 would wear out his broom in half an hour, but the 
 broom of a crossing sweeper of de Maupassant or 
 Flaubert would be certain of an average life. Balzac's
 
 xx INTRODUCTORY ESSAY 
 
 world is not the world of realism, because it goes too 
 fast, like a clock without a pendulum running at full 
 speed. His world is more alive than ours, and so are 
 his men. They are demons, men carried to the th 
 power. Fire runs in their veins instead of blood, and 
 we watch them with something like terror, as if we were 
 peeping into hell. They are superhuman like Balzac 
 himself, and have become a kind of lesser divinities. 
 None but he would have dared ' to frame their fearful 
 symmetry.' None but they could so well have illus- 
 trated existence as Balzac saw it. 
 
 And life, as this Rabelaisian Frenchman saw it, in 
 the chaotic years of the nineteenth century, was a 
 terrible thing except to the blind and the numbed, and 
 to those who, like himself, possessed ' unconquerable 
 souls.' He found two primary motives in existence. 
 Passion and the production of children was one. He 
 said that this was the only one. But his life and his 
 work made it clear that there was another, and that this 
 other was money. Money, the need of it, the spending 
 of it, fantastic but always acute plans for getting hold 
 of it, like that suggested in Farino Cane, filled his own 
 life, and were not banished even from his love-letters. 
 His own obsession by debts and business forced on 
 him as a novelist a new way of looking at life, and, 
 through him, gave another outlook to storytelling. In 
 the older novels, Fielding's for example, rich are rich, 
 and poor are poor, and only to be changed from one 
 to the other by some calamity or fairy godmother of
 
 INTRODUCTORY ESSAY xxi 
 
 a coincidence. People were static ; unless they turned 
 out to be Somebody's illegitimate son or rightful heir, 
 their clothes were not of a finer cut as they grew 
 older, and if they ate off wooden platters in the first 
 chapter, they supped no more daintily in the last. In 
 romantic tales and fairy stories, a hero might cut his 
 way to fortune through dragons or piratical Turks ; in 
 the rogue novels he might swindle a dinner, and after 
 long switchbacking between twopence and nothing, 
 happen by accident upon a competence; he never, 
 before Balzac took him in hand, went grimly at life, 
 closing his heart, concentrating his energies, compel- 
 ling even love to help him in his steady climb from 
 poverty to opulence. He left that to the villain, and 
 the storyteller took care that the villain eventually got 
 his deserts. The older novelists were vastly interested 
 in the progress of a love-affair ; Balzac looks kindly at 
 that, but his real interest is in the progress of a financial 
 superman. The wealth and poverty of Balzac's char- 
 acters is the quality that makes or breaks them. The 
 mainspring of their actions is the desire of getting on 
 in life. What is the tragedy of Eugenie Grandet, but 
 money? What is the tragedy of Pere Goriot, but 
 money? Eliminate wealth and poverty from either 
 of them and they cease to exist. If old Goriot had 
 been rich and indulgent to his daughters he would 
 have been an estimable father ; but he is poor ; his 
 daughters must be luxurious, and so he is Pere Goriot. 
 The story is that of Lear and his kingdom translated
 
 xxii INTRODUCTORY ESSAY 
 
 into hundred franc notes and lacking the Cordelia. 
 Love, Wisdom, Gentleness are inconsequent dreamers 
 in a house of Mammon. They talk in window corners 
 and behind curtains, ashamed of their disinterestedness, 
 They are like the old Gods banished from the temples, 
 whispering in secret places in the woods, and going 
 abroad quietly in the twilight, while in the glare of noon 
 the clanking brazen giant strides heavily across the 
 world. 
 
 ' And underneath his feet, all scattered lay 
 Dead skulls and bones of men, whose life had 
 gone astray. 1 
 
 ARTHUR RANSOME.
 
 THE UNKNOWN MASTERPIECE 
 
 To a Lord 
 
 1845. 
 I. GILLETTE 
 
 TOWARDS the end of the year 1612, on a cold December 
 morning, a young man in very threadbare garments was 
 walking up and down before the door of a house in the 
 Rue des Grands-Augustins in Paris. When he grew 
 tired of his irresolute to and fro as irresolute as that of 
 a lover who dares not to present himself before his first 
 mistress, however facile she may be he ended by 
 crossing the threshold, and asked if Master Francois 
 Porbus was in his rooms. Upon an affirmative reply 
 from an old woman who was sweeping out a ground- 
 floor apartment, the young man went slowly upstairs, 
 stopping at every step, like a newly accredited courtier 
 who is uneasy about his reception by the King. When 
 he reached the top of the spiral staircase, he hesitated 
 a while on the landing, uncertain whether or no he 
 should use the grotesque knocker that decorated the 
 door of the studio wherein, as he conjectured, was at 
 that moment working Henri rv.'s painter, now thrown 
 over for Rubens by Marie de Medicis.
 
 2 THE UNKNOWN MASTERPIECE 
 
 The young man was feeling that profound emotion 
 which must have stirred in the heart of many a great 
 artist when, in the prime of his youth and his passion 
 for Art, he first encountered a man of genius or a 
 masterpiece. In all human sentiments there exists 
 this primal efflorescence, engendered by a noble 
 enthusiasm which grows ever weaker and weaker until 
 at last joy is but a memory, and glory a lie. Among 
 these frail emotions, none is so akin to love as the 
 young passion of an artist beginning the exquisite 
 torture of his glorious and lamentable career a passion 
 compact of boldness and timidity, of vague faith and 
 certain discouragement. If such an one, poor in 
 worldly gear, yet all a-bud with genius, has not thus 
 keenly thrilled at his introduction to a master, there 
 will be lacking some heartfelt note, some indescribable 
 touch a sentiment, a poetic feeling, I know not what 
 in all his work. There may be a few inflated 
 blusterers who never have had any doubt about their 
 future, but only fools will reckon them among the wise. 
 At any rate, our young acquaintance was apparently 
 not without true merit, if talent is to be measured by 
 this initiatory timidity the indefinable modesty which 
 those whom fame awaits can throw off as soon as they 
 come to exercise their art, just as pretty women can 
 throw off theirs when they are in full flight of coquetry. 
 Habitual triumph diminishes doubt and modesty is, 
 perhaps, a form of doubt. 
 
 Overwhelmed with distress and, now that it had come
 
 THE UNKNOWN MASTERPIECE 3 
 
 to the point, astounded at his own presumption, the 
 poor neophyte would never have intruded himself on 
 the painter to whom we owe our admirable portrait of 
 Henri iv., if chance had not now sent him a surprising 
 helper. An old man had just come up the stairs. By 
 the eccentricity of his dress, the magnificence of his 
 lace lappets, and the absolute self-confidence of his 
 demeanour, the youth divined in him either a patron or 
 a friend of the painter ; he drew back to make room on 
 the landing, and scrutinised the new comer closely, 
 hoping to discover in him the kindliness of the artist, 
 or else that good-nature characteristic of those who 
 love the arts but instead he perceived not only some- 
 thing diabolical about the face but, as well, the 
 peculiar, enigmatic quality so alluring to an artist. 
 Imagine a bald and bulging brow, very prominent, 
 sticking out above a little snub nose like that of 
 Rabelais or Socrates ; mocking, shrivelled lips, a short 
 chin, haughtily lifted, and set off by a grey pointed 
 beard, sea-green eyes which might look dimmed by 
 age, but which, nevertheless, so brilliant were the jewel- 
 like whites, could doubtless flash green lightning in mo- 
 ments of anger or enthusiasm. For the rest, the face had 
 been singularly ravaged by the years, and still more by 
 such thoughts as undermine both soul and body. The 
 eyelashes were gone; and the eyebrows, above the 
 deep sockets, were barely traceable. Set this head 
 upon a thin and fragile body, surround it with lace of 
 dazzling whiteness and intricate device such device as
 
 4 THE UNKNOWN MASTERPIECE 
 
 one sees on a fish-carver ; throw over the black doublet 
 a heavy golden chain and you will have some idea of 
 the personage who now loomed fantastically in the dim 
 light of the staircase. One might have thought that a 
 Rembrandt canvas had walked out of its frame, and 
 was now moving noiselessly in the tenebrous atmo- 
 sphere which that great painter has made his own. The 
 old man cast a piercing glance at the young one, 
 knocked thrice at the door, and said to a delicate-look- 
 ing man of about forty, who opened it : 
 
 'Good-day, Master.' 
 
 Porbus bowed respectfully. He let our young friend 
 in also, supposing that the visitor had brought him, and 
 taking him all the more for granted, because the neo- 
 phyte was held fast in the spell to which all born 
 painters succumb at their first sight of a studio that 
 initiation into the material processes of art. An open 
 window in the roof lit Master Porbus's studio. The 
 light was concentrated on the easel, where hung a 
 canvas as yet untouched by more than three or four 
 white marks ; the corners of the vast room were in pro- 
 found darkness, but some stray reflections, amid the 
 russet gloom, played upon the rounded parts of an old 
 German cuirass which swung from the wall, struck with 
 a capricious gleam the carved and polished cornice of 
 an antique dresser loaded with curious vessels, and 
 pricked with glittering dots the heavy tracery of some 
 ancient gold brocade curtains, still in their worn rich 
 folds, which were thrown here and there and used as
 
 THE UNKNOWN MASTERPIECE 5 
 
 models for drapery. Anatomical models in plaster, 
 fragments and torsos of antique goddesses, lovingly 
 polished by the kisses of the ages, strewed the shelves 
 and tables. Innumerable sketches, studies in three 
 crayons, in sanguine, or in pen-and-ink, covered the 
 walls to the very ceiling. Boxes of colours, bottles of 
 oil and of essence, overturned stools, left but a narrow 
 path to the place where the ring of light was thrown 
 from the high window. Its beams fell full upon the 
 pale face of Porbus and the ivory-like pate of his strange 
 visitor. The young man's attention was soon wholly 
 arrested by a picture which even in that troubled and 
 revolutionary age, had already become famous, so much 
 so as to be the object of many visits from some of those 
 steadfast enthusiasts who keep the Sacred Fire alive for 
 us in evil days. This fine piece represented a Marie 
 Egyptienne preparing to pay for her transit across the 
 water. It was a masterpiece, painted for Marie de 
 Medicis, and sold by her in the days of her distress. 
 
 4 I like your saint,' said the old man to Porbus, 'and 
 I would pay you ten golden crowns above the Queen's 
 price for it ; but get in her way devil take me, no ! ' 
 
 4 You approve of it, then ? ' 
 
 4 H'm h'm ! ' said the other, ' approve of it ... yes 
 and no. The good lady is fairly well put together, but 
 she 's not alive. You fellows think you 've done the 
 whole trick when you've drawn a form correctly and 
 set everything in its right anatomical place ! Then 
 you colour it up with a flesh-tone that 's sitting ready-
 
 6 THE UNKNOWN MASTERPIECE 
 
 made on your palette, taking care to keep one side 
 darker than the other; and because you glance now 
 and again at a naked woman standing on a table, you 
 think you've copied Nature, you imagine you're 
 painters and have found out all God's secrets ! . . . 
 P-r-r ! Great poets aren't made by knowing all about 
 syntax and avoiding grammatical mistakes. Just look 
 at your saint, Porbus. At first sight, she seems 
 admirable ; but then one looks again, and behold ! she 's 
 fast stuck to the back of the canvas you couldn't 
 possibly walk round her body. She 's a silhouette with 
 only one face, she 's a canvas apparition, she 's an image 
 that can't stir, that can't move. I feel no air between 
 that arm and the field you've painted; space and 
 depth are out of it oh, it 's quite correct in perspective, 
 and the gradation of tone is closely observed, but for 
 all your laudable efforts, nothing will make me believe 
 that that handsome body is warmed by the breath of 
 life. It seems to me that if I put my hand on that 
 admirably rounded neck, I should find it as cold as 
 marble. No, my friend ! the blood isn't coursing under 
 that ivory skin, life isn't swelling with its crimson flood 
 those veins, those fibres, so cunningly interlaced 
 beneath the warm transparence of the temples and the 
 breast. One place may palpitate another doesn't; 
 life and death are fighting for every detail : here, it 's a 
 woman; there, a statue; somewhere else, a corpse. 
 Your creation is incomplete. You haven't succeeded 
 in breathing more than a part of your soul into your
 
 THE UNKNOWN MASTERPIECE 7 
 
 cherished work. The torch of Prometheus went out 
 more than once in your hands ever so many places 
 in your picture are quite untouched by the celestial 
 flame.' 
 
 ' But how has it happened, dear Master ? ' Porbus 
 answered respectfully, though the young stranger had 
 great difficulty in keeping his hands off the little old 
 man. 
 
 ' Ah, there you are ! ' he now replied. ' It 's because 
 you've hovered irresolutely between two systems 
 between drawing and painting between the phleg- 
 matic meticulosity, the stiff precision of the old German 
 masters, and the glowing ardour, the felicitous fecundity 
 of the Italians. You tried to imitate at one and the 
 same moment Hans Holbein and Titian, Albrecht 
 Diirer and Paul Veronese. Undoubtedly a fine am- 
 bition ! But behold the result. You have neither the 
 rigid charm of the plain statement, nor the illusive 
 magic of chiaroscuro. Here, like a fusing bronze that 
 bursts its mould, Titian's rich golden colour smashes to 
 bits the meagre Albrecht Diirer-line within which you 've 
 tried to confine it. But here again, the line has held 
 firm and pent up the magnificent overflowings of 
 those splendid Venetian colours. And so your figure is 
 neither consummately drawn, nor consummately painted; 
 but shows in every part the marks of your unfortunate 
 irresolution. If you didn't feel yourself capable of 
 fusing the rival methods in the fire of your genius, you 
 ought to have plumped boldly for one or the other,
 
 8 THE UNKNOWN MASTERPIECE 
 
 thus obtaining that unity which simulates one of the 
 aspects of life. You 're truthful only in your middles, so 
 to speak; your contours are false they neither lose 
 themselves nor suggest anything behind them. There 's 
 truth here,' he continued, pointing to the saint's breast 
 . . . ' and here,' indicating the outline of the shoulder. 
 'But there,' he added, returning to the neck, 'all is 
 wrong. Well, we 'd best analyse no more ; it would 
 drive you to despair.' 
 
 The old man sat down on a stool, took his head 
 between his hands, and fell silent. 
 
 ' Master,' said Porbus, ' I studied that neck very 
 carefully in the nude; but, unfortunately for us, 
 Nature sometimes has effects which seem fantastic on 
 canvas ' 
 
 'The mission of Art is not to copy Nature, but to 
 express her ! You 're not a wretched copyist you 're 
 a poet ! ' cried the old man eagerly, cutting Porbus 
 short with a despotic gesture. 'A sculptor isn't a 
 sculptor because he runs a woman's form into a cast, is 
 he ? If you think so, try to cast your mistress's hand, 
 and set it up in front of you what will you see ? A 
 horrible lump of dead flesh, utterly unlike the original ; 
 you will be forced to use the chisel of the man who, 
 without exactly copying you the thing, will give you 
 its movement and its life. We have to catch the spirit, 
 the soul, the physiognomy of things and beings. 
 Effects ! effects ! they 're the accidents of life, not life 
 itself. A hand since I 've taken that as my text a
 
 THE UNKNOWN MASTERPIECE 9 
 
 hand isn't merely a thing that belongs to a body ; it 
 expresses and develops a thought, and that thought 
 we 've got to capture and render. Neither the painter 
 nor the poet nor the sculptor may separate the effect from 
 the cause the two are for ever indissoluble. And that 's 
 where the tussle conies in ! Some painters triumph 
 by instinct without knowing this canon of art. You 
 draw a woman, but you don't see her ! That is not the 
 way to force Nature's shrine. Your hand unconsciously 
 reproduces the model you copied when a pupil. You 
 don't penetrate far enough into the inwardness of form, 
 you don't pursue it lovingly into its details, its evasions. 
 Beauty is a stern, exacting thing that doesn't easily 
 accord itself you must await its chosen hours, watch it, 
 hold it, and clasp it closely to you, before you can force 
 it to yield itself. Form is a Proteus much more elusive 
 and much more cunning than the Proteus of fable ; 
 only after long combat can you make it reveal itself to 
 you as it really is. But no ! you fellows are content 
 with the first show it chooses to put up, or, at the very 
 most, with the second or the third the battle 's not won 
 like that ! The Unconquerables are not taken in by all 
 these subterfuges they persevere, persevere, till Nature 's 
 forced to show herself in her nudity, in the very essence 
 of her. That 's what Raphael did,' said the old man, 
 taking off his velvet cap to express his respect for the 
 King of Art ; ' his great superiority arises from that 
 intimate perception which, in him, seems seeking to 
 break through the form. Form, in his figures, is what
 
 io THE UNKNOWN MASTERPIECE 
 
 it is in real life an interpreter, ready to communicate 
 to us ideas, sensations, a whole vast system of poetry. 
 Every figure is a world the portrait of a model seen in 
 a sublime vision, coloured by light, described by an 
 inward voice, laid bare by a celestial finger pointing, 
 through the whole of the life lived, to the sources of 
 expression. You dress your women in handsome gar- 
 ments of flesh, handsome draperies of hair but where 
 is the blood which makes them calm or passionate, or 
 indeed makes them anything at all ? Your saint is a 
 dark woman, my poor Porbus but you've painted a 
 blonde all the same! Your figures, then, are simply 
 poor, coloured phantoms ; you present such stuff to us, 
 and call it Painting and Art ! Because you 've made 
 something which is more like a woman than it 's like a 
 house, you imagine you Ve hit the mark ; and, much 
 puffed-up at being no longer obliged to write currus 
 venustus or pulcher homo at the side, as the primitive 
 painters did, you conceive yourselves to be wonderful 
 artists. But you haven't got there yet, my fine fellows ! 
 you '11 have to use up a lot of pencils, you '11 have to 
 cover a lot of canvases, before you 're anywhere near 
 it ! Undoubtedly, a woman carries her head like that, 
 holds up her skirt like that ; her eyes languish and melt 
 with just such a sweet, resigned expression, the lashes' 
 shadow trembles on her cheek very like, very like ! 
 It 's that yet it 's not that. And what 's wanting ? A 
 nothing but that nothing is all. You have the show 
 of life, but you haven't got its overflow, its running-over,
 
 THE UNKNOWN MASTERPIECE n 
 
 that ineffable something which may for all I know be 
 the soul, floating in vapour about its envelope in 
 short, you haven't got that flower of life which Titian 
 and Raphael somehow seized hold of. Any one starting 
 from the point you 've reached, would probably do 
 excellent work ; but you all get tired so soon. The 
 vulgar admire ; the true connoisseur smiles. ... O 
 Mabuse, O my master ! ' added this amazing personage, 
 ' you 're a thief, you Ve carried vitality off with you ! . . . 
 For all that, though,' he resumed, 'this picture's better 
 than that rascally Rubens's stuff, with his mountains 
 of Flemish meat dabbed with vermilion, his cataracts of 
 red hair, and his bluster of colours. At the worst, there 
 are colour, feeling, and drawing the three essentials of 
 Art in your picture.' 
 
 ' But this saint is sublime, old man ! ' the young 
 stranger loudly exclaimed, issuing from a profound 
 reverie. 'Those two figures the saint and the boat- 
 man have a subtlety unknown to the Italian painters ; 
 I can't think of one of them who could have invented 
 the indecision of that boatman.' 
 
 'Did this eccentric young person come with you?' 
 asked Porbus of the old man. 
 
 'Ah, master ! forgive my boldness,' replied the blush- 
 ing neophyte. ' I am quite an obscure person, a dauber 
 by instinct, and but lately arrived in this town, which is 
 the fount of all knowledge.' 
 
 ' To work, then ! ' answered Porbus, giving him a bit 
 of red chalk and a sheet of paper. 
 c
 
 12 THE UNKNOWN MASTERPIECE 
 
 The stranger executed a swift and clever copy of the 
 Marie. 
 
 ' Oh, oh ! ' cried the old man. ' What 's your name ? ' 
 
 The youth wrote at the bottom, ' Nicolas Poussin.' 
 
 'It's not bad for a beginner,' said the odd creature 
 who had been holding forth so tumultuously. ' I see 
 that one can talk painting before you. I don't blame 
 you for having admired Porbus's saint. It 's an accepted 
 masterpiece, and only those who are profoundly initiate 
 in Art can see where it falls short. But, since you 're 
 worthy of the lesson and capable of understanding it, 
 I 'm going to show how little is wanting to its real com- 
 pletion. Now, be all eyes and all attention, for such 
 an opportunity may never occur again. Your palette, 
 Porbus ! ' 
 
 Porbus brought palette and brushes. The little old 
 man turned back his sleeves with a sharp convulsive 
 gesture, stuck his thumb in the palette loaded with an 
 immense variety of tones which Porbus held to him, 
 tore, rather than took, from the same hands a fistful of 
 many-sized brushes, while his pointed beard moved 
 suddenly in violent jerks like those produced by an 
 attack of amorous passion. As he charged his brush 
 with colour, he growled between his teeth : 
 
 ' These tones are only fit to throw out of window 
 after the man who composed them, they 're so disgust- 
 ingly crude and false ! How could any one paint with 
 this sort of thing ! ' 
 
 Then with feverish vivacity he dipped the point of
 
 THE UNKNOWN MASTERPIECE 13 
 
 the brush in the different mounds of colour, running 
 through the entire gamut of them more rapidly than a 
 cathedral organist runs through the full extent of his 
 diapason in the O Filii at Easter. 
 
 Porbus and Poussin stood motionless on either side 
 of the canvas, rapt in eager contemplation. 
 
 'Do you see, young man,' said the other, working 
 undeviatingly, 'do you see how, by means of three or 
 four touches and a little bluish glaze, one can cause the 
 air to circulate round the head of this poor saint, who 
 must have been gasping and choking in that heavy 
 atmosphere? See how this drapery floats now, and 
 how one feels that it 's the breeze which is lifting it ! 
 Formerly it looked like starched linen, tightly pinned 
 up. Do you notice how well the satin sheen I Ve just 
 laid on the bosom renders the slippery suppleness of a 
 young girl's skin, and how this mixed russet and burnt- 
 ochre tone warms up the ashen coldness of this great 
 shadow wherein the blood was congealing instead of 
 running? Young man, young man, no master could 
 teach what I 'm showing you now. Mabuse alone 
 possessed the secret of giving life to form. Mabuse 
 had but one pupil, and that was I. I have had none, 
 and I am old. You are intelligent enough to divine 
 the rest, by the various hints I Ve given you.' 
 
 While he spoke, the strange old man was touching 
 every part of the canvas : here a couple of strokes, 
 there only one, but every stroke so telling that it 
 seemed like a new picture, a picture positively steeped
 
 14 THE UNKNOWN MASTERPIECE 
 
 in light. He worked with so passionate an ardour that 
 the sweat stood in pearls on his bald forehead ; he did 
 it all so rapidly, in little impatient jerky movements, 
 that, to young Poussin, it seemed as if there were in the 
 quaint body a demon which made fantastic use of the 
 hands against the owner's will. The unnatural bril- 
 liancy of the eyes, the convulsions which had all the 
 effect of a kind of resistance, made the notion plausible 
 to a youthful fancy. The old man worked on, still 
 talking. 
 
 ' Paf ! paf ! paf ! that 's the way to cook it up, boy ! 
 . . . Come, my little touches, warm this glacial tone 
 for me ! None of your nonsense ! Pon ! pon ! pon ! ' 
 he kept it up, warming those places where he had 
 already pointed out a lack of vitality by dispersing his 
 colours so that they hid the disparities of temperament, 
 and re-established the unity of tone proper to a fervid 
 Egyptian woman. ' Look you, boy, the last stroke is 
 the only one that counts. Porbus has given a hundred ; 
 I, only one. We get no thanks for all the rest 
 realise that ! ' 
 
 At last the demon stopped, and, turning to Porbus 
 and Poussin, who were dumb with admiration, he said 
 to them, ' It 's not as good as my Belle Noiseuse ; but 
 one could sign one's name to it. Yes, I 'd sign it,' he 
 added, going to fetch a mirror, and looking at it through 
 that. '. . . Now let us go to breakfast,' he cried. 
 'You must both come to my place. I have some 
 smoked ham, some good wine, and despite the foul
 
 THE UNKNOWN MASTERPIECE 15 
 
 times, we '11 talk painting, eh ? For we 're worthy men 
 all. . . . Here's a little fellow,' he ended, slapping 
 Nicolas Poussin on the shoulder, ' who has facility.' 
 
 Then, noticing the Norman's threadbare cloak, he 
 drew a hide-purse from his belt, rummaged in it, took 
 out two gold pieces, and showing them : ' I '11 buy your 
 drawing,' said he. 
 
 'Take it,' said Porbus to Poussin, seeing him start 
 and flush up, for the young adept had all the pride of 
 poverty ; ' take it ; he has enough to ransom two Kings 
 in his purse ! ' 
 
 Then the three went downstairs, and, talking art all 
 the time, made their way to a handsome wooden house 
 near the Pont St. Michel. Its ornaments the knocker, 
 the window-frames, the arabesques astounded Poussin. 
 Before he knew where he was, the embryo painter 
 found himself in a low-ceiled room, before a good fire, 
 near a table loaded with appetising food and all, oh 
 wondrous fortune ! in the company of two great artists 
 in the height of good-fellowship. 
 
 'Young man,' said Porbus, seeing him staring open- 
 mouthed at a picture, ' don't look too hard at that, or 
 you '11 fall into black despair.' 
 
 It was the Adam that Mabuse painted in order to 
 get out of the prison where he had long been kept by 
 his creditors ; and the figure was so amazingly real that 
 Nicolas Poussin began in that instant to understand 
 the real sense of the old man's confused discourse. 
 This latter was looking at the picture with an air of
 
 i6 THE UNKNOWN MASTERPIECE 
 
 satisfaction, but not of enthusiasm, and seemed to be 
 saying, ' I Ve done better than that ! ' 
 
 ' There 's life in it,' he remarked. ' My poor master 
 surpassed himself there ; but there 's a certain lack of 
 truthfulness at the heart of it. The man is fully alive ; 
 he 's getting up and coming towards us. But the air, 
 the sky, the wind, all that we should breathe, see, and 
 feel they're out of it. And moreover, it's only a 
 human man after all ! Now, the one man that came 
 straight out of the hands of God ought to have 
 something divine about him, and that's not there. 
 Mabuse himself used to say so angrily, when he wasn't 
 drunk.' 
 
 Poussin looked alternately at the old man and at 
 Porbus with an uneasy curiosity. He approached the 
 latter as if to ask him the name of their host; but 
 the painter put a finger on his lips with a mysterious 
 air, and the young man, deeply interested, kept silence, 
 hoping that sooner or later some word would enable 
 him to guess it, for wealth and talent were sufficiently 
 attested by the respectful demeanour of Porbus, and 
 the accumulation of wonders in the room. Poussin, 
 on beholding a magnificent portrait of a woman which 
 hung on the dark oaken wainscot, exclaimed, ' What a 
 fine Giorgione ! ' 
 
 ' No,' replied the old man ; ' you are looking at one 
 of my first daubs . . .' 
 
 ' Jesu ! Then I 'm in the abode of the god of paint- 
 ing,' said Poussin artlessly.
 
 THE UNKNOWN MASTERPIECE 17 
 
 The other smiled as one long since accustomed to 
 the eulogy. 
 
 ' Master Frenhofer,' said Porbus, ' couldn't you send 
 for a little of your good Rhine-wine for me ? ' 
 
 ' Two pipes ! ' answered the old man. ' One in 
 acknowledgment of the pleasure I enjoyed this morning 
 when looking at your pretty sinner, and the other as 
 friendship's offering.' 
 
 'Ah ! if I wasn't for ever ailing,' replied Porbus, 'and 
 if you would but let me see your Belle Noiseuse, I might 
 paint a picture tall and broad and deep, where the 
 figures should be all life-size.' 
 
 'Show my work !' cried the old man, deeply moved. 
 ' No, no ! I must bring it to perfection first. Yesterday, 
 towards evening, I thought I had finished. Her eyes 
 seemed to me to float, her flesh to stir. The tresses of 
 her hair moved. She was breathing ! . . . But al- 
 though I Ve discovered how to render on a flat canvas 
 the relief and the roundness of Nature I saw my mis- 
 take in the morning light, all the same. ... Ah ! to 
 arrive at that glorious result, I have studied thoroughly 
 the great masters of colouring, I Ve analysed and lifted, 
 layer by layer, the pictures of Titian, the King of 
 Light ; like that sovereign artist, I Ve sketched my figure 
 in light tone with a rich and supple brush for shadow 
 is but an accident, remember that, boy ! . . . Then I 
 went over my work again, and by means of half-tones 
 and glazes, which I made ever less and less transparent, 
 I found I was able to render the most unremitting
 
 i8 THE UNKNOWN MASTERPIECE 
 
 shadows, yes ! even to the very pitchiest of blacks ; for 
 the shadows of ordinary painters are of another nature 
 altogether from their high lights they 're wood, brass, 
 anything you like but flesh in shadow. One feels that 
 if their figure should move about, the darker places 
 would not clear up, would not become luminous. I Ve 
 avoided that error, into which many of the most illus- 
 trious have fallen; in my pictures, the whiteness shows 
 under the opacity of the lustiest shadow. I 'm not like 
 that sort of ass who thinks he can draw correctly because 
 he carefully pares off his touches ; I don't make a hard 
 line round my form nor display every little anatomical 
 detail the human body isn't an affair of outlines. 
 There's where the sculptors get nearer to truth than 
 we can. Nature is a succession of involuted curves. 
 Strictly speaking, there's no such thing as drawing! . . . 
 Don't laugh, young man ! That may sound crazy to 
 you now, but some day you '11 know what it means. . . . 
 The line is the medium whereby man perceives the 
 effect of light upon objects ; but there are no lines in 
 Nature, for Nature is the totality of things : it 's by 
 modelling that one draws, that is to say, detaches things 
 from their environment; the distribution of light is 
 the only means whereby we see a body ! And so I 
 haven't fixed the lineaments, but spread over the 
 contours a veil of warm, light half-tones, in such a way 
 that one could not possibly put one's finger on the 
 place where they melt into the background. At close 
 quarters, this method looks woolly and seems wanting in
 
 THE UNKNOWN MASTERPIECE 19 
 
 precision ; but at a little distance, it consolidates, 
 harmonises, stands out the body seems ready to turn 
 round, the forms project themselves, one feels the air 
 circulating everywhere. However, I am not satisfied 
 yet ; I have my doubts. Perhaps one should never 
 draw a single stroke ; perhaps one should attack a 
 figure from the centre, concentrating one's self at first 
 upon the high-lights, and then going on to the darkest 
 portions. Isn't it thus that the sun works the sun, 
 that godlike painter of the universe? O Nature, Nature, 
 where is the man who has captured thee in thy flight ! 
 Well ! excess of science, like excess of ignorance, ends 
 in negation. I am sceptical of my work ! ' 
 
 He paused, then resumed : ' I have been at it ten 
 years, young man ; but what are ten short years when 
 one's having a tussle with Nature? We don't know 
 how long our lord Pygmalion took to make the only 
 statue that has ever walked ! ' 
 
 The old man fell into a deep reverie ; with fixed eyes, 
 he sat playing mechanically with his knife. 
 
 'He's talking to his famulus now,' said Porbus in a 
 low voice. 
 
 At these words, Nicolas Poussin realised that he was 
 under the spell of an artist's inexplicable curiosity. The 
 old man with his pale eyes, thus fixed in blank absorp- 
 tion already superhuman enough in the boy's fancy 
 now seemed like some fantastic genie from an unknown 
 world. He awakened an infinity of confused ideas in the 
 mind. This sort of fascination is a moral phenomenon
 
 20 THE UNKNOWN MASTERPIECE 
 
 which one can no more define than one can put into 
 words the emotion excited by a song which brings his 
 country back into an exile's heart. The disdain which 
 this old man affected for the finest efforts of Art, his 
 wealth, his odd ways, the deference which Porbus showed 
 him, the work which was kept such a secret and for 
 so long that work of such infinite patience, and doubt- 
 less of genius as well, if one were to judge by the Tete 
 de Vierge which young Poussin had so frankly admired, 
 and which, beautiful even in juxtaposition with the 
 Adam of Mabuse, was in the true imperial manner of a 
 prince of Art everything about him was beyond the 
 limits of human nature. The clearest, most perceptible 
 impression left upon the eager imagination of Nicolas 
 Poussin by this supernatural being, was that of a perfect 
 type of the artistic temperament that wild thing to 
 which so much power is given, and which but too often 
 abuses it, dragging cold reason, and the respectable 
 citizen, and even some real lovers of Art, through rocky 
 path after rocky path, where there is nothing for them ; 
 but where, ever madder in caprice, this white-winged 
 wanton discovers epics, ancient castles, masterpieces. A 
 mocking creature and a kindly, and a prolific, and a 
 barren ! . . . Thus, for enthusiastic Poussin, the old man 
 had been suddenly transfigured, as it were, into Art her- 
 self Art with her secrets, her ardours, and her reveries. 
 ' Yes, my dear Porbus,' began Frenhofer again ; ' I 
 have never yet encountered an irreproachable woman, a 
 body whose contours were of perfect beauty, and whose
 
 THE UNKNOWN MASTERPIECE 21 
 
 fleshtints. . . . But where does she exist,' he interrupted 
 himself with ' that undiscoverable Venus of the 
 ancients, so long sought, of whose loveliness we can 
 find no more than a few traces ? Oh ! to see once, 
 were it but for a moment, Nature in her divinity, her 
 perfection, the Ideal, in a word ! I would give my 
 entire fortune . . . Yea ! I would seek thee in thy 
 Limbo, thou celestial beauty ! Like Orpheus, I would 
 go down into the Hell of Art, and bring back Life with 
 me.' 
 
 'We may take ourselves off,' said Porbus to Poussin ; 
 'he neither sees nor hears us now.' 
 
 'Let us go to his studio,' suggested the wondering 
 youth. 
 
 ' Oh ! the old fox has that safe and fast. His 
 treasures are too well guarded we could never get at 
 them. I have not waited for your suggestion and your 
 whim before making an assault upon the mystery ! ' 
 
 ' Then there is a mystery ? ' 
 
 'Yes,' replied Porbus. 'Old Frenhofer is the only 
 pupil that Mabuse would ever take. Frenhofer became 
 his friend, his saviour, his father; he sacrificed the 
 greater part of his treasures to satisfy the passions of 
 Mabuse, and in exchange, Mabuse bequeathed him the 
 secret of 'relief,' the power of giving to figures that 
 extraordinary vitality, that flower of life, which is our 
 eternal despair, but which he could get so marvellously 
 that one day, having sold and drunk the flowered 
 damask which he was to wear at the entry of Charles-
 
 22 THE UNKNOWN MASTERPIECE 
 
 Quint, he accompanied his master in a dress of paper 
 painted to look like it. The Emperor was amazed at 
 the peculiar splendour of the stuff which Mabuse wore, 
 and, wishing to compliment the old drunkard's patron 
 upon it, he discovered the cheat. Frenhofer is an 
 impassioned lover of our Art, and sees further and 
 deeper than other painters. He has pondered pro- 
 foundly on colours, on the absolute truth of line ; but, 
 through his very research itself, he has come actually to 
 disbelieve in its object. In his moments of despair, he 
 maintains that drawing does not exist, and that one can 
 produce nothing but geometrical figures by means of 
 strokes which is on the hither side of truth, since, with 
 a stroke and the charcoal (which being black is not a 
 colour), one can make a figure, thus proving that our Art 
 is, like Nature, composed of an infinite number of 
 elements. Drawing produces a skeleton, colour is that 
 skeleton's life; but the life without the skeleton is a 
 thing more incomplete than is the skeleton without the 
 life. In the end, there 's something truer than any of 
 that 'tis that practice and observation are everything 
 with a painter, and that, if reason and poetry are to 
 go wrangling with the brushes, one will arrive at being 
 a sceptic like this old fellow, who 's as much of a mad- 
 man as of a painter. He is a sublime artist, but he had 
 the misfortune to be born rich, which has permitted 
 him to fool about don't imitate him in that ! Work ! 
 Artists should think only with their brushes.' 
 
 ' We '11 get in somehow ! ' cried Poussin, who was no
 
 THE UNKNOWN MASTERPIECE 23 
 
 longer listening to Porbus, but arranging everything in 
 imagination just as he wanted it to be. 
 
 Porbus smiled at the young stranger's enthusiasm, 
 and departed, inviting him to come and see him. 
 
 Nicolas Poussin walked slowly back towards the Rue 
 de la Harpe, and, in his preoccupation, went past his 
 own modest lodging. Then, anxiously and eagerly 
 climbing the wretched stair, he reached an upper room 
 tucked right under a wooden-fronted roof that rustic 
 and graceful feature of so many an old Paris house. 
 Near the one dim window of this apartment, sat a young 
 girl, who, as the latch rattled, sprang up with loving im- 
 pulse : she had recognised the painter's hand so soon as 
 he touched it. 
 
 ' What is the matter ? ' she exclaimed. 
 
 ' It 's . . . it 's oh ! ' he cried, breathless with joy, 
 ' how I have felt I was a painter ! I had my doubts 
 before, but this morning I believed in myself! I could 
 be a great man ! O Gillette, we '11 be rich and we '11 
 be happy. These brushes are full of gold.' . . . But 
 he stopped suddenly. His grave, strong young face 
 lost its radiance as he compared the immensity of his 
 hopes with the mediocrity of his resources. The walls 
 were covered with ordinary sheets of paper all scribbled 
 over with crayon drawings. He possessed only four real 
 canvases. Colours were then very costly, and the poor 
 young man had often gazed at an almost empty palette. 
 But for all his poverty, he possessed and displayed the 
 richest treasures of the heart, as well as the superabund-
 
 24 THE UNKNOWN MASTERPIECE 
 
 ance of a consuming genius. He had been brought to 
 Paris by an aristocratic friend, or perhaps by his own 
 talent ; and quickly had encountered there a mistress 
 one of those noble and generous souls who can live 
 and suffer with a great man, wedding his troubles and 
 training herself to understand his caprices ; as valiant 
 for poverty and for love, as other women are for luxury 
 and heartless show. Gillette's hovering smile irradiated 
 the garret like the very sun himself. And the sun did 
 not always shine, but she was always there wrapt up 
 in her passion, tenacious of her joy and of her sufferings, 
 consoling the genius which was fulfilling itself in love 
 before it entered into its kingdom of Art. 
 
 ' Listen, Gillette come here ! ' 
 
 The obedient, happy girl flew to his arms. She sat 
 upon his knee, all grace and beauty, fair as an April 
 day, rich in every womanly charm, and enhancing each 
 one with the lustre of an ardent spirit. 
 
 ' O God ! ' the boy cried, ' I can never dare to tell 
 her ' 
 
 ' A secret ? ' she exclaimed. ' I must know it ! ' 
 
 Poussin was lost in dreams. 
 
 ' Do tell me.' 
 
 ' Gillette poor darling ! . . .' 
 
 ' Oh, you want me to do something for you ? ' 
 
 'Yes.' 
 
 ' If it 's to pose for you again as I did the other day,' 
 she said with a little resentful look, '1 never will 
 again for when I 'm doing it, your eyes don't say
 
 THE UNKNOWN MASTERPIECE 25 
 
 things to me any more. You 're not thinking of me at 
 all, and yet you 're looking at me ' 
 
 ' Would you rather see me copying another woman ? ' 
 
 ' I might,' answered she, ' if she was very ugly.' 
 
 ' Well,' resumed Poussin gravely, ' supposing that for 
 the sake of my future fame, supposing that to make me 
 a great painter, you had to go and pose for some one 
 else ? ' 
 
 'You can put me to the test,' she replied. 'You 
 know very well I wouldn't go.' 
 
 Poussin's head sank on his breast, as does his who 
 breaks down beneath joy or grief. 
 
 ' Listen,' the girl said, pulling the sleeve of his worn 
 doublet. ' I have often told you, Nick, that I 'd give 
 up my life for you, but I never promised to give up my 
 love, while I am alive.' 
 
 ' To give up your love ? ' cried the young artist. 
 
 ' If I showed myself like that to another man, you 
 wouldn't love me any more ; and I shouldn't feel that 
 I was worthy of you, either. To obey your caprices, 
 that's the simple, natural thing; for, even against my 
 own wish, I 'm glad and proud to do your dear bidding. 
 But for another man oh, shame ! ' 
 
 'Forgive me, my Gillette,' he cried, suddenly kneel- 
 ing before her. ' I had rather be loved than be famous. 
 You are dearer to me than fortune and renown. Here ! 
 I '11 throw away my brushes, I '11 burn my canvases. I 
 was wrong : my vocation is to love you. I 'm not a 
 painter, I 'm a lover. Perish Art and all her secrets ! '
 
 26 THE UNKNOWN MASTERPIECE 
 
 She gazed at him in admiring delight. She felt like a 
 queen, she knew instinctively that the arts were being 
 forgotten for her, nay ! were flung at her feet like a grain 
 of incense ! 
 
 ' And yet he 's only an old man,' began Poussin again. 
 ' He won't see anything in you but the female form 
 and yours is so faultless ! ' 
 
 ' One must love, indeed ! ' cried she, ready to sacrifice 
 her loving scruples, to reward her lover for all his sacri- 
 fices. ' But,' she added, ' it will be the destruction of 
 me. Ah ! to ruin myself for you that would be very 
 beautiful ! But you will forget me . . . Oh ! why, why 
 did you think of this thing ? ' 
 
 1 1 thought of it, and I love you,' he said with a sort 
 of contrition. ' Am I really such an infamous wretch, I 
 wonder ? ' 
 
 ' Let us consult Father Hardouin,' suggested she. 
 
 ' No, no ; let it be a secret between us two.' 
 
 'Well, I'll go; but you mustn't be there,' she said. 
 'You must stay outside the door, and have your 
 dagger ready and if I scream, rush in and kill the 
 painter.' 
 
 Blind to all but his art, Poussin clasped Gillette in 
 his arms. 
 
 ' He loves me no more ! ' thought she, when she was 
 alone again. 
 
 Already she was repenting her decision. But she 
 was presently seized by a more terrible pang than that 
 of repentance ; she struggled with a horrible thought.
 
 THE UNKNOWN MASTERPIECE 27 
 
 She felt that already she loved the artist less because 
 he had forfeited a little of her respect. 
 
 II. CATHERINE LESCAULT 
 
 THREE months after the meeting of Poussin and 
 Porbus, the latter went to see Master Frenhofer. The 
 old man was just then a prey to one of those profound 
 and unreasoned discouragements whose cause lies, ac- 
 cording to the mathematicians of medicine, in a poor 
 digestion, in the direction of the wind, or else in the 
 heat or some other hypochondriacal rubbish ; while, 
 according to the spiritualists, it arises from the imper- 
 fection of our moral nature. Our old gentleman was, in 
 plain fact, utterly worn out by his efforts to get his mys- 
 terious picture finished. He was sitting languidly in a 
 vast seat of carved oak, upholstered in black leather; 
 without altering his listless attitude, he cast an ineffably 
 weary glance at Porbus. 
 
 'Well, master,' said this latter, 'did that ultramarine 
 you went all the way to Bruges for, turn out a failure ? 
 Or have you found it impossible to grind our new 
 white ? Or is the oil bad, or are the brushes restive ? ' 
 
 ' Alas ! ' cried the old man, ' I thought for a while 
 that my work was finished ; but I now believe firmly 
 that I Ve made some mistakes in detail, and I shan't be 
 easy till I've dissipated my doubts. I'm making up 
 my mind to travel ; and I shall go to Turkey, Greece, 
 D
 
 28 THE UNKNOWN MASTERPIECE 
 
 Asia, to look for a model and compare my picture with 
 the different types I find. . . . And yet, maybe I really 
 have her up there,' he went on, with a slight smile of 
 satisfaction. ' Nature herself, I mean. Sometimes I 'm 
 almost afraid that a breath may bring that woman to life, 
 and that then she '11 vanish from my sight.' 
 
 And he got up suddenly, as if about to start that very 
 instant. 
 
 ' Oh, oh ! ' said Porbus, ' I see I Ve come just in time 
 to spare you the expense and fatigue of the voyage.' 
 
 ' What do you mean ? ' asked Frenhofer, in surprise. 
 
 'Young Poussin is beloved by a woman whose 
 incomparable beauty is absolutely without any imper- 
 fection whatever. But, my dear master, if he consents 
 to lend her to you, you must at least let us see your 
 picture.' 
 
 The old man stood motionless, in a state of utter 
 stupefaction. ' What ! ' he cried at last most mourn- 
 fully, ' show my creature, my spouse ? rend the veil 
 which I have chastely thrown over my bliss ? 'Twould 
 be a hideous prostitution ! Here 's ten years that I Ve 
 been living with that woman ; she 's mine, mine alone, 
 she loves me. Hasn't she smiled at me with every 
 brush-mark I put on her ? Why ! she has a soul the 
 soul that I Ve given her. She would blush if other eyes 
 than mine were to behold her. Show her ! but where 's 
 the husband, the lover, who 's vile enough to bring his 
 woman to dishonour? When you paint a picture for 
 the Court, you don't put your whole soul into it you
 
 THE UNKNOWN MASTERPIECE 29 
 
 sell mere coloured mannikins to your courtiers. My 
 painting is not a painting it 's a sentiment, a passion ! 
 Born in my studio, she shall stay there a virgin ; she 
 shall leave it only when she's fully clothed. Poetry 
 and women give themselves in their nudity to their 
 lovers alone ! Do we possess Raphael's model, or 
 Ariosto's Angelica, or Dante's Beatrice ? Not we ! We 
 see only the shapes of them. Well, the thing I keep 
 under bolt and bar up there is an exception in our art. 
 It 's not a picture it 's a woman ! a woman with whom 
 I weep, laugh, talk, and think. Do you suppose I can 
 cast off a bliss that 's lasted ten years, as one casts off a 
 cloak that, all in a minute, I can cease to be father, 
 lover, and god ? The woman there is not a creature, 
 but a creation. Let your young man come along, and 
 I '11 give him my treasures my Correggios, my Michael 
 Angelos, my Titians ; I '11 kiss his footsteps in the dust 
 but make him my rival ? 'twould be infamy ! Ah, 
 I 'm more lover even than painter. Yes I shall have 
 the fortitude to burn my Belle Noiscuse when my last 
 moment comes ; but expose her to the gaze of a man, a 
 young man, a painter no, no ! If any one should 
 pollute her with a look, I 'd kill him next day ! I 'd 
 kill you on the instant, you who are my friend, if you 
 did not do homage to her on your knees ! And now 
 do you still imagine that I'll subject my idol to the 
 frozen stares, the inane criticisms of idiots ? Ah, love 
 is a mystery; it's only in the very core of our hearts 
 that we really live at all, and all is lost when a man
 
 30 THE UNKNOWN MASTERPIECE 
 
 can say, even to his friend, " That 's the woman I 
 love ! " ' 
 
 The old man seemed to have grown young again ; 
 his eyes were flashing, his pale cheeks were touched 
 with vivid colour, his hands were trembling. Porbus, 
 astonished at the passionate vehemence with which he 
 had spoken, was puzzled how to respond to a feeling so 
 abnormal and so intense. Was Frenhofer a rational 
 being, or a madman? Was he now enthralled by an 
 artist's fantasy, or did the ideas he had expressed pro- 
 ceed from that singular fanaticism which is produced in 
 us by the long process of generation necessary to a 
 great work of art ? Could one ever hope to persuade 
 such a strange passion to any sort of compromise ? 
 
 Possessed by all these thoughts, Porbus said to the 
 old man, ' But isn't it woman for woman ? Won't 
 Poussin be yielding up his mistress to your gaze ? ' 
 
 'What sort of a mistress?' rejoined Frenhofer. 
 ' She '11 betray him sooner or later. Mine will be always 
 faithful ! ' 
 
 ' Well,' answered Porbus, ' we '11 talk of it no more. 
 But before you find, even in Asia, a woman as beauti- 
 ful, as faultless as she of whom I speak, you '11 die and 
 leave your picture unfinished.' 
 
 ' Oh, it is finished ! ' said Frenhofer. 'Any one look- 
 ing at it would think he saw a real woman lying on a 
 velvet couch, under curtains. Near her a golden tripod 
 is breathing forth perfume. You would want to take 
 hold of the tassel of the curtain-bands; you would
 
 THE UNKNOWN MASTERPIECE 31 
 
 believe you were seeing the very bosom of Catherine 
 Lescault a beautiful courtesan who was called La 
 Belle Noiseuse and watching its very rise and fall. . . . 
 And yet, I wish I were quite sure ' 
 
 'Then go to Asia,' said Porbus, perceiving a sort of 
 hesitation in Frenhofer's gaze; and with that, he went 
 towards the door. 
 
 Just at that moment Gillette and Nicolas Poussin 
 arrived at the house. The girl was on the threshold, 
 when suddenly she dropped Poussin's arm, and recoiled 
 as though she had been seized by some swift fore- 
 boding. 
 
 ' Why do I come hither what should I do 
 here?' she asked her lover earnestly, with a sombre 
 gaze. 
 
 'Gillette, I have left it in your hands I will obey 
 you wholly. You are my conscience ; you shall be my 
 glory. Come home I shall be happier, perhaps, than 
 if you . . .' 
 
 ' And am I mistress of myself, do you suppose, when 
 you talk to me like that ? Ah no ! I turn into a child 
 again. . . . Let us go in,' she added, evidently with 
 a great effort ; ' and though our love be destroyed, and 
 though I fill my own heart with a long regret, your 
 celebrity will be the price of my obedience to your will. 
 Yes, we '11 go in ; and I shall live again for ever ! as 
 a memory on your palette.' 
 
 As they opened the door, the lovers encountered 
 Porbus, who, amazed at Gillette's beauty, caught her
 
 32 THE UNKNOWN MASTERPIECE 
 
 all trembling and tearful as she was, and led her to the 
 old man. 
 
 ' Look ! ' he cried ; ' isn't she worth all the master- 
 pieces in the universe ? ' 
 
 Frenhofer started. There stood Gillette, in a child- 
 ish, artless attitude an innocent, frightened Georgian 
 maiden, dragged by brigands before a slave-merchant, 
 might so stand and so look. She was blushing deeply, 
 her eyes were downcast, her hands hung by her sides, 
 she seemed quite helpless, and her tears protested, as 
 it were, against this affront to her modesty. Poussin, 
 repenting him that he had brought his treasure from 
 its hiding-place, bitterly cursed himself. Once more he 
 was the lover rather than the artist ; his heart sickened 
 as he saw the old man's eye light up that painter's 
 eye which, as it were, unclothed her, divining unerringly 
 the most intimate secrets of her form. Poussin knew 
 then in all its ferocity the natural jealousy of true 
 passion. 
 
 ' Let us go, Gillette ! ' he cried. 
 
 At that cry, at that accent, his happy mistress looked 
 up, read his face, and rushed into his arms. 
 
 ' Ah, then you love me ! ' she sobbed. She had 
 been strong enough to say nothing of her anguish, but 
 she had not strength to hide her joy. 
 
 1 Oh ! leave her to me for a moment ! ' said the old 
 painter ; ' and then yes, I consent ! you shall com- 
 pare her with my Catherine.' 
 
 There was love in Frenhofer's cry, too. He seemed
 
 THE UNKNOWN MASTERPIECE 33 
 
 to have a personal feeling about his painted woman 
 something almost like rivalry, for he appeared to be, so 
 to speak, exulting beforehand in the victory that his 
 lovely creation was to win over a young, living girl. 
 
 1 Don't let him go back on his word,' cried Porbus, 
 slapping Poussin's shoulder. 'The harvest of love is 
 fleeting that of Art immortal ! ' 
 
 ' But,' said Gillette, looking searchingly at them both, 
 'am I not something more than a mere woman for 
 him?' 
 
 She lifted her head haughtily ; but when, after an 
 indignant glance at Frenhofer, she looked at her lover 
 again and found him staring at the portrait which 
 formerly he had mistaken for a Giorgione : ' Ah ! ' she 
 exclaimed. ' Let us go up to the other room. . . . He 
 has never looked at me like that.' 
 
 ' Old man,' said Poussin, roused by Gillette's voice, 
 'do you see this sword? If this damsel utters one 
 word of complaint, I '11 plunge it in your heart ; I '11 
 burn your house down not one soul shall escape. 
 Do you understand?' 
 
 His face was dark, his voice terrible. This attitude 
 (and better still, his threatening gesture) consoled Gil- 
 lette ; she could almost pardon him for having sacrificed 
 her to his Art and his glorious future. . . . Porbus and 
 Poussin waited outside the door, exchanging silent 
 glances. At first, the painter of the Marie Egyptienne 
 uttered a few exclamations : ' Ah, she 's undressing ! 
 He 's told her to go under the full light ! He 's com-
 
 34 THE UNKNOWN MASTERPIECE 
 
 paring them now ! ' but Poussin's heart-broken expres- 
 sion quickly silenced him, for though old painters for- 
 get these little scruples in the service of Art, Porbus 
 was touched by the lover's freshness and the pathos of 
 the situation. The boy had his hand on his dagger, 
 his ear was glued to the door. The two, standing 
 there in the gloom, looked like conspirators awaiting 
 the hour to strike a tyrant down. 
 
 ' Come in, come in ! ' said the old man at last, beam- 
 ing with joy. ' My picture is perfect I can show it 
 proudly now. Never will painter, brushes, colours, 
 canvas, and light combine to put together a rival to 
 Catherine Lescault, the beautiful courtesan ! ' 
 
 Possessed by eager curiosity, Porbus and Poussin 
 rushed to the centre of a vast, dusty, and very dis- 
 orderly studio, with a few pictures hanging on its walls. 
 They paused at first before a life-size figure of a woman, 
 half-naked, which had arrested their admiring attention. 
 
 ' Oh, don't waste time over that ! ' said Frenhofer ; 
 'that's a canvas I daubed as a study of a pose it's not 
 worth looking at. Those are my mistakes ! ' he went 
 on, pointing to the exquisite things which hung on the 
 walls around them. 
 
 On hearing this, Porbus and Poussin, overwhelmed by 
 such disdain for such productions, looked about eagerly 
 for the promised portrait, but could not see it. 
 
 Why, here it is ! ' said the old man. His hair was 
 rumpled, his face was flushed with unnatural excitement, 
 his eyes were sparkling, and he was panting like a
 
 THE UNKNOWN MASTERPIECE 35 
 
 young man drunk with passion . . . ' Ha, ha ! ' he 
 cried, 'you didn't expect such perfection, did you? 
 You're standing before a woman, and you're looking 
 for a mere picture ! There 's such depth in this canvas, 
 the atmosphere is so truthful, that you positively can't 
 distinguish it from the atmosphere around you. Where 
 is artifice? Gone, vanished this is the very form itself 
 of a young girl. Haven't I got the colour, the very soul 
 of the line which seems to bound the body ? Why, it 's 
 the same phenomenon, isn't it ? that we see every day 
 of objects floating in atmosphere as a fish floats in 
 water. Look how the contours are detached from the 
 background ! Aren't you convinced that you could 
 pass your hand behind that back ? That 's why, for 
 seven whole years, I Ve studied the effects of the coup- 
 ling of light and objects just to get that. And the 
 hair isn't it drenched with sunshine? Did she breathe 
 just then ? I believe she did ! . . . And look at that 
 bosom ! Who wouldn't kneel and worship it ? Why, 
 the flesh moves as you look ! She 's going to stand up 
 wait ! ' 
 
 'Do you perceive anything?' asked Poussin of 
 Porbus. 
 
 ' No. ... Do you ? ' 
 
 ' Nothing.' 
 
 The two painters left the old man to his rapture, and 
 looked to see whether the light, falling full on the 
 canvas he was showing them, might not possibly be 
 neutralising all the effects. They stood on the right,
 
 36 THE UNKNOWN MASTERPIECE 
 
 on the left, and straight in front of the picture, now 
 stooping, now standing erect. . . . 
 
 ' Yes, yes it is really a canvas,' said Frenhofer, 
 mistaking the motive of this minute scrutiny. ' Look ! 
 here 's the stretcher, here 's the easel ; and why ! here 
 are my colours, my brushes He seized a brush, and 
 held it to them with a boyish gesture. 
 
 'The old rogue is making fun of us,' said Poussin, 
 returning to the supposed picture. ' All I can see there 
 is a mass of confused colour, imprisoned in a multi- 
 tude of extraordinary lines like a sort of wall of paint- 
 ing.' 
 
 ' No, we 're wrong look ! ' cried Porbus. 
 
 Drawing nearer, they perceived in one corner of the 
 canvas the tip of a bare foot. This projected from the 
 chaos of tints, of tones, of faintest gradations, which 
 made up something resembling a shapeless cloud. 
 'Twas an enchanting foot a living foot ! they stood 
 struck dumb with admiration before the one fragment 
 which had escaped from that slow, relentless, incredible 
 destruction. The foot had the same effect as has 
 the torso of some Parian-marble Venus emerging 
 from the litter of a city that has been burned to the 
 ground. 
 
 ' There 's a woman underneath ! ' cried Porbus, point- 
 ing out to Poussin the layers of colour which the old 
 painter had heaped up in the belief that he was bringing 
 his picture to perfection. 
 
 The two artists turned swiftly to Frenhofer. They
 
 THE UNKNOWN MASTERPIECE 37 
 
 were beginning to have some idea, however vague, 
 of the state of rapture in which he lived and 
 moved. 
 
 ' He is not joking,' said Porbus. 
 
 ' Yes, my friend,' said the old man, coming to him- 
 self again, ' one must have faith faith in Art and one 
 must live long and long with one 's work before one can 
 produce a creation like that ! Some of those shadows 
 gave me a desperate bout of it. Look now, there on 
 the cheek, under the eyes, do you see a slight shade of 
 a shade which, if you '11 observe it some day in real life, 
 I guarantee you'll judge to be untranslatable. Well, 
 do you suppose that effect didn't cost me the devil of a 
 time to produce? But then again, my dear Porbus, 
 look carefully into my method, and you '11 understand 
 better what I once said about the way to treat your 
 object and its contours. Look at the light on the 
 bosom, and observe how, by successive touches and by 
 putting lots of paint on my high lights, I 've succeeded 
 in getting hold of the very gleam itself and combining 
 it with the dazzling whiteness of the places it lights up ; 
 and then again, by a reversal of the process, by toning 
 down the projections, the actual grain of the paint, see 
 how I 've caressed the contour of my figure, drowned it 
 in half-tints till I 've dismissed all suspicion of drawing 
 or any artificial method whatever, and given it the 
 aspect, the roundness, of Nature itself. Come nearer ; 
 then you '11 see the work better. It loses, at a distance. 
 There ! now that, I consider, is very remarkable.' And
 
 38 THE UNKNOWN MASTERPIECE 
 
 with the point of his brush, he indicated a mere plaster 
 of light colour. 
 
 Porbus clapped him on the shoulder, and, turning to 
 Poussin, ' Do you know, we are looking at a very great 
 painter ? ' said he. 
 
 ' He is even more of a poet than of a painter,' replied 
 Poussin, gravely. 
 
 'There, 'went on Porbus, touching the picture, 'there 
 culminates our Art in this world ! ' 
 
 ' And thence it mounts to Heaven, and loses itself,' 
 answered Poussin. 
 
 ' What joys are embodied in that bit of canvas ! ' 
 cried Porbus. 
 
 The old man, rapt away, never heard them ; he was 
 smiling at his imaginary lady. 
 
 ' But sooner or later he must see that there 's nothing 
 on his canvas ! ' Poussin exclaimed. 
 
 ' Nothing on my canvas ! ' said Frenhofer, looking in 
 turn at the painters and at his supposed picture. 
 
 'What have you done?' said Porbus, under his 
 breath, to Poussin. 
 
 The old man clutched the young man's arm and said : 
 'You see nothing, do you? you clown, you renegade, 
 you ninny, you ' he ended with a hideous obscenity. 
 ' How dared you come up here, then ? . . . My good 
 Porbus,' he went on, turning to the painter, ' surely you 
 aren't making game of me, too ? Tell me I 'm your 
 friend ; say, have I really spoilt my picture ? ' 
 
 Porbus hesitated, afraid to speak ; but the anxiety de-
 
 THE UNKNOWN MASTERPIECE 39 
 
 picted on the old man's white face was so intense, that 
 he pointed to the canvas, saying, ' Look ! ' 
 
 Frenhofer looked at his picture for a moment, and 
 staggered. ' Nothing ! nothing ! And I Ve worked for 
 ten years. . . .' 
 
 He sat down and wept. 
 
 ' And so I 'm an imbecile, a madman ! I have 
 neither talent nor capacity ! I 'm nothing now but a 
 rich man like the rest as dull as any of 'em. I 've 
 produced nothing ! ' 
 
 He gazed through blinding tears at his picture ; then 
 all at once rose haughtily, and flashed a look at the 
 two painters. 
 
 ' Oh, by the Blood, by the Body, by the Head of 
 Christ ! you 're nothing but a pair of jealous thieves that 
 want me to think she 's ruined so that you may get her 
 away from me ! I can see her ! ' he cried ; ' she 's a 
 beauty, she 's a wonder ' 
 
 Just then, Poussin heard Gillette sobbing. She was 
 sitting, all forgotten, in a corner. 
 
 ' What 's the matter, my darling ? ' asked the painter, 
 instantly turning into a lover again. 
 
 ' Kill me ! ' she wept, ' I should be a vile wretch if I 
 loved you still, for I despise you. ... I admire you, 
 and you make me shudder ! I love you, and I believe 
 I already detest you ! ' 
 
 While Poussin was listening to Gillette, Frenhofer 
 was covering up his picture with a green cloth, as 
 seriously and tranquilly as a jeweller who closes his
 
 drawers against what he supposes to be a gang of clever 
 thieves. He cast upon the two men a profoundly sinis- 
 ter look, all scorn and distrust, led them silently, with 
 convulsive rapidity, to his studio-door then, on the 
 threshold, spoke. 
 
 'Good-bye, my little friends.' 
 
 The tone chilled their blood. Next day, Porbus, 
 very uneasy, returned and learnt that Frenhofer had 
 died in the night, after burning his pictures.
 
 THE ATHEIST'S MASS 
 
 DOCTOR BIANCHON a physician to whom science owes 
 a beautiful physiological theory, and who, though still a 
 young man, has won himself a place among the cele- 
 brities of the Paris School, a centre of light to which all 
 the doctors of Europe pay homage had practised 
 surgery before devoting himself to medicine. His early 
 studies were directed by one of the greatest surgeons in 
 France, the celebrated Desplein, who was regarded as a 
 luminary of science. Even his enemies admitted that 
 with him was buried a technical skill that he could not 
 bequeath to any successor. Like all men of genius he 
 left no heirs. All that was peculiarly his own he carried 
 to the grave with him. 
 
 The glory of great surgeons is like that of actors 
 whose work exists only so long as they live, and of 
 whose talent no adequate idea can be formed when they 
 are gone. Actors and surgeons, and also great singers 
 like those artists who increase tenfold the power of 
 music by the way in which they perform it all these 
 are the heroes of a moment. Desplein is a striking 
 instance of the similarity of the destinies of such trans- 
 itory geniuses. His name, yesterday so famous, to-day 
 
 41
 
 42 THE ATHEIST'S MASS 
 
 almost forgotten, will live among the specialists of his 
 own branch of science without being known beyond it. 
 
 But is not an unheard-of combination of circum- 
 stances required for the name of a learned man to pass 
 from the domain of science into the general history of 
 mankind ? Had Desplein that universality of acquire- 
 ments that makes of a man the expression, the type of a 
 century? He was gifted with a magnificent power of 
 diagnosis. He could see into the patient and his 
 malady by an acquired or natural intuition, that enabled 
 him to grasp the peculiar characteristics of the indi- 
 vidual, and determine the precise moment, the hour, the 
 minute, when he should operate, taking into account 
 both atmospheric conditions and the special tempera- 
 ment of his patient. In order thus to be able to work 
 hand in hand with Nature, had he studied the ceaseless 
 union of organised and elementary substances contained 
 in the atmosphere, or supplied by the earth to man, 
 who absorbs and modifies them so as to derive from 
 them an individual result ? Or did he proceed by that 
 power of deduction and analogy to which the genius of 
 Cuvier owed so much ? 
 
 However that may be, this man had made himself 
 master of all the secrets of the body. He knew it in its 
 past as in its future, taking the present for his point of 
 departure. But did he embody in his own person all 
 the science of his time ; as was the case with Hippo- 
 crates, Galen, and Aristotle? Did he lead a whole 
 school towards new worlds of knowledge? No. And
 
 THE ATHEIST'S MASS 43 
 
 while it is impossible to deny to this indefatigable 
 observer of the chemistry of the human body the 
 possession of something like the ancient science of 
 Magism that is to say the knowledge of principles in 
 combination, of the causes of life, of life as the ante- 
 cedent of life, and what it will be through the action of 
 causes preceding its existence it must be acknowledged 
 that all this was entirely personal to him. Isolated 
 during his life by egotism, this egotism was the suicide 
 of his fame. His tomb is not surmounted by a pre- 
 tentious statue proclaiming to the future the mysteries 
 that genius has unveiled for it. 
 
 But perhaps the talents of Desplein were linked with 
 his beliefs, and therefore mortal. For him the earth's 
 atmosphere was a kind of envelope generating all things. 
 He regarded the earth as an egg in its shell, and unable 
 to solve the old riddle as to whether the egg or the hen 
 came first, he admitted neither the hen nor the egg. 
 He believed neither in a mere animal nature giving 
 origin to the race of man, nor in a spirit surviving him. 
 Desplein was not in doubt. He asserted his theories. 
 His plain open atheism was like that of many men, 
 some of the best fellows in the world, but invincibly 
 atheistic atheists of a type of which religious people do 
 not admit the existence. This opinion could hardly be 
 otherwise with a man accustomed from his youth to 
 dissect the highest of beings, before, during and after 
 life, without finding therein that one soul that is so 
 necessary to religious theories. He recognised there a 
 
 E
 
 44 THE ATHEIST'S MASS 
 
 cerebral centre, a nervous centre, and a centre for the 
 respiratory and circulatory system, and the two former 
 so completely supplemented each other, that during the 
 last part of his life he had the conviction that the sense 
 of hearing was not absolutely necessary for one to hear, 
 nor the sense of vision absolutely necessary for sight, 
 and that the solar plexus could replace them without 
 one being aware of the fact. Desplein, recognising 
 these two souls in man, made it an argument for his 
 atheism, without however assuming anything as to the 
 belief in God. This man was said to have died in final 
 impenitence, as many great geniuses have unfortunately 
 died, whom may God forgive. 
 
 Great as the man was, his life had in it many ' little- 
 nesses ' (to adopt the expression used by his enemies, 
 who were eager to diminish his fame), though it would 
 perhaps be more fitting to call them ' apparent contra- 
 dictions.' failing to understand the motives on which 
 high minds act, envious and stupid people at once seize 
 hold of any surface discrepancies to base upon them 
 an indictment, on which they straightway ask for judg- 
 ment. If, after all, success crowns the methods they 
 have attacked, and shows the co-ordination of prepara- 
 tion and result, all the same something will remain of 
 these charges flung out in advance. Thus in our time 
 Napoleon was condemned by his contemporaries for 
 having spread the wings of the eagle towards England. 
 They had to wait till 1822 for the explanation of 1804, 
 and of the flat-bottomed boats of Boulogne.
 
 THE ATHEIST'S MASS 45 
 
 In the case of Desplein, his fame and his scientific 
 knowledge not being open to attack, his enemies found 
 fault with his strange whims, his singular character. 
 For he possessed in no small degree that quality which 
 the English call ' eccentricity.' Now he would be 
 attired with a splendour that suggested Crebillon's 
 stately tragedy ; and then he would suddenly affect a 
 strange indifference in the matter of dress. One saw 
 him now in a carriage, now on foot. By turns sharp- 
 spoken and kindly ; assuming an air of closeness and 
 stinginess, but at the same time ready to put his fortune 
 at the disposal of exiled professors of his science, who 
 would do him the honour of accepting his help for a 
 few days no one ever gave occasion for more contra- 
 dictory judgments. Although for the sake of obtaining 
 a decoration that doctors were not allowed to canvass 
 for, he was quite capable of letting a prayer-book slip 
 out of his pocket when at court, you may take it that in 
 his own mind he made a mockery of everything. He 
 had a deep disdain for men, after having caught 
 glimpses of their true character in the midst of the 
 most solemn and the most trivial acts of their existence. 
 In a great man all his characteristics are generally in 
 keeping with each other. If one of these giants has 
 more talent than wit, it is all the same true that his wit 
 is something deeper than that of one of whom all that 
 can be said is that 'He is a witty fellow.' Genius 
 always implies a certain insight into the moral side of 
 things. This insight may be applied to one special line
 
 4 6 
 
 of thought, but one cannot see the flower without at 
 the same time seeing the sun that produces it. The 
 man who, hearing a diplomatist whom he was saving 
 from death ask, ' How is the Emperor ? ' remarked, 'The 
 courtier is recovering, and the man will recover with 
 him ! ' was not merely a doctor or a surgeon, but was 
 also not without a considerable amount of wit. Thus 
 the patient, unwearying observation of mankind might 
 do something to justify the exorbitant pretensions of 
 Desplein, and make one admit that, as he himself 
 believed, he was capable of winning as much distinction 
 as a Minister of State, as he had gained as a surgeon. 
 
 Amongst the problems that the life of Desplein pre- 
 sented to the minds of his contemporaries, we have 
 chosen one of the most interesting, because the key to 
 it will be found in the ending of the story, and will 
 serve to clear him of many stupid accusations made 
 against him. 
 
 Among all Desplein's pupils at the hospital, Horace 
 Bianchon was one of those to whom he was most strongly 
 attached. Before becoming a resident student at the 
 Hotel Dieu, Horace Bianchon was a medical student, liv- 
 ing in the Quartier Latin in a wretched lodging-house, 
 known by the name of the Maison Vauquer. There the 
 poor young fellow experienced the pressure of that acute 
 poverty, which is a kind of crucible, whence men of 
 great talent are expected to come forth pure and in- 
 corruptible, like a diamond that can be subjected to 
 blows of all kinds without breaking. Though the fierce
 
 THE ATHEIST'S MASS 47 
 
 fire of passion has been aroused, they acquire a pro- 
 bity that it cannot alter, and they become used to 
 struggles that are the lot of genius, in the midst of the 
 ceaseless toil, in which they curb desires that are not 
 to be satisfied. Horace was an upright young man, 
 incapable of taking any crooked course in matters where 
 honour was involved ; going straight to the point ; ready 
 to pawn his overcoat for his friends, as he was to give 
 them his time and his long vigils. In a word Horace was 
 one of those friends who do not trouble themselves as to 
 what they are to receive in return for what they bestow, 
 taking it for granted that, when it comes to their turn, 
 they will get more than they give. Most of his friends 
 had for him that heart-felt respect which is inspired by 
 unostentatious worth, and many of them would have 
 been afraid to provoke his censure. But Horace mani- 
 fested these good qualities without any pedantic display. 
 Neither a puritan nor a preacher, he would in his 
 simplicity enforce a word of good advice with any oath, 
 and was ready for a bit of good cheer when the occasion 
 offered. A pleasant comrade, with no more shyness 
 than a trooper, frank and outspoken not as a sailor, 
 for the sailor of to-day is a wily diplomatist but as a 
 fane young fellow, who has nothing in his life to be 
 ashamed of, he went his way with head erect and with 
 a cheerful mind. To sum it all up in one word, Horace 
 was the Pylades of more than one Orestes, creditors 
 nowadays playing most realistically the part of the 
 Furies. He bore his poverty with that gaiety which is
 
 48 THE ATHEIST'S MASS 
 
 perhaps one of the chief elements of courage, and, like 
 all those who have nothing, he contracted very few 
 debts. As enduring as a camel, as alert as a wild deer, 
 he was steadfast in his ideas and in his conduct. 
 
 The happiness of Bianchon's life began on the day 
 when the famous surgeon became acquainted with the 
 good qualities and the defects, which, each as well as 
 the other, make Dr. Horace Bianchon doubly dear to 
 his friends. When the teacher of a hospital class 
 receives a young man into his inner circle, that young 
 man, has, as the saying goes, his foot in the stirrup. 
 Desplein did not fail to take Bianchon with him as his 
 assistant to wealthy houses, where nearly always a 
 gratuity slipped into the purse of the student, and 
 where, all unconsciously, the young provincial had re- 
 vealed to him some of the mysteries of Parisian life. 
 Desplein would have him in his study during consulta- 
 tions, and found work for him there. Sometimes he 
 would send him to a watering place, as companion to a 
 rich invalid, in a word, he was preparing a professional 
 connection for him. The result of all this was that 
 after a certain time the tyrant of the operating theatre 
 had his right-hand man. These two one of them at 
 the summit of professional honours and science, and in 
 the enjoyment of an immense fortune and an equal 
 renown, the other a modest cipher without fortune or 
 fame became intimate friends. The great Desplein 
 told everything to his pupil. Bianchon came to know 
 the mysteries of this temperament, half lion, half bull,
 
 THE ATHEIST'S MASS 49 
 
 that in the end caused an abnormal expansion of the 
 great man's chest and killed him by enlargement of 
 the heart. He studied the odd whims of this busy life, 
 the schemes of its sordid avarice, the projects of this 
 politician disguised as a man of science. He was able 
 to forecast the disappointments that awaited the one 
 touch of sentiment that was buried in a heart not of 
 stone though made to seem like stone. 
 
 One day Bianchon told Desplein that a poor water- 
 carrier in the Quartier Saint-Jacques was suffering from 
 a horrible illness caused by overwork and poverty. 
 This poor native of Auvergne had only potatoes to eat 
 during the hard winter of 1821. Desplein left all his 
 patients. At the risk of breaking down his horse, he 
 drove at full speed, accompanied by Bianchon, to the 
 poor man's lodging, and himself superintended his 
 removal to a private nursing home established by the 
 celebrated Dubois in the Faubourg Saint-Denis. He 
 went to attend to the man himself, and gave him, when 
 he had recovered, money enough to buy a horse and a 
 water-cart. The Auvergnat distinguished himself by an 
 unconventional proceeding. One of his friends fell 
 sick, and he at once brought him to Desplein, and said 
 to his benefactor : 
 
 ' I would not think of allowing him to go to any one 
 else.' 
 
 Overwhelmed with work as he was, Desplein grasped 
 the water-carrier's hand and said to him : 
 
 ' Bring them all to me.'
 
 50 THE ATHEIST'S MASS 
 
 He had this poor fellow from the Cantal admitted to 
 the Hotel Dieu, where he took the greatest care of him. 
 Bianchon had on many occasions remarked that his 
 chief had a particular liking for people from Auvergne, 
 and especially for the water-carriers ; but as Desplein 
 took a kind of pride in his treatment of his poor 
 patients at the Hotel Dieu, his pupil did not see any- 
 thing very strange in this. 
 
 One day when Bianchon was crossing the Place 
 Saint-Sulpice he caught sight of his teacher going into 
 the church about nine o'clock in the morning. 
 Desplein, who at this period would not go a step with- 
 out calling for his carriage, was on foot, and slipped in 
 quietly by the side door in the Rue du Petit Lion, as if 
 he was going into some doubtful place. The student was 
 naturally seized by a great curiosity, for he knew the 
 opinions of his master; so Bianchon too slipped into 
 Saint-Sulpice and was not a little surprised to see the 
 famous Desplein, this atheist, who thought very little of 
 angels, as beings who give no scope for surgery, this 
 scoffer, humbly kneeling, and where ? ... in the Lady 
 Chapel, where he heard a mass, gave an alms for the 
 church expenses and for the poor, and remained 
 throughout as serious as if he were engaged in an 
 operation. 
 
 Bianchon's astonishment knew no bounds. ' If,' he 
 said to himself, ' I had seen him holding one of the 
 cords of the canopy at a public procession on Corpus 
 Christi I might just laugh at him ; but at this time of
 
 THE ATHEIST'S MASS 51 
 
 day, all alone, without any one to see him, this is 
 certainly something to set one thinking ! ' 
 
 Bianchon had no wish to appear to be playing the 
 spy on the chief surgeon of the Hotel Dieu, so he went 
 away. It so happened that Desplein asked him to dine 
 with him that day, not at his house but at a restaurant. 
 Between the cheese and the dessert Bianchon, by 
 cleverly leading up to it, managed to say something about 
 the mass, and spoke of it as a mummery and a farce. 
 
 'A farce,' said Desplein, 'that has cost Christendom 
 more bloodshed than all the battles of Napoleon, all the 
 leeches of Broussais. It is a papal invention, that only 
 dates from the sixth century. What torrents of blood 
 were not shed to establish the feast of Corpus Christi, 
 by which the Court of Rome sought to mark its victory 
 in the question of the real presence, and the schism that 
 has troubled the church for three centuries ! The wars 
 of the Count of Toulouse and the Albigenses were the 
 sequel of that affair. The Vaudois and the Albigenses 
 refused to recognise the innovation.' 
 
 In a word Desplein took a pleasure in giving vent to 
 all his atheistic ardour, and there was a torrent of 
 Voltairian witticisms, or to describe it more accurately, 
 a detestable imitation of the style of the Citateur. 1 
 
 1 Hum ! ' said Bianchon to himself, ' what has become 
 of my devotee of this morning ? ' 
 
 1 The Citatettf, a now forgotten book by Pigault Lebrun, pub- 
 lished at Paris in 1803 a kind of popular summary of current 
 attacks on the clergy and their teachings. Translator.
 
 Sa THE ATHEIST'S MASS 
 
 He kept silent. He began to doubt if it was really 
 his chief that he had seen at Saint-Sulpice. Desplein 
 would not have taken the trouble to lie to Bianchon. 
 They knew each other too well. They had already 
 exchanged ideas on points quite as serious, and dis- 
 cussed systems of the nature of things, exploring and 
 dissecting them with the knives and scalpels of in- 
 credulity. 
 
 Three months went by. Bianchon took no further 
 step in connection with the incident, though it remained 
 graven in his memory. One day that year one of the 
 doctors of the Hotel Dieu took Desplein by the arm in 
 Bianchon's presence, as if he had a question to put to 
 him. 
 
 ' Whatever do you go to Saint-Sulpice for, my dear 
 master ? ' he said to him. 
 
 'To see one of the priests there, who has caries in 
 the knee, and whom Madame the Duchess of Angou- 
 leme did me the honour to recommend to my care,' 
 said Desplein. 
 
 The doctor was satisfied with this evasion, but not so 
 Bianchon. 
 
 ' Ah, he goes to see diseased knees in the church ! 
 Why, he went to hear mass ! ' said the student to 
 himself. 
 
 Bianchon made up his mind to keep a watch on 
 Desplein. He remembered the day, the hour, when 
 he had caught him going into Saint-Sulpice, and he 
 promised himself that he would be there next year on
 
 THE ATHEIST'S MASS 53 
 
 the same day and at the same hour, to see if he would 
 catch him again. In this case the recurring date of 
 his devotions would give ground for a scientific investi- 
 gation, for one ought not to expect to find in such 
 a man a direct contradiction between thought and 
 action. 
 
 Next year, on the day and at the hour, Bianchon, 
 who by this time was no longer one of Desplein's 
 resident students, saw the surgeon's carriage stop at 
 the corner of the Rue de Tournon and the Rue du 
 Petit Lion. His friend got out, passed stealthily along 
 by the wall of Saint-Sulpice, and once more heard his 
 mass at the Lady altar. It was indeed Desplein, the 
 chief surgeon of the hospital, the atheist at heart, the 
 devotee at haphazard. The problem was getting to be 
 a puzzle. The persistence of the illustrious man of 
 science made it all very complicated. When Desplein 
 had gone out Bianchon went up to the sacristan, who 
 came to do his work in the chapel, and asked him if 
 that gentleman was a regular attendant there. 
 
 'Well, I have been here twenty years,' said the 
 sacristan, 'and all that time M. Desplein has come 
 four times a year to be present at this mass. He 
 founded it.' 
 
 ' A foundation made by him ! ' said Bianchon, as he 
 went away. 'Well, it is more wonderful than all the 
 mysteries.' 
 
 Some time passed by before Dr. Bianchon, although 
 the friend of Desplein, found an opportunity to talk to
 
 54 THE ATHEIST'S MASS 
 
 him of this singular incident in his life. Though they 
 met in consultation or in society, it was difficult to get 
 that moment of confidential chat alone together, when 
 two men sit with their feet on the fender, and their 
 heads resting on the backs of their arm-chairs, and tell 
 each other their secrets. At last, after a lapse of seven 
 years, and after the Revolution of 1830, when the 
 people had stormed the Archbishop's house, when 
 Republican zeal led them to destroy the gilded crosses 
 that shone like rays of light above the immense sea 
 of housetops, when unbelief side by side with revolt 
 paraded the streets, Bianchon again came upon Des- 
 plein as he entered the church of Saint-Sulpice. The 
 doctor followed him in, and took his place beside him, 
 without his friend taking any notice of him, or showing 
 the least surprise. Together they heard the mass he 
 had founded. 
 
 'Will you tell me, my dear friend,' said Bianchon to 
 Desplein, when they left ; the church, 'the reason for 
 this monkish proceeding of yours? I have already 
 caught you going to mass three times, you of all men ! 
 You must tell me the meaning of this mystery, and 
 explain to me this flagrant contradiction between your 
 opinions and your conduct. You don't believe in God 
 and you go to mass ! My dear master, you are bound 
 to give me an answer.' 
 
 'I am like a good many devotees, men deeply 
 religious to all appearance, but quite as much atheists 
 as we can be, you and I.'
 
 THE ATHEIST'S MASS 55 
 
 And then there was a torrent of epigrams referring to 
 certain political personages, the best known of whom 
 presents us in our own time with a new edition of the 
 Tartuffe of Moliere. 
 
 'I am not asking you about all that,' said Bianchon. 
 ' But I do want to know the reason for what you have 
 just been doing here. Why have you founded this 
 mass ? ' 
 
 ' My word ! my dear friend,' said Desplein, ' I am 
 on the brink of the grave, and I may just as well talk 
 to you about the early days of my life.' 
 
 Just then Bianchon and the great man were in the 
 Rue des Quatre Vents, one of the most horrible streets 
 in Paris. Desplein pointed to the sixth story of one 
 of those high, narrow-fronted houses that stand like 
 obelisks. The outer door opens on a passage, at the 
 end of which is a crooked stair, lighted by those small 
 inner windows that are aptly called jours de souff- 
 rance. 1 It was a house with a greenish-coloured front, 
 with a furniture dealer installed on the ground floor, 
 and apparently a different type of wretchedness lodging 
 in every story. As he raised his arm with a gesture 
 that was full of energy, Desplein said to Bianchon 
 
 ' I lived up there for two years ! ' 
 
 1 A pun generally evaporates and disappears in the process of 
 translation. Jours de souffrance suggests ' days of endurance ' ; 
 but taking/0r in the sense of a window or opening giving light 
 it refers here to windows on a stair or passage, getting their light 
 not from the open air but from one of the rooms, ' borrowed 
 lights," as we sometimes call them. Translator.
 
 56 THE ATHEIST'S MASS 
 
 1 1 know that. D'Arthez used to live there. I came 
 there nearly every day when I was quite a young fellow, 
 and in those days we used to call it " the store bottle of 
 great men ! " Well, what comes next?' 
 
 ' The mass that I have just heard is connected with 
 events that occurred when I was living in that garret 
 in which you tell me D'Arthez once lived, the room 
 from the window of which there is a line hanging with 
 clothes drying on it, just above the flower-pot. I had 
 such a rough start in life, my dear Bianchon, that I 
 could dispute with any one you like the palm for suffer- 
 ing endured here in Paris. I bo*e it all, hunger, thirst, 
 want of money, lack of clothes, boots, linen all that 
 is hardest in poverty. I have tried to warm my frozen 
 fingers with my breath in that "store bottle of great 
 men," which I should like to revisit with you. As I 
 worked in the winter a vapour would rise from my 
 head, and I could see the steam of perspiration like we 
 see it about the horses on a frosty day. I don't know 
 where one finds the foothold to stand up against such 
 a life. I was all alone, without help, without a penny 
 to buy books or to pay the expenses of my medical 
 education : without a friend, for my irritable, gloomy, 
 nervous character did me harm. No one would recog- 
 nise in my fits of irritation the distress, the struggles of 
 a man who is striving to rise to the surface from his 
 place in the very depths of the social system. But I 
 can say to you, in whose presence I have no need to 
 cloak myself in any way, that I had that basis of sound
 
 THE ATHEIST'S MASS 57 
 
 ideas and impressionable feelings, which will always be 
 part of the endowment of men strong enough to climb 
 up to some summit, after having long plodded through 
 the morass of misery. I could not look for any help 
 from my family or my native place beyond the in- 
 sufficient allowance that was made to me. To sum it 
 all up, at that time my breakfast in the morning was a 
 roll that a baker in the Rue du Petit Lion sold cheaply 
 to me because it was from the baking of yesterday or 
 the day before, and which I broke up into some milk ; 
 thus my morning meal did not cost me more than a 
 penny. I dined only every second day, in a boarding- 
 house where one could get a dinner for eightpence. 
 Thus I spent only fourpence-halfpenny a day. You 
 know as well as I do what care I would take of such 
 things as clothes and boots ! I am not sure that in 
 later life we feel more trouble at the treachery of a 
 colleague than we have felt, you and I, at discovering 
 the mocking grimace of a boot sole that is coming away 
 from the sewing, or at hearing the rending noise of a 
 torn coat cuff. I drank only water. I looked at the 
 cafes with the greatest respect. The Cafe Zoppi 
 seemed to me like a promised land, whefe the Lucul- 
 luses of the Quartier Latin had the exclusive right of 
 entry. " Shall I ever," I used sometimes to ask myself, 
 " shall I ever be able to go in there to take a cup of 
 coffee and hot milk, or to play a game of dominoes ? " 
 
 ' Well I brought to my work the furious energy that 
 my poverty inspired. I tried rapidly to get a grasp of
 
 58 THE ATHEIST'S MASS 
 
 exact knowledge so as to acquire an immense personal 
 worth in order to deserve the position I hoped to reach 
 in the days when I would have come forth from my 
 nothingness. I consumed more oil than bread. The 
 lamp that lighted me during these nights of persistent 
 toil cost me more than my food. The struggle was 
 long, obstinate, without encouragement. I had won no 
 sympathy from those around me. To have friends 
 must one not associate with other young fellows, and 
 have a few pence to take a drink with them, and go 
 with them wherever students are to be found ? I had 
 nothing. And no one in Paris quite realises that nothing 
 is really nothing. If I ever had any occasion to reveal 
 my misery I felt in my throat that nervous contraction 
 that makes our patients sometimes imagine there is a 
 round mass coming up the gullet into the larynx. 
 Later on I have come across people, who, having been 
 born in wealth and never wanted for anything, knew 
 nothing of that problem of the Rule of Three : A 
 young man is to a crime as a five franc piece is to the 
 unknown quantity X. These gilded fools would say to 
 me: 
 
 ' " But why do you get into debt ? Why ever do you 
 contract serious obligations ? " 
 
 ' They remind me of that princess, who, on hearing 
 that the people were in want of bread, said : " Why 
 don't they buy sponge cakes?" I should like very 
 much to see one of those rich men, who complains that 
 I ask him for too high a fee when there has to be an
 
 THE ATHEIST'S MASS 59 
 
 operation yes, I should like to see him all alone in 
 Paris, without a penny, without luggage, without a 
 friend, without credit, and forced to work his five 
 fingers to the bone to get a living. What would he do ? 
 Where would he go to satisfy his hunger ? Bianchon, 
 if you have sometimes seen me bitter and hard, it was 
 because I was then thinking at once of my early 
 troubles and of the heartlessness, the selfishness of 
 which I have seen a thousand instances in the highest 
 circles ; or else I was thinking Of the obstacles that 
 hatred, envy, jealousy, calumny have raised up between 
 me and success. In Paris when certain people see you 
 ready to put your foot in the stirrup, some of them pull 
 at the skirt of your coat, others loosen the saddle girth ; 
 this one knocks a shoe off your horse, that one steals 
 your whip ; the least treacherous of the lot is the one 
 you see coming to fire a pistol at you point blank. You 
 have talent enough, my dear fellow, to know soon 
 enough the horrible, the unceasing warfare that medi- 
 ocrity carries on against the man that is its superior. If 
 one evening you lose twenty-five fouis, next morning 
 you will be accused of being a gambler, and your best 
 friends will say that you have lost twenty-five thousand 
 francs last night. If you have a headache, you will be 
 set down as a lunatic. If you are not lively, you will be 
 set down as unsociable. If to oppose this battalion of 
 pygmies, you call up your own superior powers, your 
 best friends will cry out that you wish to devour every- 
 thing, that you claim to lord it and play the tyrant. In 
 
 F
 
 6o 
 
 a word your good qualities will be turned into defects, 
 your defects will be turned into vices, and your virtues 
 will be crimes. If you have saved some one, it will be 
 said that you have killed him. If your patient re- 
 appears, it will be agreed that you have made sure of 
 the present at the expense of his future ; though he is 
 not dead, he will die. If you stumble, it will be a fall ! 
 Invent anything whatever, and assert your rights, and 
 you will be a difficult man to deal with, a sharp fellow, 
 who does not like to see young men succeed. So, my 
 dear friend, if I do not believe in God, I believe even 
 less in man. Do you not recognise in me a Desplein 
 that is quite different from the Desplein about whom 
 every one speaks ill ? But we need not dig into that 
 heap of mud. 
 
 ' Well, I was living in that house, I had to work to be 
 ready to pass my first examination, and I had not a 
 farthing. You know what it is ! I had come to one of 
 those crises of utter extremity when one says to oneself : 
 " I will enlist ! " I had one hope. I was expecting 
 from my native place a trunk full of linen, a present 
 from some old aunts, who, knowing nothing of Paris, 
 think about providing one with dress shirts, because 
 they imagine that with thirty francs a month their 
 nephew dines on ortolans. The trunk arrived while I 
 was away at the Medical School. It had cost forty 
 francs, carriage to be paid. The concierge of the house, 
 a German cobbler, who lived in a loft, had paid the 
 money and held the trunk. I took a walk in the Rue
 
 THE ATHEIST'S MASS 61 
 
 des Fosse-Saint-Germain-des-Pres and in the Rue de 
 1'Ecole de Medicine, without being able to invent a 
 stratagem, which would put the trunk in my possession, 
 without my being obliged to pay down the forty francs, 
 which of course I meant to pay after selling the linen. 
 My stupidity seemed a very fair sign to me that I was 
 fit for no vocation but surgery. My dear friend, 
 delicately organised natures, whose powers are exercised 
 in some higher sphere, are wanting in that spirit of 
 intrigue, which is fertile in resources and shifts. Genius 
 such as theirs depends on chance. They do not seek 
 out things, they come upon them. 
 
 ' At last, after dark, I went back to the house, just at 
 the moment when my next room neighbour was coming 
 in, a water-carrier named Bourgeat, a man from Saint- 
 Flour in Auvergne. We knew each other in the way 
 in which two lodgers come to know each other, when 
 both have their rooms on the same landing, and they 
 can hear each other going to bed, coughing, getting up, 
 and end by becoming quite used to each other. My 
 neighbour informed me that the landlord, to whom I 
 owed three months' rent, had sent me notice to quit. I 
 must clear out next day. He himself was to be evicted 
 on account of his business. I passed the most sorrow- 
 ful night of my life. 
 
 ' Where was I to find a porter to remove my poor 
 belongings, my books ? How was I to pay the porter 
 and the concierge ? Where could I go ? With tears in 
 my eyes I repeated these insoluble questions, as
 
 62 THE ATHEISTS MASS 
 
 lunatics repeat their catchwords. I fell asleep. For 
 the wretched there is a divine sleep full of beautiful 
 dreams. Next morning, while I was eating my porringer 
 full of bread crumbled into milk, Bourgeat came in, 
 and said to me in bad French : 
 
 " : Mister Student, I 'm a poor man, a foundling of the 
 hospice of Saint-Flour, without father or mother, and 
 not rich enough to marry. You are not much better off 
 for relations, or better provided with what counts? 
 Now, see here, I have down below a hand-cart that I 
 have hired at a penny an hour. All our things can be 
 packed on it. If you agree, we will look for a place 
 where we can lodge together, since we are turned out 
 of this. And after all it's not the earthly paradise." 
 
 ' " I know it well, my good Bourgeat," said I to him, 
 " but I am in a great difficulty. There 's a trunk for me 
 downstairs that contains linen worth a hundred crowns, 
 with which I could pay the landlord and what I owe to 
 the concierge, and I have not got as much as a hundred 
 sous." 
 
 '"Bah! I have some bits of coin," Bourgeat answered 
 me joyfully, showing me an old purse of greasy leather. 
 " Keep your linen." 
 
 ' Bourgeat paid my three months, and his own rent, 
 and settled with the concierge. Then he put our 
 furniture and my box of linen on his hand-cart and 
 drew it through the streets, stopping at every house 
 that showed a " Lodgings to Let " card. As for me I 
 would go upstairs to see if the place to let would suit
 
 THE ATHEIST'S MASS 63 
 
 us. At noon we were still wandering about the 
 Quartier Latin without having found anything. The 
 rent was the great obstacle. Bourgeat proposed to me 
 to have lunch at a wine-shop, at the door of which we 
 left the hand-cart. Towards evening, in the Cour de 
 Rohan off the Passage du Commerce, I found, under 
 the roof at the top of a house, two rooms, one on each 
 side of the staircase. We got them for a rent of sixty 
 francs a year each. So there we were housed, myself 
 and my humble friend. 
 
 'We dined together. Bourgeat, who earned some 
 fifty sous a day, had saved about a hundred crowns. . . . 
 He would soon be in a position to realise his ambition 
 and buy a water-cart and a horse. When he found out 
 how I was situated and he wormed out my secrets 
 with a depth of cunning and at the same time with a 
 kindly good nature that still moves my heart to-day 
 when I think of it he renounced for some time to 
 come the ambition of his life. Bourgeat had been a 
 street seller for twenty-two years. He sacrificed his 
 hundred crowns for my future.' 
 
 At this point Desplein took a firm grip of Bianchon's 
 arm. 
 
 'He gave me the money required for my examina- 
 tions ! This man, understood, my friend, that I had a 
 mission, that the needs of my intelligence came before 
 his. He busied himself with me, he called me his 
 " little one," he lent me the money I wanted to buy 
 books; he came in sometimes quite quietly to watch
 
 64 THE ATHEIST'S MASS 
 
 me at my work ; finally he took quite a motherly care 
 to see that I substituted a wholesome and abundant 
 diet for the bad and insufficient fare to which I had 
 been condemned. Bourgeat, a man of about forty, had 
 the features of a burgess of the middle ages, a full 
 rounded forehead, a head that a painter might have 
 posed as the model for a Lycurgus. The poor man felt 
 his heart big with affection seeking for some object. 
 He had never been loved by anything but a poodle, 
 that had died a short time before, and about which he 
 was always talking to me, asking if by any possibility 
 the church would consent to have prayers for its soul. 
 His dog, he said, had been really like a Christian, and 
 for twelve years it had gone to church with him, without 
 ever barking, listening to the organ without so much as 
 opening its mouth, and remaining crouched beside him 
 with a look that made one think it was praying with 
 him. This man transferred all his affection to me. He 
 took me up as a lonely, suffering creature. He became 
 for me like a most watchful mother, the most delicately 
 thoughtful of benefactors, in a word the ideal of that 
 virtue that rejoices in its own good work. When I met 
 him in the street he gave me an intelligent look, full of 
 a nobility that you cannot imagine ; he would then 
 assume a gait like that of a man who was carrying no 
 burden; he seemed delighted at seeing me in good 
 health and well dressed. It was such devoted affection 
 as one finds among the common people, the love of the 
 little shop girl, raised to a higher level. Bourgeat ran
 
 THE ATHEIST'S MASS 65 
 
 my errands. He woke me up in the night at the 
 appointed hour. He trimmed my lamp, scrubbed our 
 landing. He was a good servant as well as a good 
 father to me, and as cleanly in his work as an English 
 maid. He looked after our housekeeping. Like 
 Philopoemon he sawed up our firewood, and he set about 
 all his actions with a simplicity in performing them that 
 at the same time preserved his dignity, for he seemed 
 to realise that the end in view ennobled it all. 
 
 ' When I left this fine fellow to enter the Hotel Dieu 
 as a resident student, he felt a kind of sorrowful gloom 
 come over him at the thought that he could no longer live 
 with me. But he consoled himself by looking forward 
 to getting together the money that would be necessary for 
 the expenses of my final examination, and he made me 
 promise to come to see him on all my holidays. Bour- 
 geat was proud of me. He loved me for my own sake 
 and for his own. If you look up my essay for the 
 doctorate you will see that it was dedicated to him. In 
 the last year of my indoor course, I had made enough 
 money to be able to repay all I owed to this worthy 
 Auvergnat, by buying him a horse and a water-cart. 
 He was exceedingly angry at finding that I was thus 
 depriving myself of my money, and nevertheless he was 
 delighted at seeing his desires realised. He laughed 
 and he scolded me. He looked at his water-barrel and 
 his horse, and he wiped away a tear as he said 
 to me : 
 
 1 " It 's a pity ! Oh, what a fine water-cart ! You have
 
 66 THE ATHEIST'S MASS 
 
 done wrong ! . . . The horse is as strong as if he came 
 from Auvergne ! " 
 
 ' I have never seen anything more touching than this 
 scene. Bourgeat absolutely insisted on buying for me 
 that pocket-case of instruments mounted with silver 
 that you have seen in my study, and which is for me 
 the most valued of my possessions. Although he was 
 enraptured with my first successes he never let slip 
 a word or a gesture, that could be taken to mean, " It 
 is to me that this man's success is due ! " And never- 
 theless, but for him, I should have been killed by my 
 misery. The poor man broke himself down for my 
 sake. He had eaten nothing but bread seasoned with 
 garlic, in order that I might have coffee while I sat up 
 at my work. He fell sick. You may imagine how I 
 passed whole nights at his bedside. I pulled him 
 through it the first time, but two years after there was a 
 relapse, and notwithstanding the most assiduous care, 
 notwithstanding the greatest efforts of science, he had to 
 succumb. No king was ever cared for as he was. Yes, 
 Bianchon, to snatch this life from death I tried unheard- 
 of things. I wanted to make him live long enough to 
 allow him to see the results of his work, to realise all 
 his wishes, to satisfy the one gratitude that had filled 
 my heart, to extinguish a fire that burns in me even 
 now ! 
 
 'Bourgeat,' continued Desplein, after a pause, with 
 evident emotion, ' Bourgeat, my second father, died in 
 my arms, leaving me all he possessed by a will which he
 
 THE ATHEIST'S MASS 67 
 
 had made at a public notary's, and which bore the date 
 of the year when we went to lodge in the Cour de 
 Rohan. He had the faith of a simple workman. He 
 loved the Blessed Virgin as he would have loved his 
 mother. Zealous Catholic as he was, he had never said 
 a word to me about my own lack of religion. When he 
 was in danger of death he begged me to spare nothing 
 to obtain the help of the Church for him. I had mass 
 said for him every day. Often in the night he 
 expressed to me his fears for his future ; he was afraid 
 that he had not lived a holy enough life. Poor man ! 
 he used to work from morning to night. Who is 
 heaven for then, if there is a heaven ? He received the 
 last sacraments like the saint that he was, and his death 
 was worthy of his life. 
 
 ' I was the only one who followed his funeral. When 
 I had laid my one benefactor in the earth, I tried to 
 find out how I could discharge my debt of gratitude to 
 him. I knew that he had neither family nor friends, 
 neither wife nor children. But he believed ! he had 
 religious convictions, and had I any right to dispute 
 them ? He had spoken to me timidly of masses said 
 for the repose of the dead ; he did not seek to impose 
 this duty on me, thinking that it would be like asking 
 to be paid for his services to me. As soon as I could 
 arrange for the endowment, I gave the Saint-Sulpice the 
 sum necessary to have four masses said there each year. 
 As the only thing that I could offer to Bourgeat was 
 the fulfilment of his pious wishes, I go there in his
 
 68 THE ATHEIST'S MASS 
 
 name on the day the mass is said at the beginning of 
 each quarter of the year, and say the prayers for him 
 that he wished for. I say them in the good faith of one 
 who doubts : " My God, if there is a sphere where 
 after their death you place those who have been perfect, 
 think of good Bourgeat ; and if he has still anything to 
 suffer, lay these sufferings on me, so that he may enter 
 the sooner into what they call Paradise ! " This, my 
 dear friend, is all that a man, who holds my opinions, can 
 allow himself. God must be good-hearted, and He will 
 not take it ill on my part. But I swear to you, I would 
 give my fortune for the sake of finding the faith of 
 Bourgeat coming into my brain.' 
 
 Bianchon, who attended Desplein in his last illness, 
 does not venture to affirm, even now, that the famous 
 surgeon died an atheist. Will not those who believe 
 take pleasure in the thought that perhaps the poor 
 Auvergnat came to open for him the gate of Heaven, as 
 he had already opened for him the portals of that 
 temple on earth, on the fagade of which one reads the 
 words : Aux grands hommes la Patrie reconnais- 
 sante ? ] 
 
 1 Inscription on the facade of the Pantheon at Paris.
 
 AN EPISODE OF THE REIGN 
 OF TERROR 
 
 ABOUT eight o'clock on the evening of January 22nd, 
 1793, an aged woman was coming down the sharp 
 descent of the Faubourg Saint-Martin that ends in front 
 of the church of Saint-Laurent. Snow had fallen so 
 heavily all day long that hardly a footfall could be heard. 
 The streets were deserted. Fears that the silence 
 around naturally enough inspired were increased by all 
 the terror under which France was then groaning. So 
 the old lady had thus far met with no one else. Her 
 sight, which had long been failing, did not enable her 
 to distinguish far off by the light of the street lamps 
 some passers-by, moving like scattered shadows in the 
 huge thoroughfare of the Faubourg. She went on 
 bravely all alone in the midst of this solitude, as if her 
 age were a talisman that could be relied on to preserve 
 her from any mishap. 
 
 When she had passed the Rue des Morts she thought 
 she perceived the heavy, firm tread of a man walking 
 behind her. It occurred to her that it was not the first 
 time she had heard this sound. She was alarmed at 
 the idea that she was being followed, and she tried to 
 
 69
 
 70 AN EPISODE OF THE REIGN OF TERROR 
 
 walk faster in order to reach a fairly well-lighted shop, 
 in the hope that, in the light it gave, she would be able 
 to put to the test the suspicions that had taken posses- 
 sion of her. 
 
 As soon as she was within the circle of light projected 
 horizontally by the shop-front, she quickly turned her 
 head and caught a glimpse of a human form in the 
 foggy darkness. This vague glimpse was enough for 
 her. She tottered for a moment under the shock of 
 terror that overwhelmed her, for she no longer doubted 
 that she had been followed by the stranger from the 
 first step she had taken outside her lodging. The long- 
 ing to escape from a spy gave her strength. Without 
 being able to think of what she was doing, she began 
 to run as if she could possibly get away from a man 
 who must necessarily be much more agile than 
 herself. 
 
 After running for a few minutes she reached a con- 
 fectioner's shop, entered it, and fell, rather than sat, 
 down upon a chair that stood in front of the counter. 
 Even while she was raising the creaking latch, a young 
 woman, who was busy with some embroidery, raised 
 her eyes, and through the small panes of the half- 
 window in the shop door recognised the old-fashioned 
 violet silk mantle, in which the old lady was wrapped. 
 She hurriedly opened a drawer as if looking for some- 
 thing she was to hand over to her. 
 
 It was not only by her manner and the look on her 
 face that the young woman showed she was anxious to
 
 AN EPISODE OF THE REIGN OF TERROR 71 
 
 get rid of the stranger without delay, as if her visitor 
 were one of those there was no pleasure in seeing ; but, 
 besides this, she allowed an expression of impatience 
 to escape her on finding that the drawer was empty. 
 Then, without looking at the lady, she turned suddenly 
 from the counter, went towards the back shop, and 
 called her husband who at once made his appearance. 
 
 ' Wherever have you put away . . . ? ' she asked of 
 him, with an air of mystery without finishing her ques- 
 tion, but calling his attention to the old lady with a 
 glance of her eyes. 
 
 Although the confectioner could see nothing but the 
 immense black silk bonnet, trimmed with bows of 
 violet ribbon, that formed the strange visitor's headgear, 
 he left the shop again, after having cast at his wife a look 
 that seemed to say, ' Do you think I would leave that 
 in your counter . . . ? ' 
 
 Surprised at the motionless silence of the old lady 
 the shopwoman turned and approached her, and as she 
 looked at her she felt herself inspired with an impulse 
 of compassion, perhaps not unmingled with curiosity. 
 Although the woman's complexion showed an habitual 
 pallor, like that of one who makes a practice of secret 
 austerities, it was easy to see that a recent emotion had 
 brought an unusual paleness to her face. Her head- 
 dress was so arranged as to conceal her hair. No 
 doubt it was white with age, for there were no marks 
 on the upper part of her dress to show that she used 
 hair powder. The complete absence of ornament lent
 
 72 AN EPISODE OF THE REIGN OF TERROR 
 
 to her person an air of religious severity. Her features 
 had a grave, stately look. In these old times the 
 manners and habits of people of quality were so 
 different from those of other classes of society, that it 
 was easy to distinguish one of noble birth. So the 
 young woman felt convinced that the stranger was a 
 ci-devant, an ex-aristocrat, and that she had belonged to 
 the court. 
 
 ' Madame ..." she said to her with involuntary 
 respect, forgetting that such a title was now forbidden. 
 
 The old lady did not reply. She kept her eyes fixed 
 on the window of the shop, as if she could distinguish 
 some fearful object in that direction. 
 
 'What is the matter, citizeness?' asked the shop- 
 keeper, who had returned almost immediately. 
 
 And the citizen-confectioner roused the lady from 
 her reverie by offering her a little cardboard box 
 wrapped in blue paper. 
 
 1 Nothing, nothing, my friends,' she answered in a 
 sweet voice. She raised her eyes to the confectioner's 
 face as if to give him a look of thanks, but seeing the 
 red cap on his head, she uttered a cry : ' Ah, you 
 have betrayed me ! ' 
 
 The young woman and her husband replied by a 
 gesture of horror at the thought, which made the 
 stranger blush, perhaps at having suspected them, 
 perhaps with pleasure. 
 
 'Pardon me,' she said, with childlike gentleness. 
 Then, taking a louis d'or from her pocket, she offered it
 
 AN EPISODE OF THE REIGN OF TERROR 73 
 
 to the confectioner : ' Here is the price we agreed on,' 
 she added. 
 
 There is a poverty that the poor readily recognise. 
 The confectioner and his wife looked at one another, 
 silently turning each other's attention to the old lady, 
 while both formed one common thought. This louis 
 d 'or must be her last. The lady's hands trembled as 
 she offered the piece of money, she looked at it with a 
 sadness that had no avarice in it, but she seemed to 
 realise the full extent of the sacrifice she made. 
 Starvation and misery were as plainly marked on her 
 face as the lines that told of fear and of habits of 
 asceticism. In her dress there were traces of old 
 magnificence. It was of worn-out silk. Her mantle 
 was neat though threadbare, with some carefully 
 mended lace upon it. In a word it was a case of 
 wealth the worse for wear. The people of the shop, 
 hesitating between sympathy and self-interest, began by 
 trying to satisfy their consciences with words : 
 
 1 But, citizeness, you seem to be very weak 
 
 1 Would Madame like to take something ? ' said the 
 woman, cutting her husband short. 
 
 ' We have some very good soup,' added the confec- 
 tioner. 
 
 ' It is so cold to-night. Perhaps Madame has had a 
 chill while walking ? But you can rest here and warm 
 yourself for a while.' 
 
 ' We are not as black as the devil ! ' exclaimed the 
 confectioner.
 
 74 AN EPISODE OF THE REIGN OF TERROR 
 
 Won by the tone of kindness that found expression 
 in the words of the charitable shopkeepers, the lady 
 let them know she had been followed by a stranger, 
 and that she was afraid to go back alone to her 
 lodgings. 
 
 ' Is that all ? ' replied the man in the red cap, ' wait 
 a little, citizeness.' 
 
 He gave the louis <?or to his wife. . . . Then moved 
 by that sort of gratitude that finds its way into the heart 
 of a dealer when he has got an exorbitant price for some 
 merchandise of trifling value, he went and put on his 
 national Guard's uniform, took his hat, belted on his 
 sword, and reappeared as an armed man. But his wife 
 had had time to reflect. In her heart, as in so many 
 more, reflection closed the open hand of benevolence. 
 Anxious and fearful of seeing her husband involved in 
 some bad business, the confectioner's wife tried to pull 
 him by the skirt of his coat and stop him. But obeying 
 his own charitable feelings the good fellow offered at 
 once to escort the old lady. 
 
 'It seems that the man the citizeness is afraid of is 
 still prowling about in front of our shop,' said the young 
 woman excitedly. 
 
 ' I am afraid he is,' put in the lady naively. 
 
 'What if he were a spy? ... if there were some 
 plot ? . . . Don 't go, and take back that box from 
 her. . . .' 
 
 These words, whispered in the ear of the confectioner 
 by his wife, froze the sudden courage that had inspired him.
 
 AN EPISODE OF THE REIGN OF TERROR 75 
 
 'Well, I '11 just say a few words to him, and rid you 
 of him soon enough,' exclaimed the shopkeeper, as he 
 opened the door and slipped hurriedly out. 
 
 The old lady, passive as a child and almost stupefied 
 by her fear, sat down again on the chair. The good 
 shopkeeper was soon back. His face, naturally ruddy- 
 enough and further reddened by his oven fire, had 
 suddenly become pallid. He was a prey to such terror 
 that his legs shook and his eyes looked like those of a 
 drunken man. 
 
 ' Do you want to get our heads cut off, you wretch of 
 an aristocrat ? ' he cried out in a fury. ' Come, show us 
 your heels, and don't let us see you again, and don't 
 reckon on my supplying you with materials for your 
 plots ! ' 
 
 As he ended, the confectioner made an attempt to 
 take back from the old lady the little box which she 
 had put into one of her pockets. But hardly had his 
 bold hands touched her dress, than the stranger pre- 
 ferring to risk herself amid the perils of the street with- 
 out any other protector but God, rather than to lose what 
 she had just bought, regained all the agility of youth. 
 She rushed to the door, opened it briskly, and vanished 
 from the sight of wife and husband as they stood trem- 
 bling and astonished. 
 
 As soon as the stranger was outside she started off at 
 a rapid walk. But her strength soon began to desert 
 her, and she heard the spy, who had so pitilessly followed 
 her, making the snow crackle as he crushed it with his 
 
 G
 
 76 AN EPISODE OF THE REIGN OF TERROR 
 
 heavy tread. She had to stop. He stopped. She did 
 not dare to address him, or even to look at him it might 
 be on account of the fear that had seized upon her, or 
 because she could not think what to say. Then she 
 went on again walking slowly. 
 
 The man also slackened his pace so as to remain 
 always just at the distance that enabled him to keep her 
 in sight. He seemed to be the very shadow of the old 
 woman. Nine o'clock struck as the silent pair once 
 more passed by the church of Saint-Laurent. 
 
 It is a part of the nature of all minds, even of the 
 weakest, to find a feeling of calm succeed to any violent 
 agitation, for if our feelings are infinite, our organism 
 has its limits. So the stranger, finding that her supposed 
 persecutor did her no harm, was inclined to see in him 
 some unknown friend, who was anxious to protect her. 
 She summed up in her mind all the circumstances that 
 had attended the appearance of the stranger, as if seek- 
 ing for some plausible motives for this consoling opinion, 
 and was then satisfied to recognise on his part a friendly 
 rather than an evil purpose. Forgetful of the alarm, 
 which this man had so short a time ago caused the con- 
 fectioner, she now went on with a firm step into the 
 upper part of the Faubourg Saint- Martin. 
 
 After walking for half an hour she came to a house 
 situated near the point where the street, which leads to 
 the Pantin barrier, branches off from the main line of the 
 Faubourg. Even at the present day the neighbourhood 
 is still one of the loneliest in all Paris. A north-east
 
 AN EPISODE OF THE REIGN OF TERROR 77 
 
 wind blowing over the Buttes Chaumont and Belleville 
 whistled between the houses, or rather the cottages, 
 scattered about this almost uninhabited valley, in which 
 the enclosures were formed of fences built up of earth 
 and old bones. The desolate place seemed to be the 
 natural refuge of misery and despair. 
 
 The man, all eagerness in the pursuit of this poor 
 creature, who was so bold as to traverse these silent 
 streets in the night, seemed struck by the spectacle 
 that presented itself to his gaze. He stood still, full of 
 thought, in a hesitating attitude, in the feeble light of a 
 street lamp, the struggling rays of which could hardly 
 penetrate the fog. Fear seemed to sharpen the sight of 
 the old lady, who thought she saw something of evil 
 omen in the looks of the stranger. She felt her terror 
 reawakening, and took advantage of the seeming hesi- 
 tation that had brought the man to a standstill to slip 
 through a shadow to the door of a solitary house, she 
 pushed back a spring latch, and disappeared in an in- 
 stant like a ghost upon the stage. 
 
 The unknown man, without moving from where he 
 stood, kept his eyes fixed on the house, the appearance 
 of which was fairly typical of that of the wretched dwell- 
 ing places of this suburb of Paris. The tumble-down 
 hovel was built of bricks covered with a coat of yellow 
 plaster, so full of cracks that one feared to see the 
 whole fall down in a heap of ruins before the least 
 effort of the wind. There were three windows to each 
 floor, and their frames, rotten with damp and warped
 
 78 AN EPISODE OF THE REIGN OF TERROR 
 
 by the action of the sun, suggested that the cold must 
 penetrate freely into the rooms. The lonely house 
 looked like some old tower that time has forgotten to de- 
 stroy. A feeble gleam lit up the warped and crooked 
 window-sashes of the garret window, that showed up the 
 roof of this poor edifice, while all the rest of the house 
 was in complete darkness. 
 
 Not without difficulty the old woman climbed the 
 rough and clumsy stair, in ascending which one had to 
 lean on a rope that took the place of a handrail. She 
 gave a low knock at the door of the garret room, and 
 hurriedly took her seat on a chair, which an old man 
 offered to her. 
 
 ' Hide yourself ! hide yourself ! ' she said to him, 
 ' though we so seldom go out, our doings are known, our 
 steps are spied upon. . . . ' 
 
 'Is there anything new then?' asked another old 
 woman who was seated near the fire. 
 
 ' That man, who has been prowling round the house 
 since yesterday, followed me this evening. . . .' 
 
 At these words the three inmates of the hovel looked 
 at each other, while they showed on their faces signs of 
 serious alarm. Of the three the old man was the least 
 agitated, perhaps because he was the most in danger. 
 Under the weight of a great misfortune, or under the 
 pressure of persecution, a brave man begins, so to say, 
 by making the complete sacrifice of himself. He 
 counts each day as one more victory won over fate. 
 The looks of the two women fixed upon this old man
 
 AN EPISODE OF THE REIGN OF TERROR 79 
 
 made it easy to see that he was the one object of their 
 keen anxiety. 
 
 'Why lose our trust in God, my sisters?' he said 
 in a voice low, but full of fervour ; ' we sang His praises 
 in the midst of the cries of the murderers and of the 
 dying at the convent of the Carmelites. If He willed 
 that I should be saved from that butchery, it was no 
 doubt to preserve me for some destiny that I must 
 accept without a murmur. God guards His own, and 
 He can dispose of them according to His will. It is of 
 yourselves, and not of me, that we must think.' 
 
 ' No,' said one of the old women, ' what are our lives 
 compared to that of a priest ? ' 
 
 ' Once I saw myself outside of the Abbey of Chelles, 
 I considered myself as a dead woman,' said one of the 
 two nuns the one who had remained in the house. 
 
 ' Here are the altar breads,' said the other, who had 
 just come in, offering the little box to the priest. ' But 
 . . . ' she cried out, ' I hear footsteps on the stairs ! ' 
 
 All three listened. . . . The sound ceased. 
 
 'Do not be alarmed,' said the priest, 'if some one 
 tries to get to see you. A person on whose good faith 
 we can depend must by this time have taken all 
 necessary steps to cross the frontier, in order to come 
 here for the letters I have written to the Due de 
 Langeais and the Marquis de Beause"ant, asking them 
 to see what can be done to take you away from this 
 wretched country, and the suffering and death that 
 await you here.'
 
 8o AN EPISODE OF THE REIGN OF TERROR 
 
 ' You are not going with us then ? ' exclaimed the two 
 nuns in gentle protest, and with a look of something 
 like despair. 
 
 ' My place is where there are still victims,' was the 
 priest's simple reply. 
 
 They were silent and gazed at their protector with 
 reverent admiration. 
 
 'Sister Martha,' he said, addressing the nun who had 
 gone to get the altar breads, ' this envoy of ours should 
 answer " Fiat voluntas " to the password " Hosanna" ' 
 
 ' There is some one on the stair ! ' exclaimed the 
 other nun ; and she opened a hiding-place constructed 
 in the roof. 
 
 This time, in the deep silence, it was easy to catch 
 the sound of the footsteps of some man, re-echoing on 
 the stairs that were rough with lumps of hardened mud. 
 The priest with some difficulty huddled himself into a 
 kind of cupboard, and the nun threw some old clothes 
 over him. 
 
 'You can shut the door,' he said in a smothered 
 voice. 
 
 The priest was hardly hidden away, when three 
 knocks at the door made both the good women start. 
 They were exchanging looks of inquiry without daring 
 to utter a word. Both seemed to be about sixty years 
 of age. Separated from the world for some forty years, 
 they were like plants, that are so used to the air of 
 a hothouse, that they die if one takes them out. 
 Accustomed as they were to the life of the convent they
 
 AN EPISODE OF THE REIGN OF TERROR 81 
 
 had no idea of anything else. One morning their 
 cloister had been broken open, and they had shuddered 
 at finding themselves free. It is easy to imagine the 
 state of nervous weakness the events of the Revolution 
 had produced in their innocent minds. Unable to 
 reconcile the mental habits of the cloister with the 
 difficulties of life, and not fully understanding the cir- 
 cumstances in which they were placed, they were like 
 children of whom every care had been taken till now, 
 and who, suddenly deprived of their mother's care, pray 
 instead of weeping. So face to face with the danger 
 which they now saw before them, they remained silent 
 and passive, knowing of no other defence but Christian 
 resignation. 
 
 The man who had asked for admittance interpreted 
 this silence in his own way. He opened the door and 
 suddenly appeared in the room. The two nuns 
 shuddered as they recognised the man, who for some 
 time had been prowling around their house, and making 
 inquiries about them. They remained motionless, 
 looking at him with the anxious curiosity of untaught 
 children who stare in silence at a stranger. 
 
 The man was tall in stature and heavily built. But 
 there was nothing in his attitude, his general appearance, 
 or the expression of his face, to suggest that he was 
 a bad character. Like the nuns he kept quite still, 
 and slowly cast his eyes round the room he had 
 entered. 
 
 Two straw mats unrolled on the floor served for beds
 
 82 AN EPISODE OF THE REIGN OF TERROR 
 
 for the nuns. There was a table in the middle of the 
 room, and there stood on it a brass candlestick, some 
 plates, three knives and a round loaf of bread. There 
 was a very small fire in the grate. A few pieces of 
 wood heaped up in a corner were a further sign of the 
 poverty of these two recluses. One could see that the 
 roof was in a bad state, for the walls, covered with a 
 coat of very old paint, were stained with brown streaks 
 that showed where the rain had leaked through. A 
 reliquary, rescued no doubt from the sack of the 
 Abbey of Chelles, served as an ornament to the mantel- 
 piece. Three chairs, two boxes, and a shabby chest 
 of drawers completed the furniture of the room. A 
 door near the fireplace suggested that there was a 
 second room beyond. 
 
 The individual, who had in such an alarming way 
 introduced himself to this poor household, had soon 
 taken mental note of all the contents of the little room. 
 A feeling of pity could be traced upon his countenance, 
 and he cast a kindly look upon the two women, and 
 appeared to be at least as much embarrassed as they 
 were. The strange silence that all three had kept so 
 far did not long continue, for at last the stranger 
 realised the timidity and inexperience of the two poor 
 creatures, and said to them in a voice that he tried to 
 make as gentle as possible : 
 
 ' I do not come here as an enemy, citizenesses . . . ' 
 He stopped, as if recovering himself, and went 
 on:
 
 AN EPISODE OF THE REIGN OF TERROR 83 
 
 'Sisters, if any misfortune comes your way, believe 
 me I have no part in it. ... I have a favour to ask of 
 you.' 
 
 They still kept silence. 
 
 ' If I am troubling you, if ... if I am causing you 
 pain, say so freely . . . and I will go away; but be 
 assured that I am entirely devoted to you ; that if 
 there is any kindness I can do to you, you can claim 
 it from me without fear ; and that I am perhaps the 
 only one who is above the law, now that there is no 
 longer a king. . . . ' 
 
 There was such an air of truth in his words, that 
 Sister Agatha, she of the two nuns who belonged to the 
 noble family of Langeais, and whose manners seemed 
 to indicate that in old times she had known the splen- 
 dours of festive society and had breathed the air of the 
 court pointed with an alert movement to one of the 
 chairs as if asking the visitor to be seated. The 
 stranger showed something of pleasure mingled with 
 sadness, as he understood this gesture, but before 
 taking the chair he waited till both the worthy ladies 
 were seated. 
 
 ' You have given a refuge here,' he continued, 'to a 
 venerable priest, one of those who refused the oath, and 
 who had a miraculous escape from the massacre at the 
 Carmelites. . . .' 'Jfosannal' . . , said Sister Agatha, 
 interrupting the stranger, and looking at him with 
 anxious curiosity. 
 
 ' I don't think that is his name,' he replied.
 
 84 AN EPISODE OF THE REIGN OF TERROR 
 
 ' But, sir, we have no priest here,' said Sister Martha, 
 eagerly. 
 
 ' If that is so, you ought to be more careful and 
 prudent,' answered the stranger in a gentle tone, as he 
 stretched out his hand to the table and took a breviary 
 from it, ' I don't suppose you know Latin, and . . .' 
 
 He said no more, for the extraordinary emotion 
 depicted on the faces of the two poor nuns made him 
 fear that he had gone too far. They were trembling, 
 and their eyes filled with tears. 
 
 ' Don't be alarmed,' he said in a voice that seemed 
 all sincerity, ' I know the name of your guest, and your 
 own names too, and for the last three days I have been 
 aware of your distress and of your devoted care for the 
 venerable Abbe" de . . .' 
 
 ' Hush ! ' said Sister Agatha in her simplicity, putting 
 a finger to her lips. 
 
 'You see, Sister, that if I had had in my mind the 
 horrible idea of betraying you, I could have done so 
 already, again and again. . . .' 
 
 Hearing these words, the priest extricated himself 
 from his prison, and came out again into the room. 
 
 ' I could not possibly believe, sir,' he said to the 
 stranger, ' that you were one of our persecutors, and I 
 trust myself to you. What do you want of me ? ' 
 
 The holy confidence of the priest, the nobility of 
 mind that showed itself in his every look, would have 
 disarmed even assassins. The mysterious man, whose 
 coming had caused such excitement in this scene of re-
 
 AN EPISODE OF THE REIGN OF TERROR 85 
 
 signed misery, gazed for a moment at the group formed 
 by the three others ; then, taking a tone in which there 
 was no longer any hesitation, he addressed the priest in 
 these words : 
 
 ' Father, I came to ask you to say a mass for the dead, 
 for the repose of the soul ... of one ... of a sacred 
 personage, whose body will never be laid to rest in 
 consecrated ground. . . .' 
 
 The priest gave an involuntary shudder. The nuns, 
 who did not yet understand to whom it was the stranger 
 alluded, sat in an attitude of curiosity, their heads 
 stretched forwards, their faces turned towards the two 
 who were speaking together. The priest looked closely 
 at the stranger, on whose face there was an un- 
 mistakable expression of anxiety, and also of earnest 
 entreaty. 
 
 ' Well,' replied the priest, ' come back this evening at 
 midnight, and I shall be ready to celebrate the only 
 rites for the dead that we may be able to offer up in 
 expiation for the crime of which you speak. . . .' 
 
 The stranger started, but it seemed that some deep 
 and soothing satisfaction was triumphing over his secret 
 sorrow. After having respectfully saluted the priest and 
 the two holy women, he took his departure showing a 
 kind of silent gratitude, which was understood by these 
 three generous souls. 
 
 About two hours after this scene the stranger re- 
 turned, knocked softly at the door of the garret, and was 
 admitted by Mademoiselle de Beauseant, who led him
 
 86 AN EPISODE OF THE REIGN OF TERROR 
 
 into the inner room of this poor place of refuge, where 
 everything had been made ready for the ceremony. 
 
 Between two chimney shafts, that passed up through 
 the room, the nuns had placed the old chest of drawers, 
 the antiquated outlines of which were hidden by a 
 magnificent altar frontal of green watered silk. A large 
 crucifix of ivory and ebony hung on the yellow washed 
 wall contrasting so strongly with the surrounding bare- 
 ness, that the eye could not fail to be drawn to it. 
 Four slender little tapers, which the sisters had suc- 
 ceeded in fixing on this improvised altar, by attaching 
 them to it with sealing wax, threw out a dim light, that 
 was hardly reflected by the wall. This feeble illumina- 
 tion barely gave light to the rest of the room ; but, as it 
 thus shone only on the sacred objects, it seemed like 
 a light sent down from heaven on this unadorned altar. 
 The floor was damp. The roof, which slanted down 
 sharply on two sides, as is usual in garret rooms, had 
 some cracks in it through which came the night wind 
 icy cold. 
 
 Nothing could be more devoid of all pomp, and 
 nevertheless there was perhaps never anything more 
 solemn than this mournful ceremony. A profound 
 silence, in which one could have heard the least sound 
 uttered on the highway outside, lent a kind of sombre 
 majesty to the midnight scene. Finally the greatness 
 of the action itself contrasted so strongly with the 
 poverty of its surroundings that the result was a feeling 
 of religious awe.
 
 AN EPISODE OF THE REIGN OF TERROR 87 
 
 On each side of the altar the two aged nuns knelt on 
 the tiled floor without taking any notice of its deadly 
 dampness, and united their prayers with those of the 
 priest, who, robed in his sacerdotal vestments, placed on 
 the altar a chalice of gold adorned with precious stones, 
 a consecrated vessel that had been saved no doubt from 
 the pillage of the Abbey of Chelles. Beside this chalice, 
 a token of royal munificence, the wine and water 
 destined for the Holy Sacrifice stood ready in two 
 glasses, such as one would hardly have found in the 
 poorest inn. For want of a missal the priest had placed 
 a small prayer-book on the corner of the altar. An 
 ordinary plate had been prepared for the washing of the 
 hands, in this case hands all innocent and free from 
 blood. There was the contrast of littleness with 
 immensity; of poverty with noble sublimity; of what 
 was meant for profane uses with what was consecrated 
 to God. 
 
 The stranger knelt devoutly between the two nuns. 
 But suddenly, as he noticed that, having no other 
 means of marking that this was a mass offered for the 
 dead, the priest had placed a knot of crape on the 
 crucifix and on the base of the chalice, thus putting 
 holy things in mourning, the stranger's mind was so 
 mastered by some recollection that drops of sweat stood 
 out upon his broad forehead. The four silent actors in 
 the scene looked at each other mysteriously. Then 
 their souls, acting and reacting on each other, inspired 
 with one common thought, united them in devout sym-
 
 88 AN EPISODE OF THE REIGN OF TERROR 
 
 pathy. It seemed as if their minds had evoked the 
 presence of the martyr whose remains the quicklime 
 had burned away, and that his shade was present with 
 them in all its kingly majesty. They were celebrating 
 a requiem without the presence of the body of the 
 departed. Under the disjointed laths and tiles of the 
 roof four Christians were about to intercede with God 
 for a King of France, and perform his obsequies though 
 there was no coffin before the altar. There was the 
 purest of devoted love, an act of wondrous loyalty per- 
 formed without a touch of self-consciousness. No doubt, 
 in the eyes of God, it was like the gift of the glass of 
 water that ranks with the highest of virtues. All the 
 monarchy was there, finding voice in the prayers of a 
 priest and two poor women ; but perhaps the Revolu- 
 tion too was represented by that man, whose face 
 showed too much remorse to leave any doubt that he 
 was fulfilling a duty inspired by deep repentance. 
 
 Before he pronounced the Latin words, Introibo ad 
 altare Dei, the priest, as if by an inspiration from on 
 high, turned to the three who were with him as the 
 representatives of Christian France, and said to them, 
 as though to banish from their sight all the misery of 
 the garret room : 
 
 ' We are about to enter into the sanctuary of God ! ' 
 
 At these words, uttered with deep devotion, a holy 
 
 awe took possession of the stranger and the two nuns. 
 
 Under the vast arches of St. Peter's at Rome these 
 
 Christians could not have realised the majesty of God's
 
 AN EPISODE OF THE REIGN OF TERROR 89 
 
 Presence more plainly than in that refuge of misery ; so 
 true is it that between Him and man all outward things 
 seem useless, and His greatness comes from Himself 
 alone. The stranger showed a really fervent devotion. 
 So the same feelings united the prayers of these four 
 servants of God and the king. The sacred words 
 sounded like a heavenly music in the midst of the 
 silence. There was a moment when the unknown man 
 could not restrain his tears. It was at the Pater Nosier, 
 when the priest added this prayer in Latin which no 
 doubt the stranger understood : 
 
 ' Et rtmitte scelus regiridis sicut Ludovicus eis rcmisit 
 semetipse. (And forgive their crime to the regicides, as 
 Louis himself forgave them.) ' 
 
 The nuns saw two large tear-drops making lines of 
 moisture down the strong face of the unknown, and 
 falling to the floor. 
 
 The Office for the Dead was recited. The Domine 
 salvum fac regem, chanted in a low voice, touched the 
 hearts of these faithful Royalists, who thought how the 
 child king, for whom at that moment they were implor- 
 ing the help of the Most High, was a captive in the 
 hands of his enemies. The stranger shuddered as he 
 remembered that perhaps a fresh crime might be com- 
 mitted, in which he would no doubt be forced to have 
 a share. 
 
 When the Office for the Dead was ended, the priest 
 made a sign to the two nuns and they withdrew. As 
 soon as he found himself alone with the stranger, he
 
 9 o AN EPISODE OF THE REIGN OF TERROR 
 
 went towards him with a sad and gentle air, and said to 
 him in a fatherly voice : 
 
 ' My son, if you have imbrued your hands in the 
 blood of the martyr king, confide in me. There is 
 no fault that is not blotted out in God's eyes by a 
 repentance as sincere and as touching as yours appears 
 to be.' 
 
 At the first words uttered by the priest the stranger 
 gave way to an involuntary movement of alarm. But 
 he recovered his self-control, and looked calmly at the 
 astonished priest. 
 
 ' Father,' he said to him, in a voice that showed 
 evident signs of emotion, ' no one is more innocent 
 than I am of the blood that has been shed. . . .' 
 
 'It is my duty to take your word for it,' said the 
 priest. 
 
 There was a pause, during which once more he 
 looked closely at his penitent. Then, persisting in 
 taking him for one of those timid members of the 
 National Convention who abandoned to the executioner 
 a sacred and inviolable head in order to save their own, 
 he spoke once more in a grave tone : 
 
 'Consider, my son, that in order to be guiltless of 
 this great crime it does not suffice merely to have had 
 no direct co-operation in it. Those who, although they 
 could have defended the king, left their swords in their 
 scabbards, will have a very heavy account to render to 
 the King of Heaven. . . . Oh, yes ! ' added the old 
 priest, shaking his head expressively from side to side.
 
 AN EPISODE OF THE REIGN OF TERROR 91 
 
 ' Yes, very heavy ! ... for in standing idle, they have 
 made themselves the involuntary accomplices of this 
 awful misdeed.' 
 
 'Do you think,' asked the man, as if struck with 
 horror, ' that even an indirect participation in it will be 
 punished? . . . Are we then to take it that, say, a 
 soldier who was ordered to keep the ground at the 
 scaffold is guilty ? . . .' 
 
 The priest hesitated. Pleased at the dilemma in 
 which he had put this Puritan of Royalism, by placing 
 him between the doctrine of passive obedience, which, 
 according to the partisans of the monarchy, must be 
 the essence of the military code, and the equally im- 
 portant doctrine which was the sanction of the respect 
 due to the person of the king, the stranger eagerly 
 accepted the priest's hesitation as indicating a favour- 
 able solution of the doubts that seemed to harrass him. 
 Then, in order not to give the venerable theologian 
 further time for reflection, he said to him : 
 
 'I would be ashamed to offer you any honorarium 
 for the funeral service you have just celebrated for the 
 repose of the soul of the king, and to satisfy my own 
 conscience. One can only pay the price of what is in- 
 estimable by offering that which is also beyond price. 
 Will you therefore condescend, sir, to accept the gift I 
 make you of a sacred relic. . . . Perhaps the day will 
 come when you will understand its value.' 
 
 As he ceased speaking, the stranger held out to the 
 priest a little box that was extremely light. The latter
 
 92 AN EPISODE OF THE REIGN OF TERROR 
 
 took it in his hands automatically, so to say, for the 
 solemnity of the words of this man, the tone in which 
 he spoke, the reverence with which he handled the box, 
 had plunged him into a reverie of deep astonishment. 
 Then they returned to the room where the two nuns 
 were waiting for them. 
 
 'You are,' said the stranger to them, 'in a house the 
 proprietor of which, the plasterer, Mucius Scaevola, who 
 lives in the first story, is famous in the quarter for his 
 patriotism. But all the same he is secretly attached to 
 the Bourbons. Formerly he was a huntsman to Mon- 
 seigneur the Prince de Conti, and he owes his fortune 
 to him. By staying here you are safer than anywhere 
 else in France. Remain here, therefore. Certain pious 
 souls will provide for your needs, and you can wait 
 without danger for less evil times. A year hence, on 
 January 2ist' (as he pronounced these last words, 
 he could not conceal an involuntary start), ' if this 
 poor place is still your refuge, I shall come back to 
 assist once more with you at a mass of expiation.' 
 
 He stopped without further explanation. He saluted 
 the silent inhabitants of the garret, took in with a last 
 look the signs that told of their poverty, and left the 
 room. 
 
 For the two simple nuns such an adventure had all 
 the interest of a romance. So when the venerable 
 abbe" had told them of the mysterious present so 
 solemnly made to him by this man, they placed the 
 box on the table, and the feeble light of the candle,
 
 AN EPISODE OF THE REIGN OF TERROR 93 
 
 shining on the three anxious faces, showed on all of 
 them a look of indescribable curiosity. Mademoiselle 
 de Langeais opened the box, and found in it a hand- 
 kerchief of fine cambric soiled with perspiration. As 
 they unfolded it they saw spots on it : 
 
 ' They are blood stains,' said the priest. 
 
 ' It is marked with the royal crown ! ' exclaimed the 
 other sister. 
 
 With a feeling of horror the two sisters dropped the 
 precious relic. For these two simple souls the mystery 
 that surrounded the stranger had become something 
 inexplicable. And, as for the priest, from that day he 
 did not even attempt to find an explanation of it in 
 his own mind. 
 
 It was not long before the three prisoners realised 
 that notwithstanding the Terror an invisible hand was 
 stretched out to protect them. At first firewood and 
 provisions were sent in for them. Then the two nuns 
 guessed that a woman was associated with their pro- 
 tector, for they were sent linen and clothes that would 
 make it possible for them to go out without attracting 
 attention by the aristocratic fashion of the dress they 
 had been forced to wear till then. Finally Mucius Scae- 
 vola provided them with two ' civic cards,' certificates of 
 good citizenship. Often by roundabout ways they re- 
 ceived warnings, that were necessary for the safety of 
 the priest, and they recognised that these friendly hints 
 came so opportunely that they could only emanate from 
 some one who was initiated into the secrets of the
 
 94 AN EPISODE OF THE REIGN OF TERROR 
 
 state. Notwithstanding the famine from which Paris 
 was suffering, the refugees found rations of white bread 
 left regularly at their garret door by invisible hands. 
 However, they thought they could identify in Mucius 
 Scaevola the mysterious agent of this beneficence, which 
 was always as ingenious as it was well directed. 
 
 The noble refugees in the garret could have no doubt 
 but that their protector was the same person who had 
 come to assist at the mass of expiation on the night of 
 January 22nd, 1793. He thus became the object of a 
 very special regard on the part of all three. They 
 hoped in him only, lived only thanks to him. They 
 had added special prayers for him to their devotions ; 
 morning and night these pious souls offered up petitions 
 for his welfare, for his prosperity, for his salvation. 
 They begged God to remove all temptations from him, 
 to deliver him from his enemies, and to give him a 
 long and peaceful life. Their gratitude was thus, so to 
 say, daily renewed, but was inevitably associated with a 
 feeling of curiosity that became keener as day after day 
 went by. 
 
 The circumstances that had attended the appearance 
 of the stranger were the subject of their conversations. 
 They formed a thousand conjectures with regard to 
 him, and it was a fresh benefit to them of another kind 
 that he thus served to distract their minds from other 
 thoughts. They were quite determined that on the 
 night, when, according to his promise, he would come 
 back to celebrate the mournful anniversary of the
 
 AN EPISODE OF THE REIGN OF TERROR 95 
 
 death of Louis xvr., they would not let him go without 
 establishing more friendly relations with him. 
 
 The night, to which they had looked forward so 
 impatiently, came at last. At midnight the heavy foot- 
 steps of the unknown resounded on the old wooden 
 stair. The room had been made ready to receive him ; 
 the altar was prepared. This time the sisters opened 
 the door before he reached it, and both hastened to 
 show a light on the staircase. Mademoiselle de Lan- 
 geais even went down a few steps in order the sooner 
 to see their benefactor. 
 
 ' Come,' she said to him in a voice trembling with 
 affection, 'come . . . you are expected.' 
 
 The man raised his head, and without replying cast a 
 gloomy look at the nun. She felt as if a mantle of ice 
 had fallen around her, and kept silence. At the sight 
 of him the feeling of gratitude and of curiosity died out 
 in all their hearts. He was perhaps less cold, less 
 taciturn, less terrible than he appeared to these souls, 
 whom the excitement of their feelings disposed to a 
 warm and friendly welcome. The three poor prisoners 
 realised that the man wished to remain a stranger to 
 them, and they accepted the situation. 
 
 The priest thought that he noticed a smile, that was 
 at once repressed, play upon the lips of the unknown, 
 when he remarked the preparations that had been made 
 for his reception. He heard mass and prayed. But 
 then he went away after having declined, with a few 
 words of polite refusal, the invitation that Mademoiselle
 
 96 AN EPISODE OF THE REIGN OF TERROR 
 
 de Langeais offered him to share with them the little 
 supper that had been made ready. 
 
 After the Qth Thermidor (the fall of Robespierre) 
 both the nuns and the Abbe de Marolles were able to 
 go about in Paris without incurring the least danger. 
 The old priest's first excursion was to a perfumer's shop 
 at the sign of the Reinc des f!eurs, kept by Citizen 
 Ragon and his wife, formerly perfumers to the court, 
 who had remained faithful to the royal family. The 
 Vendeans made use of them as their agents for corre- 
 sponding with the exiled princes and the royalist com- 
 mittee at Paris. The abbe, dressed as the times 
 required, was standing on the doorstep of the shop, 
 which was situated between the Church of Saint Roch 
 and the Rue des Frondeurs, when a crowd, which filled 
 all the Rue Saint-Honore, prevented him from going 
 out. 
 
 'What is the matter?' he asked Madame Ragon. 
 
 ' It 's nothing,' she replied. ' It 's the cart with the 
 executioner on the way to the Place Louis xv. Ah ! 
 we saw it often enough last year. But to-day, four days 
 after the anniversary of January 2ist, one can watch 
 that terrible procession go by without feeling displeasure.' 
 
 ' Why ? ' said the abbe, ' it is not Christian of you to 
 talk thus.' 
 
 ' But it 's the execution of the accomplices of Robe- 
 spierre. They did their best to save themselves, but 
 they are going in their turn where they sent so many 
 innocent people ! '
 
 AN EPISODE OF THE REIGN OF TERROR 97 
 
 The crowd was pouring past like a flood. The 
 Abbe de Marolles, yielding to an impulse of curiosity, 
 saw, standing erect on the cart, the man who three days 
 before had come to hear his mass. 
 
 ' Who is that ? ' he said, ' the man who . . . ' 
 
 ' It 's the hangman,' replied Monsieur Ragon, giving 
 the executioner the name he bore under the monarchy. 
 
 'My dear, my dear,' cried out Madame Ragon, 
 ' Monsieur 1'Abbe is dying ! ' 
 
 And the old lady seized a bottle of smelling salts 
 with which to revive the aged priest from a fainting fit. 
 
 'No doubt,' he said, 'what he gave me was the 
 handkerchief with which the King wiped his forehead 
 as he went to martyrdom. . . . Poor man ! . . . The 
 steel blade had a heart when all France was heart- 
 less ! . . .' 
 
 The perfumers thought that the poor priest was 
 raving.
 
 FACING CANE 
 
 I WAS living in a small street of which doubtless you do 
 not even know the name, the Rue des Lesdiguieres. 
 It begins at the Rue St. Antoine opposite the fountain 
 near the Place de la Bastille, and runs into the Rue 
 de la Cerisaie. The love of learning had flung me into 
 a garret where I worked during the night, and I passed 
 the day in a neighbouring library, the BibliothZque de 
 Monsieur. I lived frugally. I had accepted all those con- 
 ditions of a monastic life that are so necessary to workers. 
 When it was fine I barely allowed myself a walk on the 
 Boulevard Bourdon. One passion only drew me away 
 from my studious habits, but was not even that a sort 
 of study ? I would go out to observe the manners of 
 the Faubourg, its inhabitants and their characters. As 
 badly dressed as the workmen themselves and careless 
 about keeping up an appearance, I did not make them 
 in any way suspicious of me. I could mingle freely 
 with them, and watch them making their bargains and 
 quarrelling amongst themselves as they left their work. 
 With me the power of observation had already become 
 intuitive. It penetrated to the soul, without leaving the 
 body out of account : or rather, it grasped so well the 
 outer details, that it went at once beyond them ; it gave
 
 FACING CANE 99 
 
 me the power of living the life of the individual, on 
 whom I brought it to bear, thus permitting me in fancy 
 to substitute myself for him, as the dervish in the 
 Arabian Nights took the body and soul of the persons 
 over whom he pronounced certain words. 
 
 When between eleven o'clock and midnight I met a 
 workman and his wife returning together from the 
 Ambigu Comique, I amused myself by following them 
 from the Boulevard du Pont-aux-Choux as far as the 
 Boulevard Beaumarchais. These good people would 
 talk at first of the piece they had just seen. From one 
 thing to another they would get on to their own affairs. 
 The mother would be dragging her child by the hand 
 without heeding either its complaints or its questions. 
 The pair would reckon up the money that would be 
 paid them next day, and spend it in twenty different 
 ways. Then came household details ; complaints as to 
 the excessive price of potatoes, or about the length of 
 the winter and the dearness of peat fuel ; strong repre- 
 sentations as to the amount owing to the baker ; and at 
 last disputes that became a bit angry, and in which the 
 character of each came out in picturesque expressions. 
 While listening to these people I could enter into their 
 life ; I felt myself with their rags on my back ; I walked 
 with my feet in their broken shoes ; their desires, their 
 needs all came into my soul, or my soul passed into 
 theirs. It was the dream of one who was still wide 
 awake. With them I grew angry against the foremen 
 of the workshops who tyrannised over them, or against
 
 ioo FACING CANE 
 
 the bad custom that forced them to come again and 
 again to ask in vain for their pay. To get away from 
 my ordinary occupations, to become some one else by 
 this over excitation of my mental faculties, and to play 
 this game at my will this was my recreation. To 
 what do I owe this gift ? Is it a kind of second sight ? 
 or is it one of those powers the abuse of which would 
 lead to insanity ? I have never investigated the sources 
 of this faculty of mine ; I possess it and I make use of 
 it, that is all. 
 
 I need only tell you that in those days I had analysed 
 the elements of that heterogeneous mass called ' the 
 people,' so that I could estimate their good and bad 
 qualities. Already I knew all that was to be learned 
 from that famous Faubourg, that nursery of Revolutions, 
 which gives shelter at once to heroes, inventors, and 
 practical scientists, and knaves and scoundrels, to 
 virtues and vices, all huddled together by misery, stifled 
 by poverty, drowned in wine, wasted by strong drink. 
 You would never imagine how many unknown adven- 
 tures, how many forgotten dramas belong to that city of 
 sorrow. How many horrible and beautiful things ! 
 For imagination would never go so far as the reality 
 that is hidden there, and that no one can go there and 
 discover. One has to go down to too great a depth if 
 one is to find out those wonderful scenes of living 
 tragedy or comedy, masterpieces that chance has 
 brought into being. 
 
 I know not why I have so long kept untold the story
 
 FACING CANE 101 
 
 that I am going to relate to you ; it is one of those 
 strange tales that are laid by in the bag from which 
 memory draws them out at haphazard like the numbers 
 of a lottery. I have plenty of others quite as singular 
 as this one, buried away in the same fashion; but they 
 will have their turn, believe me. 
 
 One day my housekeeper, a working man's wife, came 
 and asked me to honour with my presence the wedding 
 of one of her sisters. In order to enable you to under- 
 stand what sort of a wedding it would be I must tell 
 you that I used to pay forty sous a month to this poor 
 creature, who came in every morning to make my bed, 
 polish my shoes, brush my clothes, sweep the room, and 
 get my breakfast ready. For the rest of her time she 
 went to turn the handle of a mangle, and by this hard 
 work earned ten sous a day. Her husband, a cabinet- 
 maker, earned four francs. But, as their household 
 included three children, they could barely pay for the 
 bread they ate. I have never come across more real re 
 spectability than that of this man and wife. Five years 
 after I had left the neighbourhood Dame Vaillant came 
 to wish me a happy name day, and brought me a bunch 
 of flowers and some oranges as presents she who had 
 never been in a position to save ten sous. Poverty had 
 drawn us together. I was never able to pay her more 
 than ten francs, often borrowed for the occasion. This 
 will explain my promise to go to the wedding ; I counted 
 on taking an unobtrusive part in the rejoicings of these 
 poor people.
 
 102 FACING CANE 
 
 The feast and the dance were both held at a wine 
 shop in the Rue de Charenton, in a large room on the 
 first story. It was lighted with lamps with tin 
 reflectors ; the paper showed grease spots at the level 
 of the tables, and along the walls there were wooden 
 benches. In this room some eighty people, dressed in 
 their Sunday clothes, decked out with flowers and 
 ribbons, all full of the holiday spirit, danced with 
 flushed faces as if the world was coming to an end. 
 The happy pair kissed each other amid a general out- 
 break of satisfaction, and one heard ' Eh ! eh ! ' and 
 1 Ah ! ah ! ' pronounced in a tone of amusement, that all 
 the same was more respectable than the timid ogling of 
 young women of a better class. Every one manifested 
 a rough and ready pleasure that had in it something 
 infectious. 
 
 But neither the general aspect of the gathering, nor 
 the wedding, nor anything of the kind, has really to do 
 with our story. Only I want you to keep in mind the 
 quaint setting of it all. Imagine to yourself the shabby 
 shop, with its decorations of red paint, smell the odour 
 of the wine, listen to the shouts of delight, keep to the 
 Faubourg, in the midst of these workers, these old men, 
 these poor women abandoning themselves to one night 
 of pleasure. 
 
 The orchestra was made up of three blind men from 
 the Hospice des Quinze-Vingts ; the first was the violin, 
 the second the clarionet, and the third the flageolet. 
 All three were paid one lump sum of seven francs for
 
 FACING CANE 103 
 
 the night. At this price, of course, they gave us neither 
 Rossini nor Beethoven; they played what they liked 
 and what they could, and with a charming delicacy of 
 feeling no one found fault with them for it ! Their music 
 was such a rough trial to my ears, that, after a glance 
 at the audience, I looked at the trio of blind men, and 
 recognising the uniform of the hospice, I felt from the 
 first disposed to be indulgent. These artists were 
 seated in the deep bay of a window, and thus in order 
 to be able to distinguish their features one had to be 
 near them ; I did not at once come close to them ; but 
 when I approached them I cannot say how it was, but 
 all was over with me, I forgot the marriage and the 
 music ; my curiosity was excited to the highest pitch, 
 for my soul passed into the body of the clarionet 
 player. The violin and the flageolet had both common- 
 place features, the well-known face of the blind, with 
 its strained look, all attention and seriousness ; but that 
 of the clarionet player was one of those phenomenal 
 faces that make the artist or the philosopher stop at 
 once to look at them. 
 
 Imagine a plaster mask of Dante, lighted up with the 
 red glare of an Argand-lamp, and crowned with a forest 
 of silver white hair. His blindness added to the bitter, 
 sorrowful expression of this splendid face, for one could 
 imagine the dead eyes were alive again; a burning 
 light seemed to shine out from them, the expression of 
 a single, ceaseless desire that had set its deep marks 
 on the rounded forehead, which was scored by wrinkles
 
 io 4 FACING CANE 
 
 like the lines of an old wall. The old man was blowing 
 away at haphazard, without paying the least attention 
 to time or tune, his fingers rising and falling, and 
 moving the old keys through mere mechanical habit. 
 He did not trouble about making what is called in the 
 slang of the orchestra ' quacks,' and the dancers took 
 no more notice of this than the two comrades of my 
 Italian did for I made up my mind that he must be 
 an Italian, and an Italian he was. There was some- 
 thing noble and commanding to be seen in this aged 
 Homer, who kept all to himself some Odyssey destined 
 to forgetfulness. It was a nobility so real that it still 
 triumphed over his obscurity ; an air of command so 
 striking that it rose superior to his poverty. None of 
 the strong feelings that lead a man to good as well as to 
 evil, that make of him a convict or a hero, were wanting 
 to this splendidly outlined face, with its sallow, Italian 
 complexion, and the shadows of the iron-grey eyebrows 
 that threw their shade over the deep cavities in which 
 one would tremble at seeing the light of thought appear 
 once more, as one fears to see brigands armed with 
 torch and dagger show themselves at the mouth of 
 a cavern. There was a lion in that cage of flesh, a lion 
 of which the fury had uselessly spent itself on the 
 iron of its bars. The fire of despair had burned out 
 among its ashes, the lava had cooled ; but rifts, 
 fallen rocks, and a little smoke told of the violence 
 of the eruption, the ravages of the fire. These ideas 
 called up by the aspect of the man were as warmly
 
 FACING CANE 105 
 
 pictured in my mind, as they were coldly marked upon 
 his face. 
 
 In the interval between each dance the violin and 
 the flageolet, becoming seriously occupied with a bottle 
 and glasses, hung their instruments to a button of their 
 reddish tunics, and stretched out a hand to a little 
 table standing in the bay of the window, on which were 
 their refreshments. They always offered the Italian 
 a full glass, which he could not have got unaided, for 
 the table was behind his chair. Each time the clarionet 
 thanked them with a friendly nod of his head. Their 
 movements were carried out with that precision, which 
 always seems so astonishing in the case of the blind 
 folk from the Quinze-Vingts, and which seems to make 
 one think they can see. I drew near to the three blind 
 men to listen to them, but when I stood near them 
 they somehow scrutinised me, and doubtless failing to 
 recognise the workman type in me, they said not a word. 
 
 'From what country are you, you who play the 
 clarionet ? ' 
 
 ' From Venice,' answered the blind man, with a slight 
 Italian accent. 
 
 ' Were you born blind, or were you blinded by ..." 
 
 ' By a mishap,' he replied sharply ; ' a cursed amau- 
 rosis in my eyes.' 
 
 'Venice is a beautiful city. I have always had an 
 idea of going there.' 
 
 The face of the old man became animated, its furrows 
 rose and fell, he was strongly moved.
 
 106 FACING CANE 
 
 ' If I went there with you, you would not lose your 
 time,' said he to me. 
 
 ' Don't talk of Venice to him,' said the violin to me, 
 ' or our Doge will start his story. Besides that he has 
 already two bottles under his belt, the old prince ! ' 
 
 'Come, let us be getting on, Pere Canard,' said the 
 flageolet. 
 
 All three began to play ; but all the time that they 
 were going through the four parts of the quadrille the 
 Venetian was sizing me up; he guessed the extra- 
 ordinary interest I took in him. His face lost its cold 
 expression of sadness. Some hope or other brightened 
 all his features played like a blue flame in the wrinkles 
 of his face. He smiled as he wiped his forehead 
 that forehead with its bold and terrible look ; finally he 
 became quite gay, like a man who is getting up on his 
 hobby. 
 
 ' What is your age ? ' I asked him. 
 
 ' Eighty-two years.' 
 
 ' How long have you been blind ? ' 
 
 'It will soon be fifty years,' he replied, in a tone 
 which suggested that his regret was not only for the 
 loss of his sight, but also for some great power of which 
 he had been deprived. 
 
 ' But why do they call you the Doge ? ' I asked him. 
 
 'Ah ! that's a joke,' he said; 'I am a patrician of 
 Venice, and I could have been a Doge as well as any 
 one else.' 
 
 ' What is your name then ? '
 
 FACING CANE 107 
 
 ' Here,' he said, ' I am old Canet. My name has 
 never appeared otherwise on the local registers. But in 
 Italian it is Marco Facino Cane, Prince of Varese.' 
 
 ' What ! Are you descended from the famous con- 
 dottiere, Facino Cane, whose conquests passed into the 
 possession of the Dukes of Milan ? ' 
 
 ' vero (that 's true),' said he. ' In those times the 
 son of Cane, to escape being killed by the Visconti, 
 took refuge in Venice, and had his name inscribed in 
 the Golden Book of nobility. But now neither the 
 Book nor any of the House of Cane are left ! ' 
 
 And he made a startling gesture to signify his feeling 
 that patriotism was dead, and his disgust for human 
 affairs. 
 
 'But if you were a Senator of Venice, you must 
 have been rich. How did you come to lose your 
 fortune ? ' 
 
 At this question he raised his head, turning to me as 
 if regarding me with a movement full of truest tragedy, 
 and replied to me : 
 
 ' In the midst of misfortunes ! ' 
 
 He no longer thought of drinking ; with a wave of 
 his hand he refused the glass of wine which the old 
 flageolet player offered him at this moment, then he 
 bowed down his head. 
 
 These details were not of a kind to put an end to my 
 curiosity. During the quadrille that the three instru- 
 ments played in mechanical style, I watched the old 
 Venetian noble with the feelings that devour a man of 
 
 i
 
 io8 FACING CANE 
 
 only twenty. I saw Venice and the Adriatic, and I 
 saw its ruin in this ruined face. I was moving about in 
 that city so beloved of its inhabitants. I went from the 
 Rialto to the Grand Canal, from the Riva degli Schiavoni 
 to the Lido ; I came back to its cathedral so sublime 
 in its originality; I looked up at the windows of the 
 Casa d'Oro, each of which has different ornaments ; I 
 contemplated its old palaces, so rich in marbles in a 
 word, all those wonders that move the student's feelings 
 all the more when he can colour them with his fancy, 
 and does not spoil the poetry of his dreams by the 
 sight of the reality. I traced backward the course of 
 the life of this scion of the greatest of the condottieri, 
 seeking out in it the traces of his misfortunes and the 
 causes of the deep physical and moral degradation that 
 made the sparks of greatness and nobility that shone 
 again at that moment seem all the finer. Our thoughts 
 were no doubt in mutual accord, for I believe that 
 blindness makes mental communication much more 
 rapid, by preventing the attention from dispersing itself 
 on external things. I had not long to wait for a proof 
 of our bond of feeling. Facino Cane stopped playing, 
 rose, came to me and said, ' Come out,' in a way that 
 produced on me the effect of an electric shock. I gave 
 him my arm and we went away. 
 
 When we were in the street, he said to me : 
 ' Will you take me to Venice, guide me there ? Will 
 you have confidence in me ? You will be richer than 
 the ten richest firms of Amsterdam or London ; richer
 
 FACING CANE 109 
 
 than the Rothschilds ; in a word, rich as the Arabian 
 Nights.' 
 
 I thought the man was mad. But there was in his 
 voice a power that I obeyed. I let him lead me, and 
 he took me in the direction of the ditches of the 
 Bastille, as if he still had the use of his eyes. He sat 
 down on a stone in a very lonely place, where, since 
 then, the bridge has been built under which the Canal 
 Saint Martin passes to the Seine. I took my place on 
 another stone facing the old man, whose white hairs 
 glittered like threads of silver in the moonlight. The 
 silence, hardly disturbed by such stormy sounds as 
 reached us from the Boulevards, the brightness of the 
 night, all helped to make the scene something fantastic. 
 
 ' You talk of millions to a young man, and you think 
 that he would hesitate to endure a thousand ills to 
 secure them ! Are you not making a jest of me ? ' 
 
 ' May I die without confession,' said he fiercely, ' if 
 what I am about to tell you is not true ! I was once a 
 young man of twenty as you are now. I was rich. I 
 was handsome. I was a noble. I began with first of all 
 follies love. I loved as men no longer love, going so 
 far as to hide in a chest at the risk of being stabbed, 
 without having received anything else but the promise 
 of a kiss. To die for her seemed to me worth a whole 
 life. In 1760 I fell in love with one of the Vendramini, 
 a girl of eighteen, married to a certain Sagredo, one of 
 the richest of the Senators, a man of thirty years, madly 
 devoted to his wife. My lover and I, we were as inno-
 
 no FACING CANE 
 
 cent as two little cherubs when the husband surprised 
 us talking love together. I was unarmed, he was armed 
 but he missed me. I sprang on him, I strangled him 
 with my two hands, twisting his neck like a chicken's. 
 I wanted to go away with Bianca, but she would not go 
 with me. That 's what women are like ! I went away 
 alone. I was condemned in my absence, my property 
 was confiscated for the benefit of my heirs ; but I had 
 carried off with rne my diamonds, five pictures by Titian 
 rolled up, and all my gold. I went to Milan, where I 
 was not molested, for my affair did not interest the State. 
 
 'One little remark before going on,' he said, after 
 a pause. ' Whether it is true or not that a woman's 
 fancies influence her child before its birth, it is certain 
 that my mother had a passion for gold while she was 
 expecting mine.' I have a monomania for gold, the 
 satisfaction of which is so necessary for my very life, 
 that in whatever circumstances I have been, I have 
 never been without some gold in my possession. I am 
 always handling gold. When I was young I always 
 wore jewels, and I always carried about with me two or 
 three hundred ducats.' 
 
 As he said these words he took two ducats out of his 
 pocket and showed them to me. 
 
 'I can smell gold. Although I am blind, I stop 
 in front of the jewellers' shops. This passion was 
 my ruin. I became a gambler, to have the enjoy- 
 ment of gold. I was not a swindler ; I was swindled. 
 I ruined myself. When I had no longer any of my
 
 FACING CANE in 
 
 fortune left I was seized with a wild longing to see 
 Bianca again. I returned secretly to Venice. I found 
 her once more ; I was happy for six months, hidden 
 with her, supported by her. I had a delightful thought 
 of thus living my life to the end. Her hand was sought 
 by the Proveditore of the Republic. He guessed he 
 had a rival ; in Italy they can almost smell them ; he 
 spied on us, and surprised us together, the coward ! 
 You can imagine what a sharp fight there was. I did 
 not kill him, but I wounded him seriously. That 
 adventure broke off my happiness. Since that day I 
 never found any one like Bianca. I have had many 
 pleasures. I lived at the court of Louis xv. in the 
 midst of the most famous women, but nowhere 
 did I find the characteristics, the graces, the love of 
 my fair Venetian. 
 
 ' The Proveditore had his followers. He called them. 
 The palace was surrounded. I defended myself, hoping 
 to die before the eyes of my dear Bianca, who helped 
 me to kill the Proveditore. Formerly this woman had 
 refused to share my flight, now, after six months of 
 happiness, she was ready to die my death, and received 
 several blows. Entangled in a big cloak that they 
 threw over me, I was rolled in it, carried to a gondola 
 and conveyed to the dungeons of the Pozzi. I was only 
 twenty-two years old then, and I held so fast to the 
 fragment of my broken sword, that to get it from me 
 they would have had to cut off my wrist. By a strange 
 chance, or rather inspired by a thought for the future,
 
 ii2 FACING CANE 
 
 I hid this bit of steel in a corner, in case it might be of 
 use to me. I was given medical care. None of my 
 wounds were mortal. At twenty-two one can recover 
 from anything. I was doomed to die by decapitation, 
 but I pretended to be ill in order to gain time. I 
 believed that I was in a dungeon next to the canal. 
 My plan was to escape by making a hole through the 
 wall and swimming across the canal at the risk of 
 drowning myself. 
 
 ' Here are some of the reasons on which I based my 
 hopes : 
 
 ' Whenever the jailer brought me my food I read, by 
 the light he carried, inscriptions scrawled upon the walls, 
 such as, " Towards the palace," " Towards the canal," 
 "Towards the underground passage," and at last 
 succeeded in making out a general plan of the place. 
 There were some small difficulties about it, but they 
 could be explained by the actual state of the Palace of 
 the Doges, which is not completed. With the clever- 
 ness that the desire to regain one's liberty gives one, 
 by feeling with my fingers the surface of a stone, I 
 succeeded in deciphering an Arabic inscription, by 
 which the writer of the words intimated to his suc- 
 cessors that he had loosened two stones in the lowest 
 course of masonry, and dug beyond them eleven feet of 
 a tunnel. In order to continue his task it was necessary 
 to spread over the floor of the dungeon itself the little 
 bits of stone and mortar produced by the work of ex- 
 cavation. Even if my keepers or the inquisitors had
 
 FACING CANE 113 
 
 not felt quite easy in their minds on account of the very 
 structure of the building, which made only an external 
 surveillance necessary, the arrangement of the Pozzi 
 dungeons, into which one descends by a few steps, made 
 it possible gradually to raise the level of the floor with- 
 out its being noticed by the jailers. The immense 
 amount of work he had done had proved to be super- 
 fluous, at least for the man who had undertaken it, for 
 the fact that it had been left unfinished told of the 
 death of the unknown prisoner. In order that his zeal 
 might not be useless for ever, it was necessary that some 
 future prisoner should know Arabic ; but I had studied 
 Eastern languages at the Armenian convent of Venice. 
 A sentence written on the back of one of the stones 
 told the fate of this unfortunate man, who had died the 
 victim of his immense riches, which Venice had coveted, 
 and of which she had taken possession. It took me a 
 month to arrive at any result. Whilst I was at work, 
 and during the intervals when I was overwhelmed with 
 fatigue I heard the sound of gold, I thought I could see 
 gold before me, I was dazzled by diamonds ! . . . Oh ! 
 just wait. 
 
 'One night, my piece of steel, now blunted, came 
 upon wood. I sharpened my broken fragment of a sword 
 and made a hole in the wood. In order to work I used 
 to drag myself along like a serpent on my stomach, and 
 I stripped so as to dig like a mole, with my hands out 
 in front of me, stretched on the stones I had already 
 burrowed through. In two days I was to appear before
 
 ii4 FACING CANE 
 
 my judges, so during this night I meant to make a last 
 effort. I cut through the wood, and my blade struck 
 against nothing beyond it. 
 
 ' Imagine my surprise when I put my eye to the hole ! 
 I had penetrated the wainscot of an underground room, 
 in which a dim light allowed me to see a great heap of 
 gold. The Doge and one of the Council of Ten were 
 in this cellar. I heard their voices. From their talk, I 
 gathered that here was the secret hoard of the Republic, 
 the gifts of the Doges, and the reserves of booty known 
 as the " share of Venice," and levied on the produce of 
 over-sea expeditions. 
 
 c I was saved ! 
 
 ' When next the jailer came, I proposed to him to 
 assist me to escape, and to go away with me, taking off 
 with us all that we could carry. There was no reason to 
 hesitate, and he agreed. A ship was about to sail for 
 the Levant. Every precaution was taken. Bianca lent 
 her aid to the plans I dictated to my accomplice. In 
 order not to arouse suspicion Bianca was to rejoin us 
 only at Smyrna. In a single night the hole was en- 
 larged, and we climbed down into the secret treasury of 
 Venice. What a night ! I saw four huge casks full of 
 gold. In the room before that, silver was in the same 
 profusion, piled up in two heaps, leaving a path in the 
 middle by which to pass through the room, with the 
 coins sloping up in piles on each side till they reached a 
 height of five feet at the walls. I thought the jailer 
 would go mad. He sang, he danced, he laughed, he cut
 
 FACING CANE 115 
 
 capers among the gold. I threatened to strangle him if 
 he wasted our time or made a noise. In his joy he did 
 not at first notice a table on which were the diamonds. 
 I threw myself upon it so cleverly that I was able, un- 
 seen by him, to fill with them my sailor's jacket and 
 the pockets of my trousers. Mon Dieu ! but I did not 
 take one-third of them. Under this table there were 
 ingots of gold. I persuaded my comrade to fill as many 
 sacks as we could carry with gold, pointing out to him 
 that this was the only way in which our plunder would 
 not lead to our being discovered abroad. 
 
 ' " Pearls, jewels, and diamonds would only lead to our 
 being recognised," I said to him. 
 
 ' Whatever might be our eagerness for it, we could 
 not take away more than two thousand pounds of gold, 
 and this required six journeys through the prison to get 
 it to the gondola. The sentinel at the water gate had 
 been won over at the price of a sack of ten pounds of 
 gold. As for the two gondoliers they were under the 
 impression that they were serving the Republic. We 
 made our start at daybreak. When we were in the 
 open sea, and when I remembered that night, when 
 I recalled all the sensations I had felt and when I saw 
 again in imagination that vast treasure house, where, 
 according to my estimate, I was leaving thirty 
 millions in silver, twenty millions in gold, and many 
 millions in diamonds, pearls, and rubies, there came 
 upon me something like a fit of madness I had the 
 gold fever.
 
 n6 FACING CANE 
 
 ' We arranged to be put ashore at Smyrna, and there 
 we at once embarked for France. When we were get- 
 ting on board of the French ship Heaven did me the 
 favour of ridding me of my accomplice. At the 
 moment I did not realise the full result of this ill- 
 natured stroke of chance, at which I rejoiced exceed- 
 ingly. We were so utterly unnerved, that we had remained 
 in a half-dazed condition without saying a word to each 
 other, waiting till we were in safety to enjoy ourselves 
 as we wished. It is not surprising that this rogue had 
 his head a bit turned. You will see later on how God 
 punished me ! 
 
 ' I did not feel I was safe till I had sold two-thirds 
 of my diamonds in London and Amsterdam, and 
 exchanged my gold dust for notes that could be cashed. 
 For five years I hid myself in Madrid. Then, in 1770, 
 I came to Paris under a Spanish name, and had a most 
 brilliant career there. Bianca had died. But in the 
 midst of my enjoyments, and when I had a fortune of 
 six million francs at my command, I was struck with 
 blindness. I have no doubt that this infirmity was the 
 result of my stay in the dungeon, and of my toils 
 when I burrowed through the stone, though perhaps 
 my mania for seeing gold implied an abuse of the 
 power of sight that predestined me to the loss of my 
 eyes. 
 
 ' At this time I was in love with a woman to whom I 
 intended to unite my lot. I had told her the secret of 
 my name. She belonged to a powerful family, and
 
 FACING CANE 117 
 
 I hoped for everything from the favour shown me by 
 Louis xv. I had put my trust in this woman, who was 
 the friend of Madame du Barry. She advised me 
 to consult a famous oculist in London. But after we 
 had stayed some months in that city, the woman gave 
 me the slip one day in Hyde Park, after having robbed 
 me of all my fortune, and left me without any resource. 
 For being obliged to conceal my real name, which 
 would hand me over to the vengeance of Venice, I 
 could not appeal to any one for help. I was afraid of 
 Venice. My infirmity was taken advantage of by spies 
 with whom this woman had surrounded me. I spare 
 you the story of adventures worthy of Gil Bias. Then 
 came your Revolution. I was forced to become an 
 inmate of the Quinze-Vingts Hospice, where this 
 creature arranged for my admission, after having kept 
 me for two years at the Bictre Asylum as a lunatic. I 
 have never been able to kill her, for I could not see to 
 do it, and I was too poor to hire another hand. If 
 before I lost Benedetto Capri, my jailer, I had 
 questioned him as to the position of my dungeon, I 
 might have ascertained exactly where the treasure lay, 
 and returned to Venice when the Republic was anni- 
 hilated by Napoleon. . . . 
 
 'However, notwithstanding my blindness, let us go 
 back to Venice ! I will rediscover the door of the 
 prison, I shall see the gold through its walls, I shall 
 smell it even under waters beneath which it is buried. 
 For the events that overthrew the power of Venice were
 
 n8 FACING CANE 
 
 of such a kind, that the secret of this treasure must have 
 died with Vendramino, the brother of Bianca, a Doge 
 who I hoped would have made my peace with the 
 Council of Ten. I wrote letters to the First Consul, I 
 proposed an arrangement with the Emperor of Austria, 
 but every one turned me away as a madman ! Come, 
 let us start for Venice, let us start even if we have to 
 beg our way ! We shall come back millionaires. We 
 will repurchase my property and you shall be my heir. 
 You will be Prince of Varese ! ' 
 
 In my astonishment at these revelations, which in my 
 imagination assumed all the aspect of a poem, -and 
 looking at this grey head, and the dark waters of the 
 ditches of the Bastille, stagnant water like that of the 
 Venetian canals, I made no reply. Facino Cane con- 
 cluded doubtless that I judged him as all the rest had 
 done with a scornful pity, and he made a gesture that 
 expressed all the philosophy of despair. 
 
 The narration had perhaps carried him back to his 
 days of happiness at Venice. He seized his clarionet 
 and played in a melancholy tone a Venetian air, a 
 barcarolle, and, as he played, he regained the skill of his 
 first years, the talent of a patrician lover. It was some- 
 thing like the lament by the rivers of Babylon. My 
 eyes filled with tears. If any belated passers-by came 
 along the Boulevard Bourdon, they must have paused 
 to listen to this last prayer of the banished man, this 
 last lament for a lost name, in which was mingled the 
 recollection of Bianca. But gold soon reasserted its
 
 FACING CANE 119 
 
 mastery, and the fatal passion extinguished this gleam 
 of youth. 
 
 ' That treasure ! ' he said to me, ' I always see it, as 
 in a waking dream. I walk about in the midst of it. 
 The diamonds sparkle, and I am not as blind as you 
 think. The gold and the diamonds illuminate my 
 darkness, the night of the last Facino Cane, for my 
 title goes to the Memmi. Mon Dieu I the murderer's 
 punishment has begun soon enough ! Ave Maria. . . .' 
 
 He recited some prayers which I could not hear. 
 
 ' We shall go to Venice ! ' I said to him, when he 
 rose. 
 
 ' I have found a man, then ! ' he exclaimed, and his 
 face lighted up. 
 
 I gave him my arm and took him home. At the 
 door of the Quinze-Vingts he grasped my hand, while 
 some of the guests from the wedding party passed on 
 their way home with deafening shouts. 
 
 'Shall we start to-morrow? ' said the old man. 
 
 ' As soon as we have a little money.' 
 
 ' But we can go on foot. I will beg alms. ... I am 
 strong, and one feels young when one sees gold in front 
 of one.' 
 
 Facino Cane died that winter, after two months of 
 lingering illness. The poor fellow had a catarrh.
 
 LA GRANDE BRETfeCHE 
 
 A SHORT distance from Venddme there stands on the 
 banks of the Loire an old house of brown stone, sur- 
 mounted by high pitched roofs. It is so completely 
 isolated that there is in its neighbourhood neither the 
 evil-smelling tannery nor the miserable inn that one 
 sees in the outskirts of most small towns. In front of 
 the house, looking out on the river, is a garden, in 
 which the box hedges, formerly clipped into green walls 
 for its alleys, are now allowed to grow as they will. 
 Some willows springing from the margin of the Loire 
 have grown as rapidly as the boundary hedges, and 
 half conceal the house. The plants that we call weeds 
 adorn with their beautiful foliage the slope towards the 
 water. The fruit-trees, neglected for ten years, no 
 longer produce a crop, and the suckers they have 
 thrown out have grown into thickets. The fruit-trees 
 trained on the walls have sprouted into wild bushes. 
 The paths once bright with gravel are overgrown with 
 moss ; but, to tell the truth, there is no longer a trace of 
 a path. 
 
 From the top of the hill crowned by the ruins of the 
 old castle of the Dukes of Vend6me, the only spot 
 
 from which the eye can look down into this enclosure, 
 120
 
 LA GRANDE BRETECHE 121 
 
 one says to oneself that at a date, now difficult to fix, 
 this little corner of the earth must have been the delight 
 of some man of good position who busied himself with 
 roses, with tulips, in a word, with horticulture, but who 
 was at the same time a gourmand in the matter of 
 choice fruit. One can make out an arched alley way, 
 or rather the remains of it, and under it there is a table 
 not entirely eaten away by time. At the sight of this 
 ruined garden one pictures to oneself the passive de- 
 lights of the quiet life enjoyed in the provinces, just as 
 one imagines the humdrum existence of some honest 
 shopkeeper as one reads the epitaph on his tomb. As 
 if suggesting a final touch to the peaceful and pathetic 
 fancies that take possession of one's mind, one of the 
 walls shows a sundial adorned with this respectably 
 pious inscription ' Ultimum cogita ! ' 
 
 The roofs of the house are in a terrible state of 
 collapse ; the shutters are always closed ; the balconies 
 are covered with swallows' nests ; the doors remain con- 
 tinually shut. Tall grasses mark out in green lines the 
 joints of the door-steps. The iron work is rust-eaten. 
 Sun, moon, winter, summer and snow have worn away 
 the woodwork, warped the boarding, ruined the paint- 
 work. 
 
 The mournful silence that broods over it all is dis- 
 turbed only by the birds, the cats, the weasels, the rats 
 and mice that are free to run about, fight, and eat each 
 other. Everywhere an unseen hand has written the 
 word ' Mystery.' If, moved by curiosity, you go and
 
 i22 LA GRANDE BRETECHE 
 
 take a look at the house from the road, you see a large 
 entrance gate, arched at the top, in the doors of which 
 the children of the countryside have knocked several 
 holes. Later on I found out that this entrance had 
 been closed for some ten years. Through these irregu- 
 lar openings in it you can make out that the court- 
 yard in front of the house is in just the same condition 
 as the garden on its river front. The same disorder 
 prevails there. Tufts of grass frame the flags of the 
 pavement. The walls are furrowed with great cracks, 
 and their blackened ridges are a tangle of thousands of 
 clumps of wallflowers. The steps at the door are dis- 
 jointed, the cord of the bell is rotten, the rain pipes are 
 broken. ' Has the fire of heaven fallen upon the place ? 
 What tribunal has ordered salt to be sown upon this 
 habitation ? Has God been insulted here ? or France 
 betrayed?' These are the questions that come into 
 one's mind. The reptiles that come crawling by give 
 no answer. This empty and deserted house presents a 
 huge enigma, of which no one knows the solution. 
 
 It was formerly the centre of a small feudal holding, 
 and bears the name of La Grande Breteche. During 
 the time of my stay at Vendome, where Dr. Desplein 
 had sent me to take care of a rich patient, the sight of 
 this strange abode became for me a source of the 
 keenest pleasure. Was it not much better than a mere 
 ruin ? A ruin has connected with it certain memories, 
 about the authenticity of which there is no doubt. But 
 this dwelling place, still standing though it was being
 
 LA GRANDE BRETECHE 123 
 
 slowly demolished by some avenging hand, held a secret, 
 some unknown idea. At the very least it suggested 
 some strange caprice. More than once, in the evenings, 
 I pressed my way through the hedge now run wild 
 that enclosed its grounds. Braving a few scratches I 
 forced an entrance into this ownerless garden, this estate 
 that was no longer either public or private. I remained 
 there whole hours considering its disordered condition. 
 I did not care to put even one question to some talka- 
 tive citizen of Vendome for the sake of learning the 
 story of the origin of this singular spectacle. But there 
 I composed delightful romances, I abandoned myself to 
 little bouts of melancholy thought that charmed me. 
 If I had known the reason perhaps a commonplace 
 one for this desolation, I would have lost all the un- 
 written poetry in which I took such wild delight. 
 
 To my mind this place of refuge brought up the most 
 diverse pictures of human life, darkened by misfortune. 
 Now it had for me the air of a cloister without its 
 monks ; now it told of the peace of a cemetery, without 
 the dead speaking to one in the language of their epitaphs. 
 To-day it would be the house of a leper ; to-morrow 
 that of the Atridse. But all the while it was provincial 
 France with its homely ideas, its life running quietly 
 like an hour-glass. I often wept there; I never laughed. 
 More than once I felt an involuntary terror as I heard 
 above my head the deep rushing sound of the wings of 
 some startled ring-dove. 
 
 The soil there is damp. One must be on the look- 
 
 K
 
 i2 4 LA GRANDE BRETECHE 
 
 out for the lizards, the vipers, the frogs that move about 
 in all the wild freedom of nature. Above all one must 
 not be afraid of cold, for at times you feel as if a mantle of 
 ice were placed upon your shoulders, like the death cold 
 hand of the Commandant on the neck of Don Juan. 
 One evening there I fairly shuddered. Just as I had 
 finished thinking out a sombre enough story as an ex- 
 planation of this kind of wretchedness built up in stone, 
 the wind set in motion a rusty old weathercock, and its 
 creaking sound was like a wailing cry from the house itself. 
 I went back to my inn, a prey to gloomy thoughts. 
 
 After I had had my supper, my hostess entered my 
 room with an air of mystery, and said to me : 
 
 ' Sir, Monsieur Regnault is here.' 
 
 ' Who is Monsieur Regnault ? ' 
 
 1 What ! Monsieur does not know Monsieur Regnault ! 
 well, that 's odd ! ' she said as she went out. 
 
 Suddenly I saw entering the room a tall, slightly built 
 man dressed in black and holding his hat in his hand. 
 He came in with his head bent forward like a ram 
 ready to charge its rival, and presented to me a retreat- 
 ing forehead, a little pointed head, and a pale face with 
 a complexion like a glass of dirty water. You might 
 have taken him for the door-keeper at one of the minis- 
 tries in Paris. The stranger wore an old coat, showing 
 a good deal of wear in its creases, but he had a diamond 
 in his shirt -frill and gold earrings in his ears. 
 
 1 Whom have I the honour of addressing, sir ? ' said 
 I to him.
 
 LA GRANDE BRETECHE 125 
 
 He took his seat on a chair, turned to the fire, placed 
 his hat on my table and replied to me, rubbing his 
 hands : 
 
 'Ah ! it's very cold. I am Monsieur Regnault, sir.' 
 I bowed, saying to myself, '// Bondocani ! look out ! ' 
 ' I am,' he went on, ' a notary at Vendome.' 
 ' I am delighted to hear it, sir ! ' I exclaimed, ' but I 
 am not in a position to make my will just now for 
 reasons well known to myself.' 
 
 ' Just a moment ! ' he began again, raising his hand 
 as if to impose silence. ' Allow me, sir, allow me ! I 
 have been informed that you sometimes go and take a 
 walk in the garden of La Grande Breteche.' 
 'Yes, sir.' 
 
 'Just a moment,' he said, repeating his gesture. 
 ' This action on your part amounts to a real breach of 
 the law. I have come, sir, in the name and as executor 
 of the late Madame la Comtesse de Merret, to request 
 that you will cease your visits. Just a moment ! I am 
 not a Turk, and I don't want to make your conduct 
 into a crime. Besides, you may very well be ignorant 
 of the circumstances which oblige me to allow the 
 finest residence in Venddme to go to ruin. Neverthe- 
 less, sir, you appear to be an educated man, and you 
 ought to be aware that the laws forbid any one to tres- 
 pass on enclosed property, and this under serious penal- 
 ties. A hedge counts for as much as a wall. But the 
 state in which the house is may serve as an excuse for 
 your curiosity. Personally I should be quite satisfied
 
 126 LA GRANDE BRETECHE 
 
 to leave you free to come and go about that house ; but 
 having been entrusted with the execution of the will of the 
 testatrix, I have the honour, sir, to request that you will 
 not again enter the garden. Since the will was opened, 
 sir, I myself have not set foot in that house, which, as 
 I have had the honour to tell you, forms part of the 
 property left by Madame de Merret. We have merely 
 taken note of the number of its doors and windows, in 
 order to assess the amount of the taxes which I pay, 
 provided annually out of funds for this purpose by the 
 late Countess. Ah ! my dear sir, her will made a great 
 stir in Vendome.' 
 
 Here the worthy man stopped to blow his nose. I 
 listened respectfully to his loquacity, for I could 
 thoroughly well realise that the administration of the 
 will of Madame de Merret was the most important 
 event of his life, the summit of his reputation, his glory, 
 all that the Restoration was for a good Royalist. I 
 must say good-bye to my delightful reveries and 
 romances. So I had no reluctance to give myself the 
 pleasure of learning the truth in an official way. 
 
 'Sir,' I said to him, 'would it be an indiscretion 
 on my part to ask you the reason for this eccentric 
 arrangement ? ' 
 
 At these words there came over the face of the 
 notary a look that expressed all the pleasure, which 
 men feel who have the habit of mounting their hobby. 
 He pulled up the collar of his shirt with a touch of 
 foppery, took out his snuff-box, opened it, and offered
 
 LA GRANDE BRETECHE 127 
 
 me a pinch ; and on my refusing it he took a big one 
 himself. He was happy ! A man who has not a hobby 
 does not know all the joy one can get in life. A hobby 
 is the golden mean between a passion and a mono- 
 mania. At that moment I understood the full force 
 of this fine expression of Sterne's, and I fully realised 
 the joy with which Uncle Toby, aided by Corporal 
 Trim, set himself astride of his charger. 
 
 ' Sir,' said Monsieur Regnault to me, ' I was the chief 
 clerk of Maitre Roguin of Paris, a first-class office, which 
 you have doubtless heard spoken of? No? However, 
 an unfortunate bankruptcy made it famous. As I had 
 not a sufficent fortune to carry on business in Paris with 
 prices at the level everything went up to in 1816, 
 I came here and bought the practice of my predecessor. 
 I had some relations in Vendome, amongst others a 
 very rich aunt, who gave me her daughter in marriage. 
 . . . Well, sir,' he continued, after a slight pause, 'three 
 months after having been admitted to my profession 
 here by Monseigneur, the keeper of the seals, one night, 
 just as I was going to bed I was not yet married then 
 I was summoned by Madame la Comtesse de Merret 
 to her chateau of Merret. Her lady's maid, an 
 excellent young woman who is now employed in this 
 very hotel, was at my door with the Countess's carriage. 
 Ah ! just a moment ! . . . I must tell you, sir, that, two 
 months before I arrived here, Monsieur le Comte de 
 Merret had gone away to die in Paris. He came to 
 a wretched end there, while he was abandoning himself
 
 128 LA GRANDE BRETECHE 
 
 to all kinds of excesses. You understand? On the 
 day of his departure Madame la Comtesse had left La 
 Grande Breteche and sent away all the furniture of the 
 house. Some persons even allege that she burned all 
 the furniture, the hangings, finally all the things in 
 general of whatsoever kind, which furnish the premises 
 at present leased by the said person. . . . Why, what 
 am I saying? Excuse me, I thought I was dictating 
 a lease . . . that she burned them,' he continued, ' in 
 the meadow at Merret. Have you been to Merret, 
 sir? No?' he said, replying for me to his own 
 question. ' Ah, it is a very pretty place ! For about 
 three months,' said he, continuing his story after giving 
 a little shake of his head, Monsieur le Comte and 
 Madame la Comtesse had been living in a singular 
 fashion. They no longer received any guests. Madame 
 had her rooms on the ground floor, and Monsieur his 
 on the first story. When Madame la Comtesse was 
 left alone she never again showed herself in the church. 
 Later on, when she had taken up her residence at the 
 chateau, she refused to see her friends even her lady 
 friends who came to visit her. She was already 
 greatly changed at the time when she left La Grande 
 Breteche to go to Merret. This dear lady (I say dear 
 because this diamond came to me from her, though for 
 that matter I never saw her but once) . . . well, this 
 good woman was very ill. No doubt she had given up 
 all hope of recovery, for she died without once express- 
 ing a wish to see a doctor : that is why many of our
 
 LA GRANDE BRETECHE 129 
 
 ladies here thought she was not quite right in her 
 head. 
 
 'Well then, sir, my curiosity was strangely excited 
 when I heard that Madame de Merret required my 
 professional services. I was not the only one who took 
 an interest in this affair. That very evening, late as it 
 was, all the town got to know that I was going to 
 Merret. The lady's maid gave rather vague answers to 
 the questions I put to her on the way. However, she 
 told me that her mistress had received the last rites of 
 the Church from the Curd of Merret during the day, 
 and that it looked as if she would not live through the 
 night. I reached the chateau about eleven o'clock. 
 I went up the great staircase. After having passed 
 through some large rooms, lofty and dark and devilishly 
 cold and damp they were, I reached at last the state 
 bedroom, where Madame la Comtesse was. 
 
 ' Considering what gossip was current about this lady 
 I would never get to the end of it, sir, if I were to tell 
 you all the stories that were repeated about her I 
 pictured her to myself as something of a coquette. 
 Just imagine, I had a lot of difficulty to see where she 
 was in the great bed in which she lay. It is true that 
 there was only one old-fashioned Argand lamp to light 
 this enormous room with, its decorative carvings in the 
 style of the ancient regime; so covered with dust that 
 it almost made one sneeze to look at them. Ah, but 
 you have never been to Merret ! Well, sir, the bed was 
 one of those old four-posters, with a tester hung with
 
 130 LA GRANDE BRETECHE 
 
 flowered chintz. A little table was near the bed, and 
 I saw on it an Imitation of Christ, which by the way 
 I bought for my wife at the sale, as well as the lamp. 
 There was also a big armchair for her waiting woman, 
 and two other chairs. No fire by the way. That was 
 all the furniture. It would not have taken up two 
 lines in a catalogue. Ah, my dear sir, if you had seen, 
 as I then saw it, that huge room hung with brown 
 curtains, you really would have thought you had been 
 transported to some scene in a novel. It was chilling, 
 nay, more than that, 'funereal' he added, raising his 
 hand with a theatrical gesture, and making a pause. 
 
 ' By dint of looking hard and coming close up to the 
 bed, at last I saw Madame de Merret by the light of the 
 lamp, the rays of which shone upon the pillows. x Her 
 face was as yellow as wax, and so wrinkled, it looked 
 like a pair of hands held close together. Madame la 
 Comtesse wore a lace night-cap, that let one see her 
 beautiful hair falling from under it, but it was white as 
 snow. She was sitting up in the bed and seemed to 
 keep that position with much difficulty. Her large 
 black eyes, sunken with the fever no doubt, and nearly 
 dead, hardly stirred under the eyelashes, in their bony 
 sockets. There,' he said, pointing to the arch of his 
 own eyebrows, 'her forehead was damp. Her wasted 
 hands were like bones covered with skin, tightly 
 stretched; one could easily see the lines of her 
 veins and muscles. She must have once been very 
 beautiful ; but at that moment I was seized by a feeling
 
 LA GRANDE BRETECHE 131 
 
 I cannot describe, as I looked at her. According to 
 what I was told by those who buried her, a living 
 creature never was more wasted away before death. In 
 one word, it was something frightful to see ! Her 
 malady had so worn away this woman, that she was just 
 like a ghost. Her lips, of a pale violet tint, seemed to 
 me to be motionless, even when she spoke. Although 
 my profession had made me used to such sights, as it 
 brings me from time to time to the bedside of dying 
 people to put their last wishes on record, I confess that 
 families in tears and men in their death-agony were all 
 nothing compared to that lonely, silent woman in the 
 midst of that immense chateau. 
 
 ' I did not hear the least sound, I could not distin- 
 guish the movement that the respiration of the sick 
 woman ought to have caused in the bedclothes that 
 covered her, and I myself stood motionless in a kind of 
 stupor. I can fancy myself there now. At last her 
 large eyes moved, she tried to raise her right hand, 
 which fell back on the bed, and these words came from 
 her lips like a dull murmur, for her voice was no longer 
 like human speech ; " I have been expecting you very 
 impatiently." A flush of colour came on her cheeks. 
 It was an effort, sir, for her to speak. 
 
 ' " Madame ..." I said to her. She made a sign 
 for me to be silent. At this moment the old woman 
 who was taking care of her rose and whispered in my 
 ear, "Do not speak, Madame la Comtesse has gone 
 beyond the stage at which she can hear even the least
 
 132 LA GRANDE BRETECHE 
 
 sound, and if you could speak to her, it would only 
 disturb her." 
 
 ' I sat down. A few moments later Madame de 
 Merret collected all the strength that was left to her, 
 and moved her right arm. She put her hand, not 
 without endless efforts, under the bolster. She paused 
 just for a moment. She made a last effort to withdraw 
 her hand, and as she held out a sealed paper, drops of 
 sweat fell from her forehead. " I entrust my last will to 
 you ..." she said. " Ah, mon Dieu, ah ! " This was 
 all. She grasped a crucifix that lay on the bed, raised 
 it quickly to her lips, and died. 
 
 ' The expression of her rigidly fixed eyes makes me 
 shudder when I think of it. She must have suffered a 
 great deal ! There was joy in her last look, and the 
 expression remained fixed in her dead eyes. 
 
 ' I took away the will, and when it was opened I 
 found that Madame de Merret had made me her legal 
 executor. With the exception of some private legacies 
 she left the whole of her property to the hospital of 
 Vendome. But listen to her arrangements with regard 
 to La Grande Breteche. She enjoined me to leave this 
 house, for the term of fifty years from the day of her 
 death, in the state in which it actually was at the 
 moment of her decease. I was to prevent any 
 person whatsoever from entering its rooms, and she 
 forbade the slightest repairs to be made to it, and even 
 provided an annual allowance, so that if necessary 
 watchmen should be engaged to enforce the complete
 
 LA GRANDE BRETECHE 133 
 
 fulfilment of these her last wishes. At the expiration 
 of the assigned period, if the intentions of the testatrix 
 had been fulfilled, the house was to belong to my heirs, 
 for, as Monsieur knows, notaries themselves cannot 
 accept legacies. Otherwise La Grande Breteche was to 
 become the property of any one who could establish a 
 claim to it, but under the condition that they should 
 observe certain provisions set forth in a codicil attached 
 to the will, which codicil is not to be opened before the 
 expiration of the aforesaid fifty years. The will was not 
 contested by any one, therefore . . . ' 
 
 With this word, and without finishing the sentence, 
 the lanky notary looked at me with an air of triumph. 
 I made him quite happy by addressing a few words of 
 compliment to him. 
 
 ' Sir,' I said, ' you have made such a strong impression 
 on me that I can imagine I am looking at this dying 
 woman, paler than the sheets of the bed ; her glistening 
 eyes are a terror to me. I shall dream of her to-night. 
 But you must have made some conjectures regarding 
 the provisions set forth in this singular will.' 
 
 ' Sir,' he answered me, with an amusing air of discreet 
 reserve, ' I never allow myself to sit in judgment on the 
 conduct of persons who honour me with the gift of a 
 diamond.' 
 
 I soon loosened the tongue of this scrupulous notary, 
 and he then communicated to me not without long 
 digressions the conclusions arrived at by the wiseacres 
 of both sexes whose judgments have the force of law
 
 134 LA GRANDE BRETECHE 
 
 at Vendome But these conclusions were so contra- 
 dictory, and so long winded, that I had some difficulty 
 in keeping myself awake, notwithstanding the interest I 
 took in this authoritative account of the affair. The 
 dull tone, and the monotonous voice of the notary, who 
 was no doubt well used to hear himself talk and to 
 make his clients and fellow townsmen listen to him, at 
 length had the better even of my curiosity. . . . Happily 
 at last he left me. 
 
 ' Ah ! ah ! sir,' he said to me on the stairs, ' there are 
 many people that would like to live another forty-five 
 years ; but, just a moment ! . . . ' 
 
 And with a knowing air he put the first finger of his 
 hand to the side of his nose, as if he meant to say, 
 ' Pay strict attention to this ! ' 
 
 ' But to go so far as that,' he added, ' one must not 
 be in the sixties ! ' 
 
 I closed my door after having been roused from my 
 apathy by this last sally, which the notary evidently 
 thought very witty. Then I seated myself in my arm- 
 chair, putting my feet on the two fire-dogs before the 
 grate. I was plunging into a romance of the gloomy 
 old style of Mrs. Radcliffe, when my door, pushed open 
 by the light touch of a woman's hand, turned on its 
 hinges. I saw my hostess coming in, a stout, smiling, 
 good-humoured woman, who had missed her vocation ; 
 she was of the type of a Fleming, and ought to have 
 figured in some picture of Teniers. 
 
 ' Well, sir,' she said to me, ' no doubt Monsieur
 
 LA GRANDE BRETECHE 135 
 
 Regnault has been spinning out his long story of La 
 Grande Breteche to you ? ' 
 
 'Yes, mother Lepas. 
 
 ' What has he told you ? ' 
 
 I repeated to her in a few words the gloomy, blood- 
 curdling story of Madame de Merret. At each sentence 
 my hostess stretched out her neck and looked at me 
 with the keen insight of an innkeeper, a kind of average 
 between the instinct of a gendarme, the cunning of a 
 spy, and the trickery of a dealer. 
 
 4 My dear Madame Lepas,' I added as I ended, 'you 
 seem to know something more, eh ? Otherwise, why 
 should you come here to me ? ' 
 
 4 Ah ! on the good faith of an honest woman, as sure 
 as my name is Lepas . . . ' 
 
 4 Now don't swear. Your eyes are big with a secret. 
 You knew Monsieur de Merret. What kind of a man 
 was he ? ' 
 
 ' Law ! Monsieur de Merret, you see, was a fine 
 figure of a man, so tall that it was a long job to look at 
 him from head to foot ! a worthy gentleman, who came 
 from Picardy, and who was, as we say here, a bit touchy. 
 He used to pay cash down, so as never to have disputes 
 with any one. He was a lively fellow, you see. Our 
 ladies all thought him very amiable.' 
 
 4 Because he was so lively ? ' said I to my hostess. 
 
 'Very likely,' she said. 4 You may well believe, sir, 
 that as they say, one had to have good prospects in the 
 world to marry Madame de Merret, who, without wish-
 
 136 LA GRANDE BRETECHE 
 
 ing to say any ill of others, was the most beautiful and 
 the richest lady round about Vendome. She had an 
 income of twenty thousand livres from property in this 
 neighbourhood. All the town went to her marriage. 
 The bride was a dainty, winning little thing, a real jewel of 
 a woman ! Ah ! they made a handsome couple that day ! ' 
 
 ' Were they happy in their married life ? ' 
 
 ' Hum ! hum ! yes and no, so far as one could make 
 out. For, as you can imagine, people of our class were 
 not hand and glove with them ! Madame de Merret was 
 a good woman, very elegant, who perhaps after all had 
 sometimes to suffer from the vivacity of her husband ; 
 and though he was a little proud, we liked him. Bah, 
 it was the nature of his class to be like that ! When 
 one is a noble, you see . . .' 
 
 'However, there must of course have been a cata- 
 strophe of some kind to cause this violent separation 
 between Monsieur and Madame de Merret ? ' 
 
 ' I never said there was any catastrophe, sir. I know 
 nothing about it.' 
 
 'Well, I feel quite sure now that you know every- 
 thing.' 
 
 ' Well, sir, I am going to tell you everything. When 
 I saw Monsieur Regnault going up to your room, I quite 
 made up my mind that he would talk to you about 
 Madame de Merret in connection with La Grande 
 Breteche. That gave me the idea of asking your advice, 
 sir, for I take you to be a man of good counsel, who 
 would be incapable of misleading a poor woman like me,
 
 LA GRANDE BRETECHE 137 
 
 who has never done any one the least harm, though all 
 the same I am troubled by my conscience. Till this 
 moment I have never dared to open my mind to the 
 people of this neighbourhood here, who are all gossips 
 with biting tongues. And then, sir, I have never had a 
 visitor who remained so long in my hotel, and to whom 
 I could venture to tell the story of the fifteen thou- 
 sand francs. ..." 
 
 ' My dear Madame Lepas,' I replied, stopping the flow 
 of her words, ' if your confidences are of a kind to com- 
 promise me, I would not for all the world be entrusted 
 with them.' 
 
 'You have nothing to be afraid of,' she said interrupt- 
 ing me, ' as you will see.' 
 
 Her eagerness made me think that I was not the only 
 one to whom my good hostess had imparted the secret 
 of which I was supposed to be the sole depositary, and 
 I listened. 
 
 ' At the time, sir,' she said, ' when the Emperor used 
 to send here prisoners of war from Spain and elsewhere, 
 I had to find lodgings, at the expense of the Govern- 
 ment, for a young Spaniard who had been sent to 
 Venddme on parole. Though he had given his parole 
 he had to go every day and report himself to the sub- 
 prefect. He was a grandee of Spain ! Excuse me a 
 moment he had a name ending in os and dia, some- 
 thing like Bagos de FeVedia. I have his name noted 
 somewhere in my list of visitors. You can read it there 
 if you like. Oh, he was a fine young man for a
 
 138 LA GRANDE BRETECHE 
 
 Spaniard, who they say are all ugly ! He was barely five 
 feet two or three inches high, but he was very well 
 made. He had little hands that he took such care of. 
 Ah ! you should have seen, he had as many brushes 
 for his hands as a woman has for her whole toilet ! He 
 had long black hair, an eye of fire, rather a bronzed 
 complexion, but I liked it all the same. He had such 
 fine linen as I have never seen on any one else, though 
 I have had princesses here, and amongst other guests 
 General Bertrand, the Duke and Duchess of Abrantes, 
 Monsieur Descazes and the King of Spain. He did 
 not eat much, but one could not find fault with him for 
 that, he had such polished, such winning manners. 
 Oh ! I was very fond of him, though he would not say 
 four words in the course of a day, and it was impossible 
 to have the slightest conversation with him. If one 
 spoke to him he would not reply. It is an oddity, a 
 mania they all have, by what I am told. He read his 
 breviary like a priest, he went to mass and to all the 
 services. And where did he chose his place? We all 
 remarked it later on two steps from the pew of 
 Madame de Merret. But as he knelt there the very 
 first time he went to the church, no one imagined that 
 there was any particular object in it. Besides he never 
 raised his nose from his prayer-book, the poor young 
 man ! Then, sir, in the evening he would walk about on 
 the hill among the ruins of the castle. It was his only 
 amusement, poor fellow, it reminded him of his own 
 country. They say Spain is all hills !
 
 LA GRANDE BRETECHE 139 
 
 ' From the first days of his detention here he kept 
 late hours. I was anxious at seeing that he did not 
 come home till the stroke of midnight. But we got 
 used to this fancy of his ; he took the door key with 
 him and we ceased to sit up for him. He lodged in the 
 house that we had in the Rue des Casernes. Then one 
 of our stablemen told us that one evening when he took 
 the horses down to the Loire to walk them in the water 
 he thought he saw the Spanish grandee swimming far 
 off in the river swimming like a fish. When he came 
 home I told him to take care not to get entangled in 
 the water weeds, and he seemed annoyed at having 
 been seen in the water. At last sir, one day, or rather 
 one morning, we found that he was not in his room. 
 He had not come home. By dint of searching every- 
 where I found a piece of writing in the drawer of his 
 table, in which there were fifty Spanish pieces of gold, of 
 the kind they call " Moidores," and which would be worth 
 about five thousand francs, and, besides these, diamonds 
 to the value of ten thousand francs in a little sealed box. 
 The writing said that, in case he did not return, he 
 left us this money and these diamonds on condition 
 that we would have masses said to thank God for his 
 escape from captivity, and to pray for his salvation. 
 
 ' At that time I had still my husband, and he went to 
 look for him. And now comes a singular incident. 
 He brought back some of the Spaniard's clothes, which 
 he had found under a big stone among some stakes on 
 the river bank, in the direction of the castle and nearly 
 
 L
 
 140 LA GRANDE BRETECHE 
 
 opposite La Grande Breteche. My husband had gone 
 out there so early in the morning that no one saw him. 
 He burned the clothes, after having read the letter, and, 
 according to Count Feredia's wish, we declared tha.t he 
 had made his escape. The sub-prefect sent all the 
 gendarmerie off after him ; but, whew ! he was never 
 caught. Lepas thought he must have been drowned. 
 But as for me, sir, I don't believe it ; I rather think that 
 he had something to do with the affair of Madame de 
 Merret, because Rosalie told me that the crucifix, 
 by which her mistress set so much value that she had it 
 buried with her, was of ebony and silver. Now during 
 the first part of his stay here Monsieur Fe're'dia had one 
 of ebony and silver, which I never after saw in his 
 possession. Well, sir, is it not true that I need have no 
 remorse about the Spaniard's fifteen thousand francs 
 and that they are fairly mine ? ' 
 
 ' Certainly. But you never tried to question 
 Rosalie ? ' said I to her. 
 
 ' Oh, yes indeed, sir ! But what use was it ? That 
 girl is like a wall. She knows something but it is 
 impossible to set her tongue going.' 
 
 After having talked a little longer with me, my 
 hostess left me a prey to vague and gloomy thoughts, a 
 romantic curiosity, a religious awe something like the 
 deep feeling which comes over one when some night 
 one enters a dark church and sees a dim light far off 
 under its lofty arches a figure half seen glides past, 
 one catches the rustle of a dress or of a soutane, and
 
 LA GRANDE BRETECHE 141 
 
 one shudders. La Grande Breteche, with its tall grass, 
 its shuttered windows, its rusted ironwork, its closed 
 doors, its deserted rooms, came up all at once in my 
 imagination. I tried in thought to penetrate into that 
 abode of mystery, seeking there the connecting link of 
 this grim story, of this drama that had been the death 
 of three people. 
 
 In my eyes Rosalie was now the most interesting 
 being in Vendome. Observing her closely, notwith- 
 standing the glow of health that shone on her plump 
 features, I remarked traces of some hidden thought. She 
 must have in her mind some permanent source of either 
 remorse or anxious hope. Her expression told of 
 some secret, it might seem like that of a devotee who is 
 carried away by excess of fervour in prayer, or on the 
 other hand like some poor girl who hears always the last 
 cry of her murdered child. All the same her general 
 manner was simple and dull ; in her silly smile there was 
 no trace of the criminal ; and you would have made up 
 your mind about her innocence only to see the red and 
 blue chequered kerchief that covered her ample bosom, 
 and was closely secured in the opening of her dress of 
 white and violet stripes. 
 
 'No,' I thought, 'I shall not leave Vend6me with- 
 out finding out the whole story of La Grande Breteche. 
 And to gain this end I shall even make love to Rosalie 
 if it is absolutely necessary.' 
 
 ' Rosalie ? ' I said to her one evening. 
 
 ' I beg your pardon, sir ? '
 
 HZ LA GRANDE BRETECHE 
 
 ' You are not married ? ' 
 
 She gave a slight start. ' Oh ! I shall have offers 
 enough whenever a fancy for being miserable comes 
 over me,' she said, laughing. 
 
 She quickly controlled any sign of inward emotion, 
 for all women, from the fine lady down to the servant 
 in a tavern inclusively, have a self-possession that is all 
 their own. 
 
 ' You are fresh enough, winning enough, not to want 
 for lovers ! But tell me, Rosalie, why did you choose 
 to become a servant in an inn after leaving Madame de 
 Merret? Can it be that she did not give you any 
 pension ? ' 
 
 ' Oh, yes indeed ! But, sir, my place is the best in 
 Vendome.' 
 
 This reply was of the class which judges and lawyers 
 call 'evasive.' Rosalie's position in this romantic 
 history seemed to me like that of the middle square of 
 the draught-board. She was in the very centre of 
 interest, the centre of the true solution. She seemed 
 to me tied up in the knot of complications. It was no 
 ordinary attraction that drew me on. In this girl was 
 embodied the last chapter of a romance, so from that 
 moment Rosalie became the special object of my 
 attentions. When I began to study this woman, I 
 noticed a number of good qualities in her, as one does 
 with any woman who becomes the chief object of one's 
 thoughts ; she was neat and careful about herself ; she 
 was pretty, it need hardly be said ; she had soon all the
 
 LA GRANDE BRETECHE 143 
 
 attractions that our own feelings can give to women 
 whatever their position may be. 
 
 A fortnight after the notary's visit, one evening, 
 or rather one morning, for it was very early, I said to 
 Rosalie : 
 
 ' Will you tell me now all that you know about 
 Madame de Merret ? ' 
 
 ' Oh ! ' she answered with a look of terror, ' don't ask 
 me that, Mr. Horace ! ' 
 
 Her beautiful face became gloomy, the bright ani- 
 mated colour on her cheeks gave way to paleness, and 
 her eyes had no longer their humid radiance. I insisted 
 nevertheless. 
 
 1 Well,' she said at last, ' since you will have it, I will 
 tell it to you. But you must keep my secret carefully.' 
 
 'Come, come, my poor girl, I shall keep all your 
 secrets with the honour there is among thieves, and that 
 is the most reliable thing there is in the world.' 
 
 ' If it 's the same to you,' she said, ' I would prefer it 
 to be kept by your own honour.' 
 
 With this she adjusted her kerchief, and settled down 
 as if to tell her story ; foi; indeed there is an attitude of 
 confidence and comfort that is quite necessary to the 
 telling of a tale. The best stories are related at a 
 certain hour when all are seated at table. No one can 
 tell a story really well when he is standing up or fasting. 
 But if I had to reproduce verbatim the diffuse eloquence 
 of Rosalie, a whole volume would hardly give space for 
 it. Now as the event, of which she gave me a confused
 
 144 LA GRANDE BRETECHE 
 
 account, fits in between the gossip of the notary and 
 that of Madame Lepas, as precisely as the middle 
 terms of an arithmetical proportion come between its 
 two extremes, I need only tell it to you in a few words. 
 I therefore summarise it. 
 
 The room that Madame de Merret occupied at La 
 Breteche was situated on the ground floor. A little 
 closet about four feet deep, constructed in the thickness 
 of the wall, was used by her as a wardrobe. Three 
 months before the evening, the events of which I am 
 going to tell you, Madame de Merret had been so un- 
 well that her husband left her by herself in her room, 
 and slept in one on the first floor. By one of those 
 chances that it is impossible to foresee, he returned that 
 evening two hours later than usual from the club, where 
 he used to go to read the newspapers and talk politics 
 with the people of the neighbourhood. His wife 
 thought he had already come in and gone to bed and 
 to sleep. But the invasion of France had been the 
 subject of a very animated discussion ; there had been 
 an exciting billiard match, at which he had lost forty 
 francs, an enormous sum at Vendome, where every 
 one is hoarding up money, and where the everyday 
 ways of life are defined by laudable moderation, which 
 is perhaps a source of such true happiness as the average 
 Parisian does not care for. For some time Monsieur de 
 Merret had always been satisfied with asking Rosalie if 
 her mistress had gone to bed, and on her replying in 
 the affirmative, he would go at once to his own room,
 
 LA GRANDE BRETECHE 145 
 
 in all the good humour that comes of a habit of mutual 
 confidence. But when he came home this night he 
 took a fancy to go to Madame de Merret and tell her 
 of his misadventure, perhaps to get some consolation 
 for it. At dinner that evening he had remarked that 
 Madame de Merret was very daintily dressed. On his 
 way home from the club he had said to himself that his 
 wife must be recovered from her illness, that her con- 
 valescence had made her look prettier, and that he had 
 been a little slow in remarking it, as husbands are in 
 noticing anything. Instead of calling Rosalie, who at 
 the moment was occupied in the kitchen, watching the 
 cook and the coachman play out a difficult hand at 
 cards, Monsieur de Merret went towards his wife's room 
 by the light of his hand lantern, which he had put down 
 on the first step of the stairs. His tread, which was 
 easily recognisable, re-echoed under the arched roof of 
 the corridor. At the moment that he turned the key of 
 his wife's room, he thought he heard some one closing 
 the door of the closet, of which I have told you. But 
 when he entered, Madame de Merret was alone, stand- 
 ing in front of the fireplace. The husband thought 
 quite simply that Rosalie was in the closet. However 
 a suspicion, that tinkled in his ear like the sound of a 
 bell, made him mistrustful. He looked at his wife and 
 saw in her eyes something wild and troubled. 
 
 ' You have come home very late,' she said. 
 
 Her voice, that was usually so clear and sweet, 
 seemed slightly changed. Monsieur de Merret did
 
 146 LA GRANDE BRETECHE 
 
 not reply, for at this moment Rosalie entered. It was 
 a thunderbolt for him. He walked up and down the 
 room, passing from one window to the other, with a 
 regular step, and with his arms folded. 
 
 ' Have you heard some bad news or are you ill ? ' his 
 wife asked him timidly, while Rosalie began to undress 
 her. 
 
 He kept silent. 
 
 ' You can go,' said Madame de Merret to her maid, 
 ' I will put in my curl-papers myself.' 
 
 From the mere look of her husband's face she sus- 
 pected some misfortune, and she wanted to be alone 
 with him. When Rosalie had gone away, or when they 
 thought she had gone, for she remained some time in 
 the corridor, Monsieur de Merret took his stand in front 
 of his wife and said to her coldly : 
 
 'Madame, there is some one in your wardrobe.' 
 
 She looked quite calmly at her husband and answered 
 him simply : 
 
 'No, sir.' 
 
 That ' No ' went to Monsieur de Merret's heart, for 
 he did not believe it. And all the same his wife had 
 never seemed to him purer and holier than she looked 
 at that moment. He turned as if to go and open the 
 closet. Madame de Merret took him by the hand, 
 stopped him, looked at him with an air of melancholy, 
 and said to him in a voice full of deep feeling : 
 
 ' If you find no one there, remember that all is over 
 between us ! '
 
 LA GRANDE BRETECHE 147 
 
 The incredible dignity that was stamped upon the 
 whole bearing of the woman, inspired the man with 
 profound esteem for her, and suggested to him one of 
 those resolves that lack only a wider field to become 
 famous for all time. 
 
 ' No, Josephine,' he said, ' I shall not go there. 
 Whether the result was one thing or the other, we 
 should be parted for ever. Listen to me. I know all 
 the purity of your soul, and I know that you lead a holy 
 life. You would not commit a mortal sin even to save 
 your life.' 
 
 At these words Madame de Merret glanced at her 
 husband with a haggard look. 
 
 'See, here is your crucifix,' the man went on; 
 ' swear to me before God that there is no one there, 
 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, 'and repeat the words 
 "I swear before God that there is no one in that 
 closet." ' 
 
 She repeated the words without any hesitation. 
 
 ' It is well,' said Monsieur de Merret coldly. 
 
 After a moment's silence he said, while he examined 
 the crucifix, which was of ebony mounted with silver 
 and with a very artistic figure : 
 
 ' You have a very beautiful thing here. I did not 
 know you had it.' 
 
 ' I found it at Duvivier's shop. When that party of
 
 148 LA GRANDE BRETECHE 
 
 prisoners passed through Vendome last year, he bought 
 it from a Spanish monk.' 
 
 ' Ah ! ' said Monsieur de Merret, as he hung the 
 crucifix again on its nail on the wall. 
 
 Then he rang the bell. Rosalie soon appeared. 
 Monsieur de Merret went quickly to meet her, led her 
 to the bay of the window that looked out on the garden, 
 and said to her in a low voice : 
 
 ' I know that Gorenflot would like to marry you, that 
 poverty is the only thing that prevents you setting up 
 house together, and that you have told him you will not 
 be his wife unless he can find the means to set up as a 
 master mason. . . . Well, go and see him, and tell him 
 to come here at once with his trowel and his other tools. 
 Take care to wake no one else but him in his house. 
 His fortune will be beyond anything you can wish for. 
 Above all when you go out of this don't gossip, other- 
 wise . . .' 
 
 He gave a frown. Rosalie moved to go. He called 
 her back. 
 
 1 Here, take my latchkey,' he said. 
 
 ' Jean ! ' Monsieur de Merret called out in a voice of 
 thunder in the corridor. 
 
 Jean who was at the same time his coachman and 
 his confidential servant left his card party and came to 
 him. 
 
 ' Go to bed, all of you,' said his master, making a 
 sign to him to come near. 
 
 Then he added, but in a low voice :
 
 LA GRANDE BRETECHE 149 
 
 'When they are all asleep asleep, do you thoroughly 
 understand? you will come down and let me know.' 
 
 Monsieur de Merret who had never let his wife out of 
 his sight even while he gave his orders, came quietly 
 back to her as she sat by the fire, and began to tell her 
 the events of the billiard match and the discussion at 
 the club. When Rosalie returned she found Monsieur 
 and Madame de Merret talking together in a very 
 friendly way. He had lately had new ceiling put to all 
 the apartments of his suite of reception-rooms on the 
 ground floor. Plaster of Paris is a rarity at Venddme, 
 for the cost of conveyance greatly increases its price. He 
 had therefore had a rather large supply of it brought to 
 his place, for he knew that he could always find buyers 
 for what was left over. It was this circumstance that 
 suggested to him the plan he put into execution. 
 
 ' Monsieur Gorenflot is here,' said Rosalie in a low 
 voice. 
 
 ' Let him come in,' replied the Picard aloud. 
 
 Madame de Merret turned slightly pale when she 
 saw the mason. 
 
 ' Gorenflot,' said her husband, 'go and get some 
 of the bricks you will find in the coach-house, and bring 
 enough of them to wall up the door of that closet ; you 
 will then use the plaster we have left to cover up the 
 brickwork.' 
 
 Then calling Rosalie and the workman to him, he 
 said in a low voice : 
 
 1 Attend to me, Gorenflot. You are to sleep in this
 
 i5o LA GRANDE BRETfcCHE 
 
 house to-night, but to-morrow morning you will be 
 given a passport to go to a foreign country, to a town 
 which I will point out to you. I will hand you six 
 thousand francs for your journey. You will remain ten 
 years in that town. If you are not comfortable there, 
 you can establish yourself in some other, provided that 
 it is in the same country. You will go by way of Paris, 
 where you will wait to see me. There I will secure to 
 you by a bond another sum of six thousand francs, which 
 will be paid to you on your return to France provided 
 you have fulfilled all the conditions of our contract. For 
 this reward you must observe the most absolute secrecy 
 about what you are to do to-night. ... As for you, 
 Rosalie, I shall give you ten thousand francs, which will 
 not be paid to you till your wedding-day, and on con- 
 dition that you marry Monsieur Gorenflot ; but if you 
 mean to marry him you must keep silence, otherwise, 
 there is no dowry for you.' 
 
 'Rosalie,' said Madame de Merret, 'come and do 
 my hair.' 
 
 The husband walked quietly up and down the room, 
 keeping a watch on the door, his wife, and the mason, 
 but without making any offensive show of suspicion. 
 Gorenflot could not avoid making some noise. Madame 
 de Merret took advantage of a moment when the 
 workman was throwing down a load of bricks, and her 
 husband was at the other end of the room, to say to 
 Rosalie : 
 
 'Ten thousand francs a year for yourself, my dear
 
 LA GRANDE BRETECHE 151 
 
 child, if you can tell Gorenflot to leave an open slit at 
 the bottom of the wall.' 
 
 Then she said to her aloud and quite calmly, 'Go 
 and help him ! ' 
 
 Monsieur and Madame de Merret did not exchange 
 a word during all the time that Gorenflot took to wall 
 up the door. This silence was a matter of deliberate 
 purpose with the husband, who did not want to give his 
 wife the pretext for uttering words that might have 
 some hidden meaning ; and with Madame de Merret it 
 was prompted by prudence or pride. When the wall 
 was built up to about half its height the cunning mason 
 took advantage of a moment when the husband had 
 his back turned to him, to put the point of his pick 
 through one of the two panes of glass in the door. 
 This act of his gave Madame de Merret to understand 
 that Rosalie had spoken to Gorenflot. Just then all 
 the three caught a glimpse of the dark, bronzed face of 
 a man, with black hair, and a look of fire in his eyes. 
 Before her husband could turn round, the poor woman 
 had time to make a sign with her head to the stranger, 
 for whom the nod signified ' Don't lose hope ! ' At 
 four o'clock when the first grey dawn was breaking, for 
 it was the month of September, the work was finished. 
 The mason remained in the house in Jean's keeping, 
 and Monsieur de Merret slept in his wife's room. In 
 the morning, as he rose, he said carelessly : 
 
 'Ah, confound it, I must go the mairie for the 
 passport 1 '
 
 152 LA GRANDE BRETECHE 
 
 He put his hat on his head, made three steps towards 
 the door, then, as if by an afterthought, he took the 
 crucifix. His wife felt a thrill of happiness. 
 
 ' He will go away to Duvivier's,' she thought. 
 
 But as soon as he had gone out, Madame de Merret 
 rang for Rosalie. Then she cried out in a terrible tone 
 of voice : 
 
 ' The pick ! the pick ! to work ! I saw how Goren- 
 flot set about doing it yesterday. We shall have time 
 to make a hole and then close it up again.' 
 
 In the twinkling of an eye Rosalie brought a kind of 
 small pick-axe to her mistress, who, with an energy that 
 no one could have imagined her capable of, set to work 
 to demolish the wall. She had already sent some bricks 
 flying, when, as she swung back to give a more vigorous 
 blow than the rest, she saw Monsieur de Merret stand- 
 ing behind her. She fainted. 
 
 ' Lay Madame on her bed,' said the husband coldly. 
 
 Foreseeing what would happen during his absence 
 he had set a trap for his wife. He had already written 
 to the mayor, and sent a summons to Duvivier. The 
 jeweller arrived just at the moment when the wreckage 
 in the room had been repaired. 
 
 ' Duvivier,' he asked him, ' have you not bought 
 crucifixes from Spaniards passing through the town ? ' 
 
 'No, sir.' 
 
 ' That 's all, thank you,' said he, as he exchanged a 
 tigerish look with his wife. 'Jean,' he went on turning 
 to his confidential servant, 'you will have my meals
 
 LA GRANDE BRETECHE 153 
 
 served here in Madame de Merret's room. She is ill, 
 and I shall not leave her till she has recovered.' 
 
 The cruel man stayed for twenty days beside his wife. 
 
 At first, when there was a noise in the closet, and 
 Josephine thought of imploring his mercy for the dying 
 stranger, he would reply to her, without allowing her to 
 say a single word : 
 
 ' You swore to me on the cross that there was no one 
 there ! ' 
 
 Printed by T. and A. CONSTABLE, Printers to His Majesty 
 at the Edinburgh University Press
 
 AUG021985 
 
 DATE DUE 
 
 CAYLORD
 
 A 000616563 3