The Cross of Berny Read online

  This is a faithful account of our expedition; it is nothing, and yet a great deal. It is sufficient to show me that I possess some influence over Louise; that my look fascinates her, my voice affects her, my touch agitates her; for one moment I held her trembling against my heart; she did not repulse me. It is true that by a little feminine Jesuitism, common enough, she might ascribe all this to vertigo, a sort of vertigo common to youth and love, which has turned more heads than all the precipices of Mount Blanc!

  What a strange creature is Louise! An inexplicable mixture of acute intelligence and virgin modesty, displaying at the same time an ignorance and information never imagined. These piquant contrasts make me admire her all the more. The day after to-morrow Madame Taverneau is going on business to Rouen. Louise will be alone, and I intend to repeat the donjon scene, with improvements and deprived of the inopportune appearance of Madame Taverneau's yellow shawl and the luckless Alfred's green hunting-dress. What delicious dreams will visit me to-night in my hammock at Richeport!

  My next letter will begin, I hope, with this triumphant line of the Chevalier de Bertin:

  "Elle est à moi, divinités du Pinde!"

  Good-bye, my dear Roger. I wish you good luck in your search. Since you have once seen Irene, she cannot wear Gyges' ring. You may meet her again; but if you have to make your way through six Boyars, three Moldavians, eleven bronze statues, ten check-sellers, crush a multitude of King Charles spaniels, upset a crowd of fruit-stands, go straight as a bullet towards your beauty; seize her by the tip of her wing, politely but firmly, like a gendarme; for the Prince Roger de Monbert must not be the plaything of a capricious Parisian heiress.

  EDGAR DE MEILHAN.

  Chapter XIV

  *

  IRENE DE CHATEAUDUN to MME. LA VICOMTESSE DE BRAIMES;

  Hotel de la Prefecture, Grenoble (Isère).

  PONT DE L'ARCHE, June 18th 18—.

  I have only time to send you a line with the box of ribbons The trunk will go to-morrow by the stage. I would have sent it before, but the children's boots were not done. It is impossible to get anything done now—the storekeepers say they can't get workmen, the workmen say they can't get employment. Blanchard will be in Paris to superintend its packing. If you are not pleased with your things, especially the blue dress and mauve bonnet, I despair of ever satisfying you. I did not take your sashes to Mlle. Vatelin. It was Prince de Monbert's fault; in passing along the Boulevards I saw him talking to a gentleman—I turned into Panorama street—he followed me, and to elude him I went into the Chinese store. M. de Monbert remained outside; I bought some tea, and telling the woman I would send for it, went out by the opposite door which opens on Vivienne street. The Prince, who has been away from Paris for ten years, was not aware of this store having two exits, so in this way I escaped him. This hateful prince is also the cause of my returning here. The day after that wretched evening at the Odeon, I went to inquire about my cousin. There I found that Madame de Langeac had left Fontainebleau and gone to Madame de H.'s, where they are having private theatricals. She returns to Paris in ten days, where she begs me to wait for her. I also heard that M. de Monbert had had quite a scene with the porter on the same morning—insisting that he had seen me, and that he would not be put off by lying servants any longer; his language and manner quite shocked the household. The prospect of a visit from him filled me with fright. I returned to my garret—Madame Taverneau was anxiously waiting for my return, and carried me off without giving me anytime for reflection; so I am here once more. Perhaps you think that in this rural seclusion, under the shade of these willows, I ought to find tranquillity? Just the reverse. A new danger threatens me; I escape from a furious prince, to be ensnared by a delirious poet. I went away leaving M. de Meilhan gracious, gallant, but reasonable; I return to find him presuming, passionate, foolish. It makes me think that absence increases my attractiveness, and separation clothes me with new charms.

  This devotion is annoying, and I am determined to nip it in the bud; it fills me with a horrible dread that in no way resembles the charming fear I have dreamed of. The young poet takes a serious view of the flattery I bestowed upon him only in order to discover what his friend had written about me; he has persuaded himself that I love him, and I despair of being able to dispel the foolish notion.

  I have uselessly assumed the furious air of an angry Minerva, the majestic deportment of the Queen of England opening Parliament, the prudish, affected behavior of a school-mistress on promenade; all this only incites his hopes. If it were love it might be seductive and dangerous, but it is nothing more than magnetism.... You may laugh, but it is surely this and nothing else; he acts as if he were under some spell of fascination; he looks at me in a malevolent way that he thinks irresistible.... But I find it unendurable. I shall end by frankly telling him that in point of magnetism I am no longer free ... "that I love another," as the vaudeville says, and if he asks who is this other, I shall smilingly tell him, "it is the famous disciple of Mesmer, Dr. Dupotet."

  Yesterday his foolish behavior was very near causing my death. Alarmed by an embarrassing tête-à-tête in the midst of an old castle we were visiting, I mounted the window-sill in one of the towers to call Madame Taverneau, whom I saw at the foot of the hill; the stone on which I stood gave way, and if M. de Meilhan had not shown great presence of mind and caught me, I would have fallen down a precipice forty feet deep! Instant death would have been the result. Oh! how frightened I was! I tremble yet. My terror was so great that I would have fainted if I had had a little more confidence; but another fear made me recover from this. Fortunately I am going away from here, and this trifling will be over.

  Yes, certainly I will accompany you to Geneva. Why can't we go as far as Lake Como? What a charming trip to take, and what comfort we will enjoy in my nice carriage! You must know that my travelling-carriage is a wonder; it is being entirely renovated, and directly it is finished, I will jump in it and fly to your arms. Of course you will ask what I am to do with a travelling-carriage—I who have never made but one journey in my life, and that from the Marais to the Faubourg Saint Honoré? I will reply, that I bought this carriage because I had the opportunity; it is a chef-d'oeuvre. There never was a handsomer carriage made in London. It was invented—and you will soon see what a splendid invention it is—for an immensely rich English lady who is always travelling, and who is greatly distressed at having to sell it, but she believes herself pursued by an audacious young lover whom she wishes to get rid of, and as he has always recognised her by her carriage, she parts with it in order to put him off her track. She is an odd sort of woman whom they call Lady Penock; she resembles Levassor in his English rôles; that is to say, she is a caricature. Levassor would not dare to be so ridiculous.

  Good-bye, until I see you. When I think that in one month we shall be together again, I forget all my sorrows.

  IRENE DE CHATEAUDUN.

  Chapter XV

  *

  ROGER DE MONBERT to MONSIEUR DE MEILHAN,

  Pont-de-l'Arche (Eure).

  PARIS, June 19th 18—.

  It is useless to slander the police; we are obliged to resort to them in our dilemmas; the police are everywhere, know everything, and are infallible. Without the police Paris would go to ruin; they are the hidden fortification, the invisible rampart of the capital; its numerous agents are the detached forts. Fouché was the Vauban of this wonderful system, and since Fouché's time, the art has been steadily approaching perfection. There is to-day, in every dark corner of the city an eye that watches over our fifty-four gates, and an ear that hears the pulsations of all the streets, those great arteries of Paris.

  The incapacity of my own agents making me despair of discovering anything; I went to the Polyphemus of Jerusalem street, a giant whose ever open eye watches every Ulysses. They told me in the office—Return in three days.

  Three centuries that I had to struggle through! How many centuries I have lived during the last month!

  The
police! Why did not this luminous idea enter my mind before?

  At this office of public secrets they said to me: Mlle. de Chateaudun left Paris five days ago. On the 12th she passed the night at Sens; she then took the route to Burgundy; changed horses at Villevallier, and on the 14th stopped at the château of Madame de Lorgeville, seven miles from Avallon.

  The particularity of this information startled me. What wonderful clock-work! What secret wheels! What intelligent mechanism! It is the machine of Marly applied to a human river. At Rome a special niche would have been devoted to the goddess of Police.

  What a lesson to us! How circumspect it should make us! Our walls are diaphanous, our words are overheard; our steps are watched ... everything said and done reaches by secret informers and invisible threads the central office of Jerusalem street. It is enough to make one tremble!!!

  At the château of Mad. de Lorgeville!

  I walked along repeating this sentence to myself, with a thousand variations: At the château of Mad. de Lorgeville.

  After a decennial absence, I know nobody in Paris—I am just as much of a stranger as the ambassador of Siam.... Who knows Mad. de Lorgeville? M. de Balaincourt is the only person in Paris who can give me the desired information—he is a living court calendar. I fly to see M. de Balaincourt.

  This oracle answers me thus: Mad. de Lorgeville is a very beautiful woman, between twenty-four and twenty-six years of age. She possesses a magnificent mezzo-soprano voice, and twenty thousand dollars income. She learnt miniature painting from Mad. Mirbel, and took singing lessons from Mad. Damoyeau. Last winter she sang that beautiful duo from Norma, with the Countess Merlin, at a charity concert.

  I requested further details.

  Madame de Lorgeville is the sister of the handsome Léon de Varèzes.

  Oh! ray of light! glimmer of sun through a dark cloud!

  The handsome Léon de Varèzes! The ugly idea of troubadour beauty! A fop fashioned by his tailor, and who passes his life looking at his figure reflected in four mirrors as shiny and cold as himself!

  I pressed M. de Balaincourt's hand and once again plunged into the vortex of Paris.

  If the handsome Léon were only hideous I would feel nothing but indifference towards him, but he has more sacred rights to my hatred, as you will see.

  Three months ago this handsome Léon made a proposal of marriage to Mlle. de Chateaudun—she refused him. This is evidently a preconcerted plan; or it is a ruse. The handsome Léon had a lady friend well known by everybody but himself, and he has deferred this marriage in order to gild, after the manner of Ruolz, his last days of bachelorhood; meanwhile Mlle. de Chateaudun received her liberty, and during this truce I have played the rôle of suitor. Either of these conjectures is probable—both may be true—one is sufficient to bring about a catastrophe!

  This fact is certain, the handsome Léon is at the waters of Ems enjoying his expiring hours of single-blessedness in the society of his painted friend, and his family are keeping Mile. de Chateaudun at the Château de Lorgeville till the season at Ems is over. In a few days the handsome Léon, on pretence of important business, will leave his Dulcinea, and, considering himself freed from an unlawful yoke, will come to the Château de Lorgeville to offer his innocent hand and pure homage to Mile. de Chateaudun. In whatever light the matter is viewed, I am a dupe—a butt! I know well that people say: "Prince Roger is a good fellow" With this reputation a man is exposed to all the feline wickedness of human nature, but when once aroused "the good fellow" is transformed, and all turn pale in his presence.

  No, I can never forgive a woman who holds before me a picture of bliss, and then dashes it to the ground—she owes me this promised happiness, and if she tries to fly from me I have a right to cry "stop thief."

  Ah! Mlle. de Chateaudun, you thought you could break my heart, and leave me nothing to cherish but the phantom of memory! Well! I promise you another ending to your play than you looked for! We will meet again!

  Stupid idiot that I was, to think of writing her an apology to vindicate my innocent share of the scene at the Odeon! Vindication well spared! How she would have laughed at my honest candor!... She shall not have an opportunity of laughing! Dear Edgar, in writing these disconsolate lines I have lost the calmness that I had imposed upon myself when I began my letter. I feel that I am devoured by that internal demon that bears a woman's name in the language of love—jealousy! Yes, jealousy fills my soul with bitterness, encircles my brow with a band of iron, and makes me feel a frenzied desire to murder some fellow-being! During my travels I lost the tolerant manners of civilization. I have imbibed the rude cruelty of savages—my jealousy is filled with the storms and fire of the equator.

  What do you pale effeminate young men know of jealousy? Is not your professor of jealousy the actor who dashes about on the stage with a paste-board sword?

  I have studied the monster under other masters; tigers have taught me how to manage this passion.

  Dear Edgar, once night overtook us amidst the ruins of the fort that formerly defended the mouth of the river Caveri in Bengal. It was a dark night illumined by a single star like the lamp of the subterranean temple of Elephanta. But this lone star was sufficient to throw light upon the formidable duel that took place before us upon the sloping bank of the ruined fort.

  It was the season of love ... how sweet is the sound of these words!

  A tawny monster with black spots, belonging to the fair sex of her noble race, was calmly quenching her thirst in the river Caveri—after she had finished drinking she squatted on her hind feet and stretched her forepaws in front of her breast—sphinx-like—and luxuriously rubbed her head in and out among the soft leaves scattered on the riverside.

  At a little distance the two lovers watched—not with their eyes but with their nostrils and ears, and their sharp growl was like the breath of the khamsin passing through the branches of the euphorbium and the nopal. The two monsters gradually reached the paroxysm of amorous rage; they flattened their ears, sharpened their claws, twisted their tails like flexible steel, and emitted sparks of fire from eyes and skin.

  During this prelude the tigress stretched herself out with stoical indifference, pretending to take no interest in the scene—as if she were the only animal of her race in the desert. At intervals she would gaze with delight at the reflected image of her grace and beauty in the river Caveri.

  A roar that seemed to burst from the breast of a giant crushed beneath a rock, echoed through the solitude. One of the tigers described an immense circle in the air and then fell upon the neck of his rival. The two tawny enemies stood up on their hind legs, clenching each other like two wrestlers, body to body, muzzle to muzzle, teeth to teeth, and uttering shrill, rattling cries that cut through the air like the clashing of steel blades. Ordinary huntsmen would have fired upon this monstrous group. We judged it more noble to respect the powerful hate of this magnificent love. As usual the aggressor was the strongest; he threw his rival to the ground, crushed him with his whole weight, tore him with his claws, and then fastening his long teeth in his victim's throat, laid him dead upon the grass—uttering, as he did so, a cry of triumph that rang through the forest like the clarion of a conqueror.

  The tigress remained in the same spot, quietly licking her paw, and when it was quite wet rubbed it over her muzzle and ears with imperturbable serenity and charming coquetry.

  This scene contained a lesson for both sexes, my dear Edgar. When nature chooses our masters she chooses wisely.

  Heaven preserve you from jealousy! I do not mean to honor by this name that fickle, unjust, common-place sentiment that we feel when our vanity assumes the form of love. The jealousy that gnaws my heart is a noble and legitimate passion. Not to avenge one's self is to give a premium of encouragement to wicked deeds. The forgiveness of wrongs and injuries puts certain men and women too much at their ease. Vengeance is necessary for the protection of society.

  Dear Edgar, tell me of your love; fear not to wound me by
a picture of your happiness; my heart is too sympathetic for that. Tell me the traits that please you most in the object of your tenderness. Let your soul expand in her sweet smiles—revel in the intoxicating bliss of those long happy talks filled with the enchanting grace and music of a first love.

  After reading my letter, remove my gloomy picture from your mind—forget me quietly; let not a thought of my misery mar your present happiness.

  I intend to honor the handsome Léon by devoting my personal attention to his future fate.

  ROGER DE MONBERT.

  Chapter XVI

  *

  EDGAR DE MEILHAN to the PRINCE DE MONBERT,

  St. Dominique Street (Paris).

  RICHEPORT, June 23d 18—.

  You place a confidence in the police worthy the prince you are, dear Roger; you rely upon their information with a faith that surprises and alarms me. How do you expect the police to know anything concerning honest people? Never having watched them, being too much occupied with scoundrels, they do not know how to go about it. Spies and detectives are generally miserable wretches, their name even is a gross insult in our language; they are acquainted with the habits and movements of thieves, whose dens and haunts they frequent; but what means have they of fathoming the whimsical motives of a high-born young girl? Their forte is in making a servant drunk, bribing a porter, following a carriage or standing sentinel before a door. If Mademoiselle de Chateaudun has gone away to avoid you, she will naturally suppose that you will endeavor to follow her. Of course, she has taken every precaution to preserve her incognita—changing her name, for instance—which would be sufficient to mystify the police, who, until applied to by you, have had no object in watching her movements. The proof that the police are mistaken is the exactitude of the information that they have given you. It is too much like the depositions of witnesses in a criminal trial, who say: "Two years ago, at thirty-three minutes and five seconds after nine o'clock in the evening, I met, in the dark, a slender man, whose features I could not distinguish, who wore olive-green pantaloons, with a brownish tinge." I am very much afraid that your expedition into Burgundy will be of none avail, and that, haggard-eyed and morose, you will drop in upon a quiet family utterly amazed at your domiciliary visit.