The Mysteries of Paris, Volume 3 of 6

"This is what I call courage well employed! But what do you want?"

"My dear cashkeeper" (this was another of M. Robert's habitual pleasantries), "it is a matter of great importance to me. You know that, according to our agreement, I have advanced to you three hundred and fifty thousand francs (14,000l.) to complete a particular payment you had; and it was stipulated that I was to give you three months' notice of my wish to withdraw that money, the interest of which you pay me regularly."

"Go on."

"Well," said M. Robert, hesitatingly, "I – no – that is – "

"What?"

"Why, it is only a whim of becoming a landed proprietor."

"Come to the point, pray! You annoy me."

"In a word, then, I am anxious to become a landed proprietor. And, if not inconvenient to you, I should like – that is I should wish – to have my funds now in your hands; and I came to say so."

"Ah, ah!"

"That does not offend you, I hope?"

"Why should I be offended?"

"Because you might think – "

"I might think – ?"

"That I am the echo of certain reports – "

"What reports?"

"Oh, nothing. Mere folly."

"But, tell me – "

"Oh, there can be no certainty in the gossip about you!"

"What gossip?"

"Oh, it is false from beginning to end. But there are chatterers who say that you are mixed up in some unpleasant transactions. Idle gossip, I am quite certain. It is just the same as the report that you and I speculated on the Exchange together. These reports soon died away. For I will always say that – "

"So you suppose that your money is not safe with me?"

"Oh, no – no! But, at this moment, I should like to have it in my own hands."

"Wait a moment." M. Ferrand shut the drawer of his bureau, and rose.

"Where are you going, my dear cashkeeper?"

"To fetch what will convince you of the truth of the reports as to the embarrassment of my affairs," said the notary, ironically; and, opening the door of a small private staircase, which enabled him to go into the pavilion at the back without passing through the office, he disappeared. He had scarce left the room, when the head clerk rapped again.

"Come in," said Charles Robert.

"Is not M. Ferrand here?"

"No, my worthy pounce and parchment" (another joke of M. Robert).

"There is a lady with a veil on, who wishes to see my employer this moment on a very urgent affair."

"Worthy quill-driver, the excellent employer will be here in a moment, and I will inform him. Is the lady handsome?"

"One must be very keen-sighted to discover; for she has on a black veil, so thick that it is impossible to see her face."

"Really, really, I will make her show her face as I go out. I'll tell the governor as soon as he returns."

The clerk left the room.

"Where the devil has the attorney at law vanished?" said M. Charles Robert. "To examine the state of his finances, no doubt. If these reports are groundless, so much the better. And, when all is said and done, they can but be false reports. Men of Jacques Ferrand's honesty always have so many people jealous of them! Still, at the same time, I should just as well like to have my own cash. I will certainly buy the château in question. There are towers and Gothic turrets quite à la Louis Quatorze, the real renaissance, and, in a word, all that is most rococo. It would give me a kind of landed proprietor's sort of air which would be capital. It would not be like my amour with that flirt of a Madame d'Harville. Has she really cut me? Can she really have given me the 'go-by?' No, no! I am not trifled with as that stupid porteress in the Rue du Temple, with her bob-wig, says. Yet this agreeable little flirtation has cost me at least one thousand crowns. True, the furniture is left, and I have quite enough in my power to compromise the marchioness. But here comes the lawyer!"

M. Ferrand returned, holding in his hands some papers, which he handed to M. Charles Robert.

"Here," said he, "are three hundred and fifty thousand francs in bank-bills. In a few days we will balance the account of interest. Give me a receipt."

"What!" exclaimed M. Robert, astonished; "do not go to think that – "

"I don't think anything."

"But – "

"The receipt!"

"Dear cashkeeper!"

"Write it; and tell the persons who talk to you of my embarrassments, how I reply to such suspicions."

"The fact is that, as soon as they hear this, your credit will be more solid than ever. But, really, take the money back again; I do not want it at this moment. I told you it was three months hence."

"Monsieur Charles Robert, no man suspects me twice."

"You are angry?"

"The receipt, – the receipt!"

"Man of iron, that you are!" said M. Charles Robert. "There!" he added, writing the receipt. "There is a lady, closely veiled, who desires to speak to you directly on a very urgent affair. Won't I have a good look at her as I go out! There's your receipt; is it all right?"

"Quite. Now I'll thank you to go out this way."

"And so not see the lady?"

"Precisely so."

And the notary rang; and when the chief clerk made his appearance, he said:

"Ask the lady to walk in. Good day, M. Robert."

"Well, I see I must give up the chance of seeing her. Don't bear malice, lawyer. Believe me, if – "

"There – there; that'll do. Good-bye." And the notary shut the door on M. Charles Robert.

After the lapse of a few moments, the chief clerk introduced the Duchess de Lucenay, very simply attired, wearing a large shawl, and her features entirely concealed by a thick veil of black lace, depending from her watered silk bonnet of the same colour.

Madame de Lucenay, a good deal agitated, walked slowly towards the notary's bureau, who advanced a few paces to meet her.

"Who are you, madame; and what may be your business with me?" said Jacques Ferrand, abruptly; for Sarah's menaces and M. Charles Robert's suspicions had a good deal ruffled him. Moreover, the duchess was clad so simply, that the notary did not see any reason why he should not be rude. As she did not immediately reply, he continued, abruptly:

"Will you be so kind as to inform me, madame?"

"Sir," she said, in a faltering voice, and endeavouring to conceal her face in the folds of her veil, "Sir, may I entrust you with a secret of extreme importance?"

"You may trust me with anything, madame. But it is requisite that I should know and see to whom I speak."

"That, sir, perhaps, is not necessary. I know that you are probity and honour itself – "

"To the point, madame, – to the point. I have some one waiting for me. Who are you?"

"My name is of no consequence, sir. One – of – my friends, – a relative, – has just left you."

"His name?"

"M. Florestan de Saint-Remy."

"Ah!" said the notary; and he cast a scrutinising and steadfast glance on the duchess. Then he added, "Well, madame?"

"M. de Saint-Remy has told me – all, – sir!"

"What has he told you, madame?"

"All!"

"What all?"

"Sir; you know – "

"I know many things about M. de Saint-Remy."

"Alas, sir, this is a terrible thing!"

"I know many terrible things about M. de Saint-Remy."

"Oh, sir, he was right when he told me that you were pitiless."

"For swindlers and forgers like him, – yes, I am pitiless. So this Saint-Remy is a relative of yours? Instead of owning it, you ought to blush at it. Do you mean to try and soften me with your tears? It is useless, – not to add that you have undertaken a very disgraceful task for a respectable female."

At this coarse insolence the pride and patrician blood of the duchess revolted. She drew herself up, threw back her veil; and then, with a lofty air, imperious glance, and firm voice, said:

"I am the Duchess de Lucenay, sir!"

The lady then assumed the lofty look of her station; and her appearance was so imposing that the notary, controlled, fascinated, receded a pace, quite overcome, took off mechanically the black silk cap that covered his cranium, and made a low bow.

In truth, nothing could be more charming and aristocratic than the face and figure of Madame de Lucenay, although she was turned thirty, and her features were pale and somewhat agitated. But then she had full, brown eyes, sparkling and bold; splendid black hair; a nose thin and arched; a lip red and disdainful; a dazzling complexion; teeth of ivory; and a form tall and slender, graceful, and full of distinction, – the carriage of a goddess in the clouds, as the immortal Saint-Simon says. With her hair powdered, and a costume of the eighteenth century, Madame de Lucenay would have represented, physically and morally, one of those gay and careless duchesses of the Regency who carried on their flirtations (or worse) with so much audacity, giddiness, and real kindness of heart, who confessed their peccadilloes from time to time with so much candour and naïveté, that the most punctilious said, with a smile, "She is, doubtless, light and culpable; but she is so kind – so delightful; loves with so much intensity, passion, and fidelity, – as long as she does love, – that we cannot really be angry with her. After all, she only injures herself, and makes so many others happy!" Except the powder and the large skirts to her dress, such also was Madame de Lucenay, when not depressed by sombre thoughts. She entered the office of M. Jacques Ferrand like a plain tradesman's wife; in the instant she came forth as a great, proud, and irritated lady. Jacques Ferrand had never in his life seen a woman of such striking beauty, – so haughty and bold, and so noble in her demeanour. The look of the duchess, her glorious eyes, encircled with an imperceptible bow of azure, her rosy nostrils, much dilated, betokened her ardent nature.

Although old, ugly, ignoble, and sordid, Jacques Ferrand was as capable as any one of appreciating the style of beauty of Madame de Lucenay. The hatred and rage which the notary felt against M. de Saint-Remy was increased by the admiration which his proud and lovely mistress inspired in him. Devoured by all his repressed passions, he said to himself, in an agony of rage, that this gentleman forger, whom he had compelled almost to fall at his feet when he threatened him with the assizes, could inspire such love in such a woman that she actually risked the present step in his behalf, which might prove fatal to her reputation. As he thus thought, the notary felt his boldness, which had been for a moment paralysed, restored to him. Hatred, envy, a kind of savage and burning resentment, lighted up his eyes, his forehead, and his cheeks. Seeing Madame de Lucenay on the point of commencing so delicate a conversation, he expected from her caution and management. What was his astonishment! She spoke with as much assurance and haughtiness as if she were discoursing about the simplest thing in the world; and as if, before a man of his sort, she had no care for reserve or those concealments which she would assuredly have maintained with her equals. In fact, the coarse brutality of the notary wounded her to the quick, and had led Madame de Lucenay to quit the humble and supplicating part she was acting with much difficulty to herself. Returned to herself, she thought it beneath her to descend to the least concealment with a mere scribbler of acts and deeds. High-spirited, charitable, generous, overflowing with kindness, warm-heartedness, and energy, in spite of her faults, – but the daughter of a mother of no principle, and who had even disgraced the noble and respectable, though fallen position of an émigrée, – Madame de Lucenay, in her inborn contempt for certain classes, would have said with the Roman empress who took her bath in the presence of a male slave, "He is not a man!"

"Monsieur Notary," said the duchess, with a determined air, to Jacques Ferrand, "M. de Saint-Remy is one of my friends, and has confided to me the embarrassment under which he is at this moment suffering, from a twofold treachery of which he is the victim. All is arranged as to the money. How much is required to terminate these miserable annoyances?"

Jacques Ferrand was actually aghast at this cavalier and deliberate manner of entering on this affair.

"One hundred thousand francs are required," he repeated, after having in some degree surmounted his surprise.

"You shall have your one hundred thousand francs; so send, at once, these annoying papers to M. de Saint-Remy."

"Where are the one hundred thousand francs, Madame la Duchesse?"

"Have I not said you should have them, sir?"

"I must have them to-morrow, and before noon, madame; or else proceedings will be instantly commenced for the forgery."

"Well, do you pay this sum, which I will repay to you."

"But madame, it is impossible."

"But, sir, you will not tell me, I imagine, that a notary, like you, cannot find one hundred thousand francs by to-morrow morning?"

"On what securities, madame?"

"What do you mean? Explain!"

"Who will be answerable to me for this sum?"

"I will."

"Still, madame – "

"Need I say that I have an estate four leagues from Paris, which brings me in eighty thousand francs (3,200l.) a year? That will suffice, I should think, for what you call your securities?"

"Yes, madame, when the mortgage is properly secured."

"What do you mean? Some formality of law, no doubt? Do it, sir, do it."

"Such a deed cannot be drawn up in less than a fortnight, and we must have your husband's assent, madame."

"But the estate is mine, and mine only," said the duchess, impatiently.

"No matter, madame, you have a husband; and mortgage deeds are very long and very minute."

"But, once again, sir, you will not ask me to believe that it is so difficult to find one hundred thousand francs in two hours?"

"Then, madame, apply to the notary you usually employ, or your steward; as for me, it is impossible."

"I have my reasons for keeping this secret," said Madame de Lucenay, haughtily. "You know the rogues who seek to take advantage of M. de Saint-Remy, and that is the reason why I address myself to you."

"Your confidence does me much honour, madame; but I cannot do what you ask of me."

"You have not this sum?"

"I have much more than that sum, in bank-notes or bright and good gold, here in my chest."

"Then why waste time about it? You require my signature, I suppose? Well, let me give it to you, and let us end the matter."

"Even admitting, madame, that you were Madame de Lucenay – "

"Come to the Hôtel de Lucenay in one hour, sir, and I will sign whatever may be requisite."

"And will the duke sign, also?"

"I do not understand, sir."

"Your signature, alone, would be worthless to me, madame."

Jacques Ferrand delighted, with cruel joy, in the manifest impatience of the duchess, who, under the appearance of coolness and hauteur, repressed really painful agony.

For an instant she was at her wits' end. On the previous evening, her jeweller had advanced her a considerable sum on her jewels, some of which had been confided to Morel, the lapidary. This sum had been employed in paying the bills of M. de Saint-Remy, and thus disarming the other creditors; M. Dubreuil, the farmer of Arnouville, was more than a year's rent in advance on the farm; and, then, the time was so pressing. Still more unfortunately for Madame de Lucenay, two of her friends, to whom she could have had recourse in this moment of distress, were then absent from Paris. In her eyes, the viscount was innocent of the forgery. He had said, and she had believed him, that he was the victim of two rogues; but yet his position was not the less terrible. He accused! He led to prison! And, even if he took flight, his name would be no less dishonoured by the suspicion that would light on him. At these distressing thoughts, Madame de Lucenay trembled with affright. She blindly loved this man, at the same time so degraded, and gifted with such strong seductive powers; and her passion for him was one of those affections which women, of her character and her temperament, ordinarily experience when they attain an age of maturity.

Jacques Ferrand carefully watched every variation in the physiognomy of Madame de Lucenay, who seemed to him more lovely and attractive at every moment, and awakened still more his ardent feeling. Yet he felt a fierce pleasure in tormenting, by his refusals, this female, who could only entertain disgust and contempt for him. The lady had spurned the idea of saying a word to the notary that might seem like a supplication; yet, when she found the uselessness of other attempts, which she had addressed to him who alone could save M. de Saint-Remy, she said, at length, trying to repress all evidence of emotion:

"Since you have the sum of money which I ask of you, sir, and my guarantee is sufficient, why do you refuse it to me?"

"Because men have their caprices, as well as ladies, madame."

"Well, what is this caprice which thus impels you to act against your own interest? For I repeat, sir, that whatever may be your conditions, I accept them."

"You will accept all my conditions, madame?" said the notary, with a singular expression.

"All, – two, three, four thousand francs, more, if you please. For you must know, sir," added the duchess, in a tone almost confidential, "I have no resource but in you, sir, and in you only. It will be impossible for me at this moment to find elsewhere what I require for to-morrow, and I must have it, as you know, – I must absolutely have it. Thus I repeat to you that, whatever terms you require for this service, I accept them; nothing will be a sacrifice to me, – nothing."

The breath of the notary became thick, and, in his ignoble blindness, he interpreted the last words of Madame de Lucenay in an unworthy manner. He saw, through his darkened understanding, a woman as bold as some of the females of the old court, – a woman driven to her wits' end for fear of the dishonour of him whom she loved, and capable, perhaps, of any sacrifice to save him. It was even more stupid than infamous to think so, but, as we have said already, Jacques Ferrand sometimes, though rarely, forgot himself.

He quitted his chair abruptly, and approached Madame de Lucenay, who, surprised, rose when he did, and looked at him with much astonishment.

"Nothing will be a sacrifice to you, say you? To you, who are so lovely?" he exclaimed, with a voice trembling and broken with agitation, as he went towards the duchess. "Well, then, I will lend you this sum, on one condition, – one condition only, – and I swear to you – "

He could not finish his declaration.

By one of those singular contradictions of human nature, at the sight of the singularly ugly features of M. Ferrand, at the strange and whimsical thoughts which arose in Madame de Lucenay's mind, at his ridiculous pretensions, which she guessed in spite of her disquietude and anxiety, she burst into a fit of laughter, so hearty, so loud, and so excessive, that the disconcerted notary reeled back. Then, without allowing him a moment to utter another word, the duchess gave way still more to her increasing mirth, lowered her veil, and, between two bursts of irrepressible laughter, she said to the notary, overwhelmed by hatred, rage, and fury:

"Really, I should much rather prefer asking this advance from M. de Lucenay."

She then left the room, laughing so heartily that, even when the door of his room was closed, the notary heard her still.

Jacques Ferrand no sooner recovered his reason than he cursed his imprudence; but he became reassured on reflecting that the duchess could not allude to this adventure without compromising herself. Still, the day had been unpropitious, and he was plunged in thought when the door of his study opened, and Madame Séraphin entered in great agitation.

"Ah, Ferrand," she exclaimed, "you were right when you declared that, one day or other, we should be ruined for having allowed her to live!"

"Who?"

"That cursed little girl!"

"What do you mean?"

"A one-eyed woman, whom I did not know, and to whom Tournemine gave the little chit to get rid of her, fourteen years ago, when we wished to make her pass for dead – Ah, who would have thought it!"

"Speak! Speak! Why don't you speak?"

"This one-eyed woman has been here, was down-stairs just now, and told me that she knew it was I who had delivered up the little brat."

"Malediction! Who could have told her? Tournemine is at the galleys."

"I denied it, and treated the one-eyed woman as a liar. But bah! she declares she knows where the girl is now, and that she has grown up, that she has her, and that it only depends on her to discover everything."

"Is hell, then, unchained against me to-day?" exclaimed the notary, in a fit of rage. "What shall I say to this woman? What shall I offer her to hold her tongue? Does she seem well off?"

"As I treated her like a beggar, she shook her hand-basket, and there was money inside of it."

"And she knows where this young girl is now?"

"So she says."

"And she is the daughter of the Countess Sarah Macgregor!" said the stupefied notary; "and just now she offered me so much to declare that her daughter was not dead; and the girl is alive, and I can restore her to her mother! But, then, the false register of her death! If a search were made, I am ruined! This crime may put others on the scent."

After a moment's silence, he said to Madame Séraphin:

"This one-eyed woman knows where the child is?"

"Yes."

"And the woman will call again?"

"To-morrow."

"Write to Polidori, to come to me this evening, at nine o'clock."

"What! Will you rid yourself of the young girl and the old woman, too? Ferrand, that will be too much at once!"

"I bid you write to Polidori, to come here this evening, at nine o'clock!"

At the end of this day, Rodolph said to Murphy: "Desire M. de Graün to despatch a courier this instant; Cecily must be in Paris in six days."

"What! that she-devil again? The diabolical wife of poor David, as beautiful as she is infamous! For what purpose, monseigneur?"

"For what purpose, Sir Walter Murphy? Ask that question, in a month hence, of the notary, Jacques Ferrand."

CHAPTER VI

THE ANONYMOUS LETTER

Towards ten o'clock in the evening of the same day in which Fleur-de-Marie was carried off by the Chouette and Schoolmaster, a man on horseback arrived at the Bouqueval farm, representing himself as coming from M. Rodolph to tranquillise Madame Georges as to the safety of her young friend, and to assure her of her safe return ere long. The man further stated that M. Rodolph, having very important reasons for making the request, particularly desired no letters might be addressed to him at Paris for the present; but that, in the event of Madame Georges having anything particular to communicate, the messenger now sent would take charge of it, and deliver it punctually.

This pretended envoy on the part of Rodolph was, in fact, an emissary sent by Sarah, who, by this stratagem, effected the twofold purpose of quieting the apprehensions of Madame Georges and also obtaining a delay of several days ere Rodolph learned that the Goualeuse had been carried off; during which interval Sarah hoped to have induced the notary, Jacques Ferrand, to promote her unworthy attempt to impose a supposititious child on Rodolph, after the manner which has already been related. Nor was this all the evil planned by the countess; she ardently desired to get rid of Madame d'Harville, on whose account she entertained very serious misgivings, and whose destruction she had so nearly compassed, but for the timely interposition of Rodolph.

On the day following that in which the marquis followed his wife into the house in the Rue du Temple, Tom repaired thither, and, by skilfully drawing Madame Pipelet into conversation, contrived to learn from her how a young and elegantly dressed lady, upon the point of being surprised by her husband, had been preserved through the presence of mind and cleverness of a lodger in the house, named M. Rodolph.

Once informed of this circumstance, and possessing no positive proof of the assignation made by Clémence with M. Charles Robert, Sarah conceived a plan evidently more hateful than the former: she resolved to despatch a second anonymous letter to M. d'Harville, calculated to bring about a complete rupture between himself and Rodolph; or, failing that, to infuse into the mind of the marquis suspicions so unworthy of his wife and friend as should induce him to forbid Madame d'Harville ever admitting the prince into her society.