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+The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Son of Clemenceau, by Alexandre (fils)
+Dumas
+
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+
+
+
+Title: The Son of Clemenceau
+
+Author: Alexandre (fils) Dumas
+
+Release Date: October 1, 2004  [eBook #13572]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+
+***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE SON OF CLEMENCEAU***
+
+
+E-text prepared by Steven desJardins and Project Gutenberg Distributed
+Proofreaders
+
+
+
+THE SON OF CLEMENCEAU
+
+A Novel of Modern Love and Life
+
+A Sequel to _The Clemenceau Case_
+
+by
+
+ALEXANDER DUMAS (FILS)
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+STUDENT AND SOLDIER.
+
+
+The sunset-gun had been fired from the ramparts of the fortifications of
+Munich and the shadows were thickly descending on the famous old city of
+Southern Germany. The evening breeze in this truly March weather came
+chill over the plain of stones where Isar flowed darkly, and at the
+first puff of it, forcing him to wind his cloak round him, a lonely
+wanderer in the low quarter recognized why "the City of Monks" was also
+called "the Realm of Rheumatism."
+
+The new town, which he had not yet seen, might justify yet another of
+its nicknames, "the German Athens," but here were, in this southern and
+unfashionable suburb, only a few modern structures, and most of the
+quaint and rather picturesque dwellings, overhanging the stores, dated
+anterior to the filling up of the town moat in 1791.
+
+The stranger was clearly fond of antiquarian spectacles, for his eye,
+though too youthful to belong to a Dryasdust professor, and unshaded by
+the almost universal colored spectacles of the learned classes, gloated
+on the mansions, once inhabited by the wealthy burghers. They were
+irregular in plan and period of erection; the windows had ornamental
+frames of great depth, but some were blocked up, which gave the facades
+a sinister aspect; the walls had not only ornamental tablets in stucco,
+but, in a better light, would have shown rude fresco paintings not
+unworthy mediæval Italian dwellings. Many of the fronts resembled the
+high poops of the castellated ships of three hundred years ago, and they
+cast a shadow on the muddy pavement. As they resembled ships, the slimy
+footway seemed the strand where they had been beached by the running out
+of the tide.
+
+As the darkness increased, the amateur of architecture became more
+solitary in the streets where the peasants in long black coats, their
+holiday wear, were hurrying to leave by the gates, and the storekeepers
+had renounced any hope of taking more money, in this ward, gloomy,
+neglected and remote from the mode, no display of goods was made after
+dark. But the man, finding novel effects in the obscurity, continued to
+gaze on the rickety houses and bestowed only a transient portion of his
+curiosity on the few wayfarers who stolidly trudged past him to cross a
+bridge of no importance a little beyond his post.
+
+One or two of the passengers, rather those of the gentler sex than the
+rude one, had, however, given attention to the figure which the flowing
+cloak did not wholly muffle. With his dark complexion and slender form,
+not much in keeping with the thickset and heavy-footed natives, and his
+glistening black eyes, he made the corner where he ensconced himself
+appear the nook where an Italian or Spanish gallant was waylaying a
+rival in love.
+
+Presently there was a change in the lighting of the scene, the gloom had
+become trying to his sight. Not only were two lamps lit on the small
+bridge, one at each end in the ornate iron scroll work, which Quintin
+Matsys would not have disavowed, but, overhead, the sky was reddened by
+the reflection of the thousands of gas jets in the north and west; the
+gay and spendthrift city was awakening to life and mirth while the
+working town was going to bed. This glimmer gave a fresh attraction to
+the architectural features, and still longer detained the spectator.
+
+"Superb!" he muttered, in excellent German, without local peculiarity,
+as if he had learned it from professors, but there was a slight trace of
+an accent not native. "It has even now the effect which Gustavus
+Adolphus termed: 'a gilded saddle on a lean jade!'" Then, shivering
+again, he added, struck as well by the now completely deserted state of
+the ways as by the cold wind: "How bleak and desolate! One could implore
+these carved wooden statues to come down and people the odd, interesting
+streets!"
+
+He was about to leave the spot, when, as though his wish was gratified,
+a strange sound was audible in the narrow and devious passages, between
+tottering houses, and those even more squalid in the rear, a commingling
+of shuffling and stamping feet, the smiting of heavy sticks on uneven
+stones and the dragging of wet rags.
+
+Struck with surprise, if not with apprehension, he shrank back into the
+over-jutting porch of an old residence, with sculptured armorial
+bearings of some family long ago abased in its pride. Here he peered,
+not without anxiety.
+
+By the exact programme carried out in cities by the divisions of its
+population, a new contingent were coming from their resting-places to
+substitute themselves for the honest toilers on the thoroughfares; each
+cellar and attic in the rookeries were exuding the horrible vermin
+which shun the wholesome light of day.
+
+The spruce trees, stuck in tubs of sand at a beer-house beyond the
+bridge, shuddered as though in disgust at this horde of Hans hastening
+to invade the district of hotels, supper-houses and gaming clubs, to beg
+or steal the means to survive yet another day.
+
+For ten or fifteen minutes the stranger watched the beggars stream
+individually out of the mazes and, to his horror, form like soldiers for
+a review, along the street before him, up to the end of the bridge at
+one extremity and far along at the other end of the line. Some certainly
+spied him, for these wretches could see as lucidly as the felines in the
+night--their day from society having reversed their conditions. But,
+though these whispered the warning to one another, and he was the object
+of scrutiny, no one left his place, and soon as their backs were turned
+to him, he had no immediate uneasiness as regarded an attack, or even a
+challenge upon his business there.
+
+Probably the good citizens were not ignorant that this meeting of the
+vagrants took place each evening, for not only were all store-doors
+closed hermetically, but the upper windows no longer emitted a
+scintillation of lamplight. The spy by accident concluded that he would
+raise his voice for help all in vain as far as the tradesmen were
+concerned. But he was brave, and he let increasing curiosity enchain him
+continuously.
+
+From time out of mind the sage in velvet has serenely contemplated
+Diogenes in his tub; not that our philosopher seemed the treasurer of an
+Alexander!
+
+Ranged at length in a long row, cripples, the blind, the young, the
+aged, it was a company of mendicants which eccentric painters would have
+given five years of life to have seen. Except for consumptive coughs,
+the misstep of a wooden leg of which the clumsy ferule slipped on a
+cobblestone, and the querulous whimper of a child, half-starved and
+imperfectly swaddled in a tattered shawl, on a flaccid bosom, the mob
+were silent in an expectation as intense as the lookers-on. The wind
+brought the whistle of the railway locomotives and the clanking of a
+steam-dredger in the river, like a giant toiling in massive chains.
+
+For this platoon of vice and misery, crime and disorder, laziness and
+rapine, the stranger confidently expected to see a commander appear
+whose flashing, fearless eye, and upright, powerful frame, would account
+for the awe in which all were held.
+
+What was his amazement, therefore, to perceive--while a tremor of
+emotion thrilled the line and announced the commander whom all
+awaited--a bent-up, scarcely human-shaped form, hardly to be
+acknowledged a woman's. It was enveloped in a heavily furred pelisse
+fitted for a man.
+
+This singular object appeared up the trap of a cellarway, much like the
+opening of a sewer, on the opposite side of the street. She proceeded to
+review the vagabonds and put questions and issue orders to each, which
+were received like mandates from Cæsar by his legions. The voice was
+fine and shrill, the movements betokened vigor, but the whole impression
+was that the female captain-general of the beggars of Munich was far
+from young.
+
+In the obscurity, and keeping in the background as he did, it was not
+possible for the stranger to scan her features; besides, they were
+veiled by the long hair of a Polish hunter's cap, with earflaps and a
+drooping foxtail, worn as the pompon but half-loosened in time. The
+eyes that inspected the file of vagrants, shone with undiminished force,
+and when they fell on the burliest and most impudent, these became quiet
+and submissive. In a word, the cohort of beggary yielded utter
+subserviency to this remarkable leader.
+
+Questions and answers were uttered in a thieve's jargon which were
+sealed letters to the eavesdropper, but it seemed to him that they all
+addressed her as _Baboushka_! This struck him as more odd from its being
+a Slavonic title, meaning "grandmother." Was it possible that he had
+before him one of those prolific centenarians, truly a mother of the
+tribe, a gypsy queen to whom allegiance went undisputed and who rules
+the subterranean strata of society with fewer revolts against them than
+their sister rulers know, who sit on thrones in the fierce white light?
+
+In any case, he was given no leisure for deciding the question, for an
+active urchin had whispered a word of caution which led the feminine
+general to direct a piercing glance toward him, and hasten to conclude
+her arrangements. The line broke up into little groups, though most of
+the men went singly, and all tramped over the little foot-bridge, which
+swung under the unusual mass.
+
+Left alone, the vagrants' queen, placing her yellow and skinny hand on a
+weapon, perhaps, among her rags, resolutely moved toward the spy. He
+expected to be interrogated, for an attack was unlikely from a lone old
+woman; but he grasped his cane firmly.
+
+Luckily, a noise of steps at the other end of the street checked the
+hag; she thrust back out of sight what had momentarily gleamed like the
+steel of a knife or brass of a pistol-barrel; listened again and stared;
+then, muttering what was probably no prayer for the stranger's welfare,
+she crossed the street with amazing rapidity. The student, hearing a
+heavy military tread at the mouth of the street, expected to see her
+vanish down her burrow, but, to his astonishment, she proceeded toward
+the new-comer.
+
+"The Schutzmaun," muttered he, as there loomed into sight a decidedly
+soldier-like man in a long cloak, thrown back to show the scarlet
+lining, and dragging a clanking sabre.
+
+Relying on her good angel, apparently, the witch boldly passed him, and
+it seemed to the watcher that a sign of understanding was rapidly
+exchanged between them. Baboushka seemed to enjoin caution for the
+stranger hooked up his trailing sabre, wrapped his cloak around him and
+came on less noisily. Certainly the old hag did not beg of him, but
+hastened to leave the street.
+
+If the new-comer had been the night guardian coming on duty, the student
+might have lost any misgiving about the vagrants or their ruler; but he
+was not sure that in him was a friend.
+
+This was an officer, not a gendarme or military policeman. Cloak and
+uniform were dark blue and fine. He bore himself with the swagger of a
+personage of no inconsiderable rank, and also of some degree in the
+nobility. Tall, burly, overbearing, the stranger took a dislike to him
+from this one glance, and would have hesitated to appeal to him for
+assistance had he felt in danger.
+
+But the beggars had flocked into the rich quarter, and their
+chieftainess vanished. He allowed the military gentleman to pass, and
+was not sorry to see him cross the bridge with a steady, haughty step,
+which made his heel ring on each plank. But, on reaching the farther
+end, to the surprise of the watcher, his carriage immediately altered;
+his step became cautious and, like the other whom he had not noticed, he
+skulked in a doorway. He might have been thought a visitor there, but,
+at the next moment, his red whiskers reappeared between the turned-up
+collar of his mantle as he showed his head under the cornice of oak.
+
+For what motive had the officer and nobleman stooped to skulking and
+prying. One alone would amply exonerate the son of Mars--devotion to
+Venus. And the architectural student, not fearing to pass the soldier in
+his excusable ambush for a sweetheart, since his route over the bridge
+into the new city, and not wishful to spoil the lover's sport, since he
+was of the age to sympathize, prepared to leave his nook.
+
+But it was fated that continual impediments were to be thrown in his
+path on this eventful night. He had hardly taken two steps out of his
+covert, which kept him hidden from the officer but revealed him to any
+one approaching in the street, before a third individual of singular
+mien caught his view and transfixed him with a thrill so sharp, poignant
+and profound that a stroke of lightning would not have more dreadfully
+affected him.
+
+And yet, it was a woman--young by her step, light and quick as the
+antelope's, graceful by her movements, charming by her outlines which a
+poor, thin woolen wrapper imperfectly shrouded. She enchanted by the
+mere contour; it was her weird burden which appalled the watcher. In one
+hand, suspended horizontally, lengthwise parallel to her course, she
+held what seemed by shape and somber hue to be an infant's coffin.
+
+Her dark and brilliant eyes had descried him from the distance, but, in
+an instant recognizing that he was neither one of the usual nocturnal
+denizens nor another sort of whom she need entertain dread, she came on
+apace.
+
+Indeed, he was far from resembling the vagrants. He was clad without any
+attention to the toilette, after the manner of the German student, who
+likes to affront the Pharisee but without overmuch eccentricity. Under
+the voluminous cloak, warranted by the chilly wind, a tight-fitting
+tunic of dark green cloth, caught in by a broad buff leather belt with
+the clasp of a University, admirably defined the shapeliness of a slight
+but manly form. His hair, black as the raven's wing, was worn long and
+came curling down on his shoulders; his complexion was dark but clear.
+But the whole appearance was of a marvel in physical excellencies; a
+physiologist would have pointed to him as a model and result of the
+combination of all desirable traits in both his progenitors. His
+attitude, checked in the advance, denoted this perfection. The young
+woman, set at ease by her glances and that peace which true symmetry
+inspires, continued her way, averting her head with calculation, but he
+felt sure that she was not offended.
+
+He could laugh at the mistake he had made for, at this close encounter,
+he perceived that what in the tragic mood originated by the review of
+beggars in the shades of night, he had taken to be a child's casket, was
+a violin-case. The girl--she was perhaps but sixteen--had the artist's
+eye, black, fiery, deep and winning, while haughty for the vulgar
+worshiper; her hair was treated in a fantastic fashion as unlike that of
+the staid German maiden as its hue of black was the opposite of the
+traditional flaxen. Even in the feeble street-lamplight, she appeared,
+with her finely chiseled features of an Oriental type, handsome enough
+to melt an anchorite, and in the beholder a flood of passion gushed up
+and expanded his heart--devoid of such a mastering emotion before. He
+believed this was love! Perhaps it was love--real, true, indubitable
+love--but there is a mock-love with so much to advance in its favor that
+it has won many a battle where the genuine feeling has fought long in
+vain.
+
+Sharing some shock not unlike his own in extent and sharpness, the girl
+with the violin-case had paused just perceptibly in an unconscious
+attitude which kept in the lamplight her bust, tightly encased in a
+faded but elegant Genoa brocade jacket, with copper lace ornamentation,
+coming down upon a promising curve, clothed in a similarly theatrical
+skirt of flowered satin and China silk braid. On her wrists were
+bracelets and on her ungloved hands many rings, with stones rather too
+large to be taken for genuine on a woman promenading alone at such an
+hour. Conjoined with the musical instrument, the attire confirmed the
+student in his first impression after the tragic one, that this was a
+performer in one of the numerous dance-houses of the popular region,
+bordering the fashionable one.
+
+He almost regretted this conclusion, for the girl's forehead was so
+high, her eyes so lofty and her delicate mouth so impressed with a proud
+and energetical curl that no ambition would seem beyond the flight of
+one thus beautiful and high-spirited.
+
+Whatever the revolution she had exercised over him, he dared not avow
+it, such respect did she inspire, and on her recovering from her
+fleeting emotion, he let her resume her way without a word to detain
+her.
+
+She had not reached the first plank of the bridge before he suddenly
+remembered the officer, like himself, in ambush; and in the same manner
+as love--if that were love--had clutched his heart with the swiftness of
+an eagle seizing its quarry, another sentiment, as fierce and
+overpowering, jealousy, stung him to the quick.
+
+As he glanced--but he had not taken his eyes off her, not even to look
+if the military officer were still at his post--she had swept her
+worsted wrapper round to set her foot on the first board of the bridge;
+and he caught a glimpse, delightful and bewildering, of a foot, long but
+slim and delicately modeled, and of a faultless ankle, in a vermilion
+silk stocking and low-cut cordovan leather slipper--as theatrical as the
+rest of her attire. Something innately aesthetical in the student, which
+made him adore the exquisitely wrought, impelled him now to be the
+slave--the devotee--the worshiper of this masterpiece of Nature.
+
+Perhaps she stood in need of a defender?
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+SOLDIER'S SWORD AND WANDER-STAFF.
+
+
+The place was historically favored for adventures. In 1543, the riot of
+Knights and Knaves had begun here. On the bridge which preceded this
+structure, a band of young noblemen had taken possession of the passage
+more important then, as this now foul and noisome channel, into which
+the effluvia of the breweries and tanneries was discharged, was a strong
+and pellucid tributary of the Isar. They levied tribute on the
+burghers, kissing the comely women and not scrupling to cut the purses
+of the master-tradesmen; in this, imitating the mode of operation of
+their country cousins, the robber barons in the mountains to the south,
+or over the river in the opposite direction.
+
+But, as for the third or fourth time, the student was on the verge of
+quitting his haven, another interrupter arose. Pausing at the head of
+the bridge, prompted by natural caution or instinct, for the officer
+remained prudently invisible to her, the girl, with the violin-case,
+looked over her shoulder and beckoned to some one on the further side of
+the astonished student.
+
+The desert was becoming animated, indeed, as he had wished, for, in the
+hazy opening, a man appeared, carrying under one arm what seemed a
+musket or blunderbuss, while leaning the other hand on a staff which
+might be the one to rest the firearm on. He had a flat felt hat on, with
+wide shaggy margins, ornamented with a yellow cord in contrast with its
+inky dye, and a dingy, often mended old cavalry-soldier's russet cloak,
+covering him from a long, full grey beard to the feet, encased in
+patched shoes. The aspect of a Jew peddler in the pictures of the Dutch
+school, who had armed himself to defend his pack of thread and needles
+on the highway.
+
+But, as before, nearness dispelled the romantic conceit: the supposed
+gun resolved itself into a Turko-phone, or Oriental flute, while, on the
+other hand, the bright eye and well-shaped features, with the venerable
+impression suggested by the beard, lifted the wearer into a high place
+for reverence. Just as the girl was unrivaled for beauty, this man, a
+near relative, perhaps her father, would have few equals in the councils
+of his tribe.
+
+While not old, spite of the grey in his beard, illness had enfeebled
+him, for he needed the walking-staff. The brisk pace of his daughter had
+left him far behind and it cost him an effort to make up for the delay.
+But in parental love he found the force, and quite nimbly he passed the
+student without observing him in his haste to join his daughter.
+
+At the sight of him coming, she had not waited for his arm, but retaken
+her course. She was half way over the bridge when he began to ascend the
+gentle slope, and when he was arduously following with the summit well
+before him, the officer emerged abruptly from his covert. He must have
+been calculating on this moment and this separation to which Baboushka
+had no doubt contributed. She now loomed into view. Repulsed by the Jew
+in his detestation of beggars--for while the Christian accepts poverty
+as a misfortune to which resignation is one remedy, he regards it as an
+affliction to be violently removed--she hesitated to continue her
+annoyance. The bridge was so narrow that he had no difficulty, thanks to
+the length of his arms, in placing a hand on each rail, so that, as he
+bent his broad, smiling face forward between them, he effectively barred
+the way. With a tone which he intended to be winning and tender, but
+which nature had not allowed him to modulate very sweetly, he said:
+
+"Divine songstress of Freyer Brothers' Brewery Harmonista Cellars!" She
+stopped quickly and faced half round, so as to be in a better position
+for retreat if he made an advance toward her. "In the hall on
+Thursday--when you made the circuit with the cup for the collection
+after your delightful ballad--you refused me even a reply to my request
+for an interview. That was for the favor of a salute from those
+somewhat thin but honeyed lips! Now, there is nobody by and I mean to be
+rewarded for the bouquets I have nightly sent you!"
+
+"Father!" cried the Jewess, too frightened by the position of her
+assailant to flee.
+
+"Your father? Bah!" with a contemptuous glance at the old man
+approaching only too slowly. "I repeat, there is no one by! _That_ I
+arranged for."
+
+The speaker had red curly hair like his whiskers; his brow was not
+narrow but his eyebrows overhung; his face was flushed with animation
+and carnal desire--perhaps by potations, though his large lower jaw
+denoted ample animal courage. He was powerful enough in the long arms
+and strong hands to have mastered the girl and her father, but it was
+not the dread of his prowess physically which awed the daughter of the
+race still proscribed in this part of Germany.
+
+Frederick von Sendlingen, Baron of ancient creation, enjoyed a wide fame
+among the knot of noble carousers who strove to make one corner of
+Munich a pale reflection of the "fast" end of Paris and Vienna. A major
+in a crack heavy cavalry regiment, allowed for family reasons to remain
+in the garrison after it had been removed elsewhere, he enjoyed enviable
+esteem from his superiors and the hatred and dislike of all others.
+Though inclined to court after the manner of the pillager who has
+captured a city, his boisterous addresses pleased the wanton matrons
+and, more naturally, the facile Cythereans of the music halls and
+dance-houses.
+
+At an early hour, he had cast his handkerchief, like an irresistible
+sultan, at the chief attraction of the beer cellar, which he named--the
+so-called "La Belle Stamboulane," and baffled in all his less brutal
+modes of attack, he had recourse to one which better suited his custom.
+
+It looked as though he had lost time in not putting it into operation
+before, since the girl, around whom, taking one stride, he threw his
+arms, could not, by her feeble resistance, prevent him snatching a kiss.
+As for her father, casting down his turkophone, and raising his staff in
+both hands, his valorous approach went for little, as his blow would
+have been as likely to fall upon his daughter as the ruffian.
+
+While he was bewildered and his stick was raised in air, the latter,
+perceiving his danger, did not scruple to show his contempt for one of
+the despised race whom he likewise scorned for his weakness, by dealing
+him a kick in the leg with his heavy boot which, fairly delivered, would
+have broken an oaken post. Though avoiding its full force, the unhappy
+father was so painfully struck that he staggered back to the opposite
+rail of the bridge and, clapping both hands to the bruise on the shin,
+groaned while he strove in vain to overcome the paralyzing agony. From
+that moment he was compelled to remain as a stranger in action to the
+outrage.
+
+Still struggling, though with little hope, the girl saw the defeat of
+her natural champion with sympathetic anguish. Though he had not spied
+the student, she had regarded him with no faint opinion of his manliness
+for--repelling the kind of proud self-reliance of her race to have no
+recourse to strangers during persecution--she lifted her voice with a
+confidence which startled her rude adorer.
+
+"Help! help from this ruffian-gentleman!"
+
+"Silence, you fool," rejoined Sendlingen. "I tell you, the coast is
+clear--for I have arranged all that. It is simple strategy to secure
+one's flanks--"
+
+"Help!" repeated the songstress, redoubling her efforts--not to escape,
+which was out of the question, but to shield her mouth from contact with
+the red moustaches, hovering over it like the wings of a bloodstained
+bird of rapine.
+
+As this repetition of the appeal, steps clattered on the bridge, and the
+officer lifted his head. He may have expected Baboushka or one of her
+fraternity, and the tall, slender student, who had flung off his cloak
+to run more swiftly, gave him a surprise. The agile and intelligent girl
+took the opportunity with commendable speed, and glided out of the
+major's relaxing grasp like a wasp from under the spider's claws. She
+retreated as far as where her father tried to stand erect, and helping
+him up, led him prudently down the bridge slope so that they might
+continue their flight. It would have been the basest ingratitude to
+depart without seeing the result of the interference, and the two
+lingered, though it would have been wiser to let the two Christians bite
+and tear each other without witnesses of another creed, and with the
+witness of none.
+
+It was a free spectacle, but, if it had cost their week's salary at the
+casino, it would have been worth the money.
+
+As the major had empty hands after the loss of his prize, the student
+had the quixotic delicacy to make the offer in dumbshow to lay aside his
+cane and undertake to chastise the insulter of womanhood with the naked
+fist. But this is a weapon almost unknown in the sword-bearing class
+which Von Sendlingen adorned, and, infuriated by the civilian
+intervening at the culmination of his daring plan, to say nothing of
+the annoying thought that his failure would be no secret from the old
+hag, his accomplice, looking on at the extremity of the bridge, he
+yielded to the worst devil in his heart. He inclined to the most
+high-handed and hectoring measure. Whipping out his sabre with a rapid
+gesture, and merely muttering a discourteous and grudging: "Be on your
+guard!" he dealt a cut at the student which threatened to cleave him in
+two.
+
+The other was on the alert; he had suspected one capable of such an
+outrage, likewise capable of worse, and he parried the coward's blow so
+dexterously with his cane that it was the soldier who was thrown off his
+balance. A second blow, with the tremendous sweep of the stick held at
+arm's length, tested the metal of the blade to its utmost, and, as the
+wielder's hand was thoroughly palsied, drove it out of the opening
+fingers, and all heard it splash in the black and pestiferous waters
+under the bridge.
+
+Von Sendlingen would almost have preferred the blow falling on his head.
+An officer, whose reputation in fencing was no mean one, to be disarmed
+by a student who swung but his road-cane! This was not all: he had lost
+his sabre, and, noble though he was, he had to pass the vigorous
+inspection of his weapons like the humblest private soldier! The absence
+of the regimental sword might cause degradation, ruin militarily and
+socially! And all for a "music-hall squaller"--and a Jewess at that!
+
+He ground his teeth, and his eyes were filled with angry fire. His face
+bore a greater resemblance to a tiger's than a man's, and had not the
+victor in this first bout possessed a stout heart, he might have
+regretted that he had commenced so well, so terrible would be the
+retaliation.
+
+All the animal in the man being roused, he longed to throw himself on
+his antagonist to grasp his throat, but the successful use of the cudgel
+against the sword indicated that this was an adept at quarter-staff and
+a man with naked hands would have easily been beaten if pitted with him.
+Sendlingen, warily and rapidly surveying the limited field of combat,
+caught sight of the Jew's walking-staff and sprang for it with an outcry
+of savage glee and hope.
+
+On perceiving this move, in spite of the pain still crippling him, the
+old man started to retrace his steps to regain possession of his weapon,
+but he was soon distanced by the younger one.
+
+Armed with this staff, the officer, remembering his student days, when
+he, too, was an expert swinger of the cane, a Bavarian mountaineer's
+weapon with which duels to the death are not unseldom fought, he stood
+before the student.
+
+"Had you been a gentleman," began the major, with a sullen courtesy,
+extorted from him by the gallantry of his antagonist.
+
+"A stick to a dog!" retorted the latter, falling into the position of
+guard with an ease and accuracy which caused the other to begin his work
+by feints and attacks not followed up too rashly, in order to test him.
+
+This time, it was the stouter and more brutal man who played cautiously
+and the younger and more refined who was spurred into recklessness by
+the contiguity of the fair Helen--or, rather, Esther--who had caused the
+fray.
+
+The girl stood at the end of the bridge, opposite to Baboushka at hers,
+there making them simple lookers-on. The old Jew seemed eager to join
+in the struggle, but the staves were in continual swing, and he could
+not draw near without the risk of having a shoulder dislocated, or, at
+least, his knuckles severely rapped. In the gloom, his hovering about
+the involved pair would have led an opera-goer to have seen in him the
+demon who thus actively presides at the fatal duel of Faust and
+Valentine.
+
+But the conflict, whatever the major's wariness, could not be long
+protracted, for canes of this sort are tiring to the arm, unlike
+smallswords; he was still on the defensive when the student assailed him
+with a shower of blows which taxed all his skill and nerve, and the
+strength of the staff which he had borrowed from his foe. Well may one
+suspect "the gifts of an enemy!" as the student might have cited:
+"_Timeo danaos_," etc. At the very moment when the officer's head was
+most in peril, while he guarded it with the staff held horizontally in
+both hands separated widely for the critical juncture, it ominously
+cracked at the reception of a vigorous blow--it parted as though a steel
+blade had severed it, and the unresisted cane came down on his skull
+with crushing force.
+
+Out of the two cavities which the broken staff now presented, rattled
+several gold coins. At the sight, the old hag scrambled toward where the
+major had fallen senseless. The Jew, after picking up the broken pieces
+of wood, would have lingered to recover those of the precious metal
+though at cost of a scuffle with Baboushka. But his daughter rebuked him
+in their language with an indignant tone, which brought him to his
+senses in an instant. She seized him by the arm, and hurried him away at
+last.
+
+After a brief survey of the defeated man, wavering between the fear
+that he had killed him and the prompting to see to his hurts, if the
+case were not fatal, the student took to flight in the direction the
+beautiful girl had chosen. He well knew that this was a grave matter,
+and that he trod on burning ground. At twenty paces farther, he
+remembered his cloak, but on the bridge were now clustered several
+shadows vying with Baboushka in picking up the coin before raising the
+unfortunate Von Sendlingen.
+
+Not a light had appeared at the windows of the houses, not a window had
+opened for a night-capped head to be thurst forth, not a voice had
+echoed the Jewess's call for the watch. It was not to be doubted that
+Footbridge street had allowed more murderous outrages to occur without
+anyone running the risk of catching a cold or a slash of a sabre.
+
+"A cut-throat quarter, that is it," remarked the student, still too
+excited to feel the cold and want of his outer garment. "After all, one
+cannot travel from Berlin to Paris without getting some soot on the
+cheek and a cinder or two in the eye. In the same way it is not possible
+to see life and go through this world without being smeared with a
+little blood or smut."
+
+While talking to himself, he smoothed his dress and curled his dark and
+fine moustache, projecting horizontally and not drooping. He had walked
+so fast that he had overtaken the Jews, delayed as the girl was by her
+father's lameness, and having to carry the violin in its case which she
+had recovered and preciously guarded.
+
+"What an audacious bully that was," the student continued; "but even a
+good cat loses a mouse now and then."
+
+The pair seemed to expect him to join them, but as he was about to do
+so, at the mouth of a narrow and unlighted alley, he heard the measured
+tramp of feet indicating the patrol.
+
+Already the character of the streets and houses changed: there were
+vistas of those large buildings which give one the impression that
+Munich is planned on too generous a scale for its population. Only here
+and there was a roof or front suggestive of the Middle Ages, and they
+may have been in imitation; the others were stately and were classical,
+and the avenues became spacious.
+
+All at once, while the student was watching the semi-military constables
+approach, he heard an uproar toward the bridge. The major had been
+discovered by quite another sort of folk than the allies of Baboushka,
+and the alarm was given.
+
+To advance was to invite an arrest which would result in no pleasant
+investigation.
+
+He had tarried too long as it was. The watchman's
+horn--tute-horn--sounded at the bridge and the squad responded through
+their commander; whistles also shrilled, being police signals. The
+student was perceived. It was a critical moment. The next moment he
+would be challenged, and at the next, have a carbine or sabre levelled
+at his breast. He retired up the alley, precipitately, wondering where
+the persons whom he befriended had disappeared so quickly.
+
+A very faint light gleamed from deeply within, at the end of a crooked
+passage through a lantern-like projection at a corner. A number of iron
+hooks bristled over his head as if for carcasses at a butchers, although
+their innocent use was to hang beds on them to air. On a tarnished plate
+he deciphered "ARTISTES' ENTRANCE," and while perplexed, even as the
+gendarmes appeared at the mouth of this blind-alley, a long and taper
+hand was laid on his arm and a voice, very, very sweet, though in a mere
+murmur, said irresistibly:
+
+"Come! come in, or you will be lost!" He yielded, and was drawn into a
+corridor under the oriel window, where the air was pungent with the reek
+of beer, tobacco-smoke, orange-peel, cheese and caraway seeds.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+"THE JINGLE-JANGLE."
+
+
+The person to whom the shapely hand and musical voice belonged,
+conducted the student along the narrow passage to a turning where she
+halted, under a lamp with a reflector which threw them in that position
+into the shade. The passage was divided by the first lobby, and on the
+lamp was painted, back to back: "Men," "Ladies;" besides, a babble of
+feminine voices on the latter side betrayed, as the intruder suspected
+from the previous placard, that he had entered a place of entertainment
+by the stage-door, a Tingel-Tangel, or Jingle-Jangle, as we should say.
+
+It was the Jewess who was the Ariadne to this maze. Seen in the light,
+at close range, with the enchanting smile which a woman always finds for
+the man who has won her gratitude by supplementing her deficiency in
+strength and courage with his own, she was worthier love than ever. At
+this view, too, he was sure that, unlike too many of the _divas_ of
+these _spielungs_, or dens, she was not one of the stray creatures who
+sell pleasure to some and give it to others, and for themselves keep
+only shame--fatal ignominy, wealth at best very unsubstantial, and if,
+at last, winners, they laugh--one would rather see them weeping.
+
+"What's your name?" she inquired, quickly. "I am Rebecca Daniels, whom
+they call on the Bills 'La Belle Stamboulane'--though I have never been
+farther east than Prague," she added with a contemptuous smile. "That
+was my father, whose maltreatment you so promptly but I fear so severely
+chastised. But your name?" impatiently.
+
+"I am a student of Wilna University, traveling according to custom of
+the college, through Germany and to make the Italian Art Tour. I am
+Claudius Ruprecht."
+
+"Not noble?" she inquired, sadly, on hearing two Christian names and
+none of family, for her people treasure the pride of ancestry.
+
+"I am an orphan. I never knew my family. Perhaps, as I am of age, I
+shall soon be informed. But--"
+
+"Enough! time is getting on, and we cannot long stay in privacy
+here--the passage-way for the performers. This is Freyers' Hall, where I
+sing--where I was a player. But my father can speak to you in the public
+room and see to your safety--for I fear this night's affair will end
+ill. But do not you fear! neither my father nor I have the powerlessness
+which that noble ruffian seemed to think is ours. You, at least, shall
+be saved--even though you killed that brute."
+
+"I do not think that, unless his head is not so hard as his heart."
+
+She opened a narrow door in the dirty wall. It was brighter in the
+capacious place thus shown.
+
+"Go in and sit down anywhere. My father will be with you in a few
+minutes. We were so delayed that they feared we would not arrive for
+'our turn.' They were glad of the excuse--I fancy they were told it
+might occur--and they are trying to break our agreement. But never mind!
+that is but a bread-and-butter business for us. For you, it will be life
+and death, if that officer be slain."
+
+Claudius, the student, mechanically obeyed the gentle impulsion her hand
+imparted to him on the shoulder, and walked through the side-door. A
+number of benches were before him with corresponding narrow tables, and
+he sat down at one, and looked round.
+
+He found himself in a very long, rectangular hall, low in the ceiling in
+proportion to the length, once brightly decorated, but faded, smoked and
+tarnished. On the walls, in panels, between tinted pilasters of a
+pseudo-Grecian design, were views of the principal towns of Germany and
+Austria, the details obliterated in the upper part by smoke and in the
+lower by greasy heads and hands. Around the sides, a dais held benches
+and tables similar to those on the floor. At the far end was a bar for
+beer and other liquors less popular, and an entrance from a main street,
+screened and indirect, down steps at another level than the rear or
+stage door. Where Claudius sat was a small stage with footlights and
+curtain complete, and an orchestra for a miniature piano such as are
+used in yachts, and six musicians; the performers sat to face the
+audience respectfully in the good Old German style.
+
+The lighting was by means of clusters of gas-jets at intervals in the
+long ceiling and along the walls. The announcement of the items of
+attraction appearing on the stage was made by changeable sliding cards
+in framework at the sides of the stage; to the left the name of the
+_scena_ was exhibited, that of the artist on the other.
+
+When Claudius took his seat, the other places were almost all empty; but
+they soon began to fill up. The majority of the spectators seemed to be
+of the tradesman and workman class, with their wives and daughters, but
+the stranger, who had been so surreptitiously "passed in," was not blind
+to the presence of a more offensive element. There were faces as
+villainous as any under the immediate command of Grandmother
+"Baboushka;" and their dress was not much better. More than one dandy of
+the gutter nursed the head of a club called significantly the
+"lawbreaker's canes of crime," with a distant air of the fop sucking his
+clouded amber knob or silver shepherd's-crook. In more than one group
+were horse-copers, and their kin the market-gardeners' thieves and
+country wagoners' pests, who not only lighten the loads on the way to
+the city market on the road, but plunder the drivers after they receive
+their salesmoney by cheating at cards.
+
+The student, crowded in by this mixed throng, began to doubt the
+providential quality of the intervention saving him from an explanation
+to the police; it was very like leaping from the proverbial frying-pan
+into the fire.
+
+At this stage in his reflections, he felt that a person in the next seat
+had risen and he soon perceived that he had politely, or from a stronger
+reason, given up his place to another. This was the old Jew, but he
+would not have known him by his dress, it was so changed for the better;
+the fine profile, the venerable beard which an Arab Sheikh would have
+reverenced, and the sharp, intelligent eyes were unaltered.
+
+"Do you speak Latin?" inquired Daniels in that tongue.
+
+But Claudius, though reading the dead tongue fluently, pronounced it
+after the University manner, and felt that he could not sustain a
+dialogue with one who followed the Italian usage. He could speak
+Italian, however, for he had long studied it to be at home in the world
+of Art.
+
+"The officer was not killed," remarked the Jew, and before his new
+acquaintance could express his relief, he added gravely, "but he has
+been spirited away."
+
+"Then it's those vagabonds--"
+
+"Of whom that old _Tausend-Kunstlerin_ (witch of a thousand tricks) is
+in the position of parent? I guess as much. He said he had connived with
+her, one who is the actual though occult ruler of the filthy region. We
+have had to pay her blackmail regularly, like the other artists, for we
+are obliged to go home after midnight. Well, if he is in their hands, it
+is among congenial spirits. Tell me your name and as much of your
+affairs as you please to enlighten me with. I am bound to assist you as
+far as possible--though my debt to you will ever remain uncanceled. I am
+Daniel Daniels, of Odessa, Marseilles, and elsewhere, and an
+introduction to my correspondent nearest where you sojourn is not to be
+despised."
+
+Impressed with his tone, the young man related his life-story
+succinctly.
+
+He had a dreamy remembrance of a long journey, lastly in a sledge,
+buried in fur robes, his clearer later memories were of a happy home in
+Poland, in the country, where, though strangers, all were kind to the
+lonely orphan. There was a mystery about his parentage; his mother was
+probably a native as he acquired the language as easily as the art of
+eating, the peasants said. His father had been killed, he thought, on
+one of those riots which, in a small way, repeat the olden revolutions
+of Poland against the triumvirate of oppression, Austria, Prussia and
+Russia. But he had heard a tutor say, when he was not supposed in
+hearing, that he had perished by the executioner's steel.
+
+"A death honorable as under the bullets," said Claudius, but half
+doubtingly.
+
+As became a man who abhorred homicide in any shape, Daniels made no
+reply.
+
+"At the age of eighteen, while at the University, I was given a private
+tutor in art and architecture, to which I had a bent. He was a Frenchman
+and I acquired his elegant tongue with that well-known facility of us
+Poles in attaining proficiency in the Western ones. Armed with that and
+Italian--"
+
+"Which you speak with finish," interrupted the Jew.
+
+"I expect my Italian and French tour to be delightful. But I am not over
+the frontier yet, and hardly will be soon if my passport is commented
+upon by an authority cognizant of this night's adventure."
+
+"I regret to find that it was deliberately planned," resumed Daniels.
+"My daughter's virtue has raised more hostility under this roof than
+even her talent. The proprietor is a notorious rascal, but he is too
+useful to the profligate among the town officials to be reprimanded. The
+police, too, wink at his personal misdoings, because he is always their
+friend to deliver the criminals who make this haunt their rendezvous.
+All those painted women, as well as the waiter-girls, are spies and
+Dalilahs who betray the Samsons of crime to the police at any given
+moment. That would be neither here nor there, however, if my daughter
+and I were allowed to conclude our engagement--which, believe me, would
+never have been signed if we had guessed the character of the resort.
+Not only would they lodge me in prison for a pretended attempt to elude
+my contract, but they seek to throw my poor Rebecca into the arms of
+such reprobates as this Major the Baron. The hag whom you noticed is not
+unconcerned in the plot. It is a protégé of hers--a lovely young girl,
+guileless in appearance as a cherub, whom they would substitute for my
+girl, if she had been detained to-night. In fact--"
+
+He paused. The orchestra had played and two or three vocalists had
+appeared and sang, without Claudius, absorbed in this conversation,
+noticing that the entertainment had commenced. A little fat man in a
+ruffled and embroidered shirt, buff waistcoat with crystal buttons, knee
+breeches and silk stockings of reproachless black, and steel buckled
+shoes, had come before the curtain, sticking one thumb in his waistband
+and the other in his vest armhole, to display a huge seal ring and a
+mammoth diamond hoop, respectively, as well as his idea of ease in
+company. He announced in a high flute-like voice that in consequence of
+indisposition, which a sworn medical affirmation confirmed--here he
+raised a laugh by sticking his tongue in his cheek--"La Belle
+Stamboulane" would not appear--might have to depart for Constantinople
+for convalescence, but that the bewitching Fraulein von Vieradlers--one
+of the few authentic _noble_ vocalists on the variety stage--following
+in the footsteps of certain princesses--would oblige, for the first time
+on any stage, with selections from her repertoire, etc.
+
+This was concerted, for the outburst of applause, started by the most
+sinister of aspect among the auditors, was vehement and so contagious
+that the _hussah_ was unanimous as the stage-manager retired.
+
+La Belle Stamboulane was already eclipsed! so evanescent is theatrical
+fame. Of all the audience, only one felt indignant, and that was the
+student Claudius, who had not heard her sing or wear stage costumes!
+
+"All is over," observed Daniels placidly. "I cannot cope with these
+rogues. I must go and join my daughter and get our dresses to our
+lodgings; thankful if we succeed so far. In about an hour, will you not
+call, when we will resume our conversation which I wish to have, and
+with practical gain to you. This is the card of our hotel. It is not
+aristocratic, but once there, you will be safe."
+
+He spoke with such tranquil assurance that Claudius had not a doubt. He
+took the card, read the address: "Hotel Persepolitan," so that if he
+lost the card, it might be in his mind, and nodded with a kind of
+gratefulness. The father of a beautiful woman is not like any other man
+in the world to a young man, who is not indifferent to her.
+
+Following the old Jew with his gaze to the narrow side-door leading to
+behind-the-scenes, Claudius thought that, in the brief period of its
+opening and closing, he spied the bright black orbs of the Jewess
+striving to catch a glimpse even so transient of him. It did not need
+this encouragement to make him resolve to respond to the invitation.
+
+An hour would soon pass, even in this tedious recreation. He felt also
+some resentment and curiosity to see the person whom the director of
+these Munich circeans considered in adequate succession to the peerless
+Stamboulane. The announcement had at least kindled the public: being
+plebeian, the promised aristocrat was already discussed. The family was
+existent, whether this variety vocalist was legitimately a daughter
+being another question. Vieradlers was a barony that had a right to fly
+its four eagles--as the name signifies--in the face of the double-headed
+king of the tribe. The baron was the latest of an old Bavarian line,
+famous in story. One of his ancestors was eagle-bearer to Cæsar after
+the defeat of Hermann. The continuators had always been near the
+emperors. There might be a drop of imperial blood in the child who had
+so strangely degenerated as to prefer royalty on the stage to that of
+the court and country-house.
+
+"She may be good-looking," thought Claudius, "for I have noticed that
+where the men are uncomely the women are often the reverse. A Berlin
+professor has boldly likened the male Bavarian to the gorilla and the
+caricaturists have taken his cue. They are of the beer-barrel shape,
+coarse, rough, quarrelsome and quick to enter into a fight. It is the
+national dish of roast goose--a pugnacious bird--and bread of oatmeal
+that does it. They may well have one beauty of the sex among them. And
+the carnation on the cheeks of these waitresses is so remarkable that
+they find rouge superfluous. They are dull, and yet the twinkle in their
+eyes indicates cunning."
+
+Before him, the next seat was occupied by two gentlemen. They spoke in
+French, thinking no one would comprehend their conversation. They were
+discussing the ascending star, about which one had a deeper knowledge
+than the subjects of Baboushka.
+
+"She is the cause of the disgrace of the Grand-Chamberlain of a northern
+kingdom," said this well-informed man. "He has been obliged to send in
+his grand cross of the Royal Order and his rank in the Holy Empire,
+after what was almost a revolution in the palace. He is a man over
+sixty, who was in Russia on an important mission, when he met by chance
+this young girl, whose mother was married to a noble, although the elder
+sister of one of those beauties notorious for their depravity in Paris.
+Perhaps, though, she secured her husband before her sister won this
+dubious celebrity. At all events, she lived blamelessly, but _bad_ blood
+does not lie! This girl seems to aim at the reputation of her aunt, the
+celebrated Iza, whose portrait was painted, her figure copied in
+immortal marble, and her charms sung by French bards. At all events, she
+bewitched the old Count von Raackensee, who took her on a tour through
+our country and Austria. It was at Vienna that he, an old statesman and
+courtier, committed the folly of presenting her as his daughter! The
+truth came out--Austria and Prussia made remonstrances, and he was
+compelled to resign his office or this witch. He would not give her up
+and so he was punished."
+
+"Punished?"
+
+"Yes; he went on to live at Nice, where he had bought a villa in
+foresight for some such day of disgrace. The Circe was to follow him,
+but, instead of that, she has shaken off the golden links and
+condescends to stay a week in Munich to amuse us coarse swiggers of
+beer."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+THE STAR IS DEAD LONG LIVE THE STAR!
+
+
+By listening to others and observing them, man obtains the material for
+self-preservation. Evidently this star of the minor stage was a woman to
+be avoided; a rising light which might scar the sight and burn the
+fingers of too venturesome an admirer. Claudius had a premonition that
+he ought to go out and kill the few minutes in strolling the streets,
+before keeping the appointment, even at the risk of being questioned by
+the police. But he overcame the impulsion, and waited to face what might
+be a danger the more.
+
+All the hall, by instinct and from the stories circulating--perhaps
+circulated by the agents of the management--divined that no common
+attraction was to be presented. Besides, to displace La Belle
+Stamboulane worthily on the stage, that chosen arena where the female
+gladiator carries the day, a miracle of beauty, wit and skill was
+requisite. Elsewhere, ability, practice, art, artifice, many gifts and
+accomplishments may triumph, but the fifth element as indispensable as
+the others, air, water, fire and earth--it is _love_, which legitimately
+monopolizes the theatre for its exhibition and glorification. Men and
+women come to such places of amusement to hear love songs, see love
+scenes, and share in the fictitious joys and sorrows of love, which they
+long to enact in reality. Nothing is above love; nothing equals it. He
+reigns as a master in a temple, with woman as the high-priestess, and
+man the victim or the chosen reward.
+
+Preceding the novelty, a bass-singer roared a drinking-song, in which
+he likened human life to a brewer's house, in which some quenched their
+thirst quickly and departed; others stayed to quaff, jest, tell stories
+to cronies, before staggering out "full;" the oldest went to sleep
+there. Though rich-voiced and liked, this time he retired in silence,
+for the audience was tormented with impatience.
+
+The orchestra struck up a fashionable waltz, and, as the door, at the
+back of a drawing-room scene, was opened in both flaps by the liveried
+servants, a young lady entered, so fresh, delightful and easy that for a
+moment it seemed as if it were a member of the "highest life" who had
+blundered off the street into this strange world.
+
+From her glistening hair of gold to the tip of her white satin slippers,
+with preposterously high heels, this was the new incarnation of the
+woman who ends the Nineteenth Century. She was indisputably beautiful,
+and Claudius, who had thought that the Jewess was incomparable, feared
+that the apple would have to be halved, since neither could have borne
+it entire away. But the Jewess's loveliness exalted the beholder; this
+one's was of the strange, irritating sort, resisted with difficulty and
+alluring a man into those byways which end in the gaming hell, the
+saturnalian halls, and the suicide's grave. Love had never chosen a more
+appetizing form to be the pivot on which human folly--perhaps human
+genius--was to spin idly and uselessly, like a beetle on a pin in a
+naturalist's cabinet.
+
+Kaiserina von Vieradlers was the modern Venus, a creation of the modiste
+rather than of the sculptor; though hips and bosom were developed
+extravagantly, the long waist was absurdly small; but no token of ill
+health from the tight lacing appeared in the irreproachable shape, the
+well-turned arms and the countenance which was unmarred in a single
+lineament; the movements were not strictly ladylike, they were too
+unfettered in spite of the smooth gloves and the stylish unwrinkled ball
+dress, rather short in front to parade the slippers mentioned and silk
+stockings so nicely moulded to the trim ankle as to show the dimple. She
+was more fair in her eighteenth year--if she were so old--than a Danish
+baby in the cradle. The yellow hair had a clear golden tint not tawny,
+and the fineness was remarkable of the stray threads that serpentined
+out of the artistic braid and drooping ringlets. The blue eyes had a
+multitude of expressions and gleams; now hard as the blue diamond's ray,
+now soft as the lapis lazuli's glow of azure; the expression was at
+present one of longing, tender, cajoling and coaxing--like a gentle
+child's, never refused a thing for which it silently pleaded.
+
+The costume was a trifle exaggerated, as is allowable on the minor
+stage, but what was that in our topsy-turvy age, when the disreputable
+woman in a mixed ball is conspicuous among her spotless sisters by the
+quiet correctness of her toilet?
+
+Kaiserina came down to the flaring footlights, after a little
+trepidation, which the inexorable demon of stage-fright exacted from
+her, with the swing and confident step of one sure that--while man may
+be unjust, cruel and oppressive to her sex off the stage--here she would
+reign and finally triumph. She bowed her head, but it was to acknowledge
+her gracious acceptance of the tribute of applause; she moistened her
+fiery-coal lips with a serpent's active tongue; she surveyed her
+dominion with eyes that assumed a passing emerald tint. There was a
+depth to those apparently superficial glances. It seemed to Claudius
+that one had singled him out, and he fancied, as his eyes became
+fastened on this vision of concentrated worldly bliss, that it was for
+him that she stretched her plump neck, waved her arms in long gloves,
+undulated her waist and murmured--though to others she was but repeating
+her song during the orchestral prelude:
+
+"You talk of plunging into the strife; you are ready to endure
+privations, you would study and toil till you vanquish. Nonsense; you
+had far better repose, recruit after the humdrum, exhaustive life of
+college; enjoy life a little. Hear a love-song, not a professor's
+lecture--see a dance of the ballet, not the procession of the deans and
+proctors; come to me for I am immediate sensation--the pleasure for all
+times--eternal intoxication--certain oblivion--the ideal bliss of the
+Hindoo! I am the grandest proof of Life--I am Love embodied!"
+
+What did she sing to the strains of the voluptuous-waltz made vocal? The
+words mattered not; in Esquimaux they would have been as intelligible
+from the intonation with which she imbued every note, and the restricted
+but perfectly comprehensible gestures with which she emphasized the
+phrases of double meaning--one for the literary censors who had "passed"
+this corruption, the other for even the more obtuse of the common herd.
+
+The rival whom, without having seen her, she had dethroned, was
+obliterated. It was not a transfer of allegiance--it was Semiramis;
+trampling an overthrown empress among the charred ruins of her palace,
+acclaimed without one dissentient shout, in her stead, and as the
+initial of a new line of sovereigns. She enchanted, interested and
+amused, while Rebecca had awed, ravished and strove apparently in vain
+to lift to a level where the élite alone soar without dread of a fall.
+
+A witty cardinal has said that if a fly were seen in the drinking-cup by
+an Italian, a Frenchman and a German, respectively, the first would send
+it away, the second fish out the insect before he drank, while the
+German would gulp liquor and fly, without demur.
+
+The good audience of Freyers' Harmonista swallowed the so-called
+Fraulein von Vieradlers, flies and all! Claudius saw no more clearly
+than they; not only was the girl an unsurpassable idol, but to its very
+feet it was pure gold and immaculate ivory. An insane idea seized him
+not only to win her--a hundred around him shared that desire--but to
+keep her spotless, as he thought her, whatever the gossips had said.
+After all, slander had no opening to attack one whose youth was
+manifest; who owed no complexion to the wax-mask, the bismuth powder,
+and the carmine; whose hair was real and fine and of a shade which no
+dye could imitate; and whose movements, though in a society dance far
+removed from the wild whirl of the monads seen on this same stage, had
+the freedom of the bacchantes.
+
+After all, the unworthiness of the object no more changes the quality of
+love than that of the glass alters the banquet of wine.
+
+Oh, to withdraw her from this turbulent career, for which surely she was
+not inextricably destined, and let her be the bright but flawless
+ornament of a happy home and a choice circle--if not the lady of
+fashion, in case the student realized one of his fantastic dreams of
+aimless ambition. The quiet learner felt an immense flame usurp the
+place of his blood; he seemed gifted with the powers of the athletic
+Duke of Munich, Christopher the Leaper, whose statue adorned the
+proscenium, and like him, clearing the orchestra with a bound of twelve
+feet, he would have grasped the girl wasting her graces of voice and
+person on these boors, and carried her off to a more congenial sphere.
+
+Obliged to repeat her song and the dance which filled the gap between
+two verses, the charmer held the spectators in a spell even more firm
+than that she had first imposed.
+
+No one was conscious at the first that down the central aisle had come a
+little party odd enough in its components and awe-inspiring in what
+might be called its rear-guard to break even enchantment more potent.
+
+An old woman, wearing over sordid garments an old furred Polish pelisse,
+was the guide--the herald, so to say, to a gentleman in gold spectacles
+and a black suit and silk hat, an inspector of police, a sergeant of the
+watch, while behind this formidable official nucleus marched a serried
+body of civil and of military police. After them all, wringing his fat
+hands, trotted the proprietor, with a terrified expression too great not
+to be assumed. Waiters completed the retinue, wearing faces much whiter
+than the napkins slung on their arms.
+
+As the orchestra faced the audience, they perceived this inroad before
+the latter and, as by a signal, ceased playing. The startled dancer, for
+all her aristocratic self-command, stopped immediately for explanation,
+and, riveting her glances on the female head of the intruders, whom she
+recognized--that was clear--stood stupor-stricken.
+
+Claudius, following her hint, turned to the center and had no difficulty
+in recognizing in the woman arrayed in the Polish pelisse, the chief of
+the beggars, Baboushka. He recalled the remark of the Jew, that she
+befriended this debutante, and he was averse to believing it. That
+delicious creature and this hideous one in ties of communion!
+ridiculous, monstrous!
+
+Spite of his concern for himself, Claudius noticed that twenty or thirty
+of the spectators, apparently perplexed at the rare conjunction of their
+leader and the authorities in friendly communication, would not wait for
+the elucidation but began to make a rush for the outlets.
+
+The voice of the town inspector, rotund and sonorous, froze them with
+terror, although not personal.
+
+"Gentlemen--(the ladies were apparently here only on sufferance, and the
+stage-performer was of no consideration in the authorities'
+eyes)--Gentlemen, a murder has been committed and we seek the culprit
+here in your midst!"
+
+"Murder!" and the audience rose to their feet like one man.
+
+"Stand up here," said the functionary, pointing to a place on a bench
+which a timid spectator had vacated, and pushing Baboushka roughly, "and
+point out the man who has made away with the honorable Major von
+Sendlingen."
+
+"Major von Sendlingen!" repeated the audience, shocked, as the officer
+had been seen but the night previously among them in lusty life, and
+death is a spectre most terrible in a saloon of mirth and carousal.
+
+After that general exclamation, a silence ensued; one that meant
+acquiescence in the proceedings of the police.
+
+"I must have killed him," thought the student. "This is a black
+prospect! I had better have quitted the hall and profited by the
+invitation of refuge which Herr Daniels offered me."
+
+For the moment, he could take no part, though he could not doubt that
+Baboushka would denounce him--a stranger, and the principal in the duel
+with canes. His cloak would help toward the identification and unless
+the hag's crew had abstracted it, it would be forthcoming, he doubted
+not.
+
+Indeed, elevated on her perch, able to see the faces of all around her,
+the hag's aged but brilliant eyes rapidly scanned those nearest her in
+wider and wider circles. All at once they became fixed upon Claudius,
+and by instinct, the neighbors fell away from him so that he was
+isolated. She extended her arm with an unnatural vigor, and in a voice
+also unexpectedly strong with malice, cried:
+
+"That is he! there you have the slayer of poor Major von Sendlingen!"
+
+At that very moment, a shrill, ear-splitting whistle sounded; and the
+gas-jets all over the hall went out too simultaneously for the act not
+to be that of a hand at the inlet from the street-main. Claudius heard
+the soldiers and policemen buffeting the people to scramble over the
+benches toward him. He had but a single road to a possible escape: by
+the little door in the wall through which Rebecca Daniels had ushered
+him into the auditorium. He stooped as he turned, to elude any
+outstretched hands, drove himself like a wedge through the compacted
+mass of frightened spectators and, spite of the gloom, the deeper
+because of the glare preceding it, he reached the egress. The
+uninitiated would never have suspected its existence, for the actors and
+staff of the establishment alone had the right and knowledge to use it.
+
+"Lights, lights!" the functionaries were shouting.
+
+By the time matches were struck and lanterns brought into the scene of
+confusion, Claudius had opened the panel, leaped through and closed it.
+He did not dally in the passage, but hastened to follow the walled-in
+road as well as he might by which he had penetrated the theatrical
+region.
+
+At the dividing-line, where the path parted to the men's and to the
+ladies' dressing-rooms, he perceived a ghostly figure in the obscurity
+which also prevailed here from the general extinction of the illuminant.
+He was about shrinking back and fleeing in another direction when eyes
+blazed in the dark like a cat's, and the sweet, unmistakable voice of
+the singer, who had enthralled him, ejaculated:
+
+"As God lives, it is you!"
+
+"Suppose it is I!" he returned, impatiently. "Stand aside, or--"
+
+"You must not pass here!" she returned, laying her hands on his lifted
+arm.
+
+"Must not? We shall see about that!" and he repulsed her violently.
+
+"No, no; you are too hasty! I mean that would be a fatal course. Here,
+here!" seizing him again and dragging him with her. "You were right to
+kill that ruffian! to cane him to death--like the Russian grand-dukes,
+he was not born to die by the sword. To abduct one woman while paying
+court to another, the traitor! But, never heed that! He is punished, and
+you must be saved. Here is an outlet: pursue the passage to the end and
+leave the town!"
+
+"But I--"
+
+"How can you repay me? Bah! repay me in the other world--below, with a
+drop of cold water when I parch!" And with a dulcet yet demoniacal
+laugh, the singular creature pushed him into a lightless lobby, slammed
+a door and seemed to run away, singing the refrain of the waltz which
+was to haunt him forever-more.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+UNDER MUNICH.
+
+
+After an instant's reflection in the impenetrable shades, Claudius
+concluded to follow the advice of the variety theatre's prima donna.
+While a stranger to the City of Breweries, he knew that its
+predestination toward thirst was due to its being the site of an ancient
+rock-salt mine. In other cities, subterraneans were melodramatic; here,
+a labyrinth under the surface and at the level of the dancing and
+drinking cellars was so natural that a child of Munich, dropped into a
+well, would have no misgivings as to his worming his way up into the
+outer air.
+
+At the worst, when pressed by hunger, he could no doubt make an appeal
+to the mounted patrol by night or the foot-passengers by day, whom he
+would hear overhead, and be released from this living burial at the cost
+of the imprisonment and trial which he had temporarily evaded.
+
+Remembering that he had a box of cigar-lights, and regretting again the
+want of the cloak so useful in these damp passages, he lighted a match
+and began his flight by the sole opening that he spied. An odor of
+sausages, cheese and coarse tobacco was here and there strong, and he
+correctly divined that at these points, fugitives, probably from the
+same enemy as he fled, had recently made halts. Once assured that he was
+in a kind of thoroughfare, though one for the nefarious, he felt bolder
+and more hopeful about reaching a desirable goal.
+
+He did not pause to think, as he continued, choosing, where there was a
+bifurcation, the most trampled corridor, hewn originally by the miners'
+pick. But he had much on his mind for future elaboration. Heretofore no
+man could have lived a less eventful life, passed among books, globes,
+drawing tools and lecture notes. In a few hours the change was great.
+The quiet student, with no aspirations but the completion of his
+wandering-year in Italian picture-galleries, had become a fugitive from
+justice, and on the hands, groping in a lugubrious earthen alley, were
+the stains of a fellow-creature's blood. Then, too, the singular
+friendships he had formed, the old Jew and his daughter, who were
+awaiting him--and this still more remarkable creature who had glanced
+across his path, like the divinities from above in antique poems, to
+point out the safe retreat.
+
+But too long a time elapsed without his finding such an evidence of his
+security as he had too confidently expected. He might have mistaken the
+true line, for while at any point of divergence there were marks in the
+earth, where traces of saline flows still glistened, and even stones and
+bits of stick placed in cavities in the manner of the gypsy clues
+familiar to social outcasts, he could not interpret them; for once, his
+university education proved faulty.
+
+A new alarm arose from the presence of swarms of rats; larger and more
+hideous than their fellows of which one catches a fleeting view in
+houses and in the streets, they seemed to be less afraid of the lord of
+creation than fables teach. They scuttled off in front of him, it is
+true, but he began to think that they followed him when he went by. One
+ray of comfort came in the two beliefs that his flashing matches
+frightened them, and that, for certain portions of the way,
+well-regulated droves of the vermin had districts assigned them; those
+that ventured in chase of him too far were beaten back by those on whose
+grounds they rashly trespassed.
+
+This latter consolation was lost almost at the same time as the other:
+his stock of fuses ran out, while with the last flash he feared that he
+saw a larger mass than ever before in his track. The rats had united to
+overwhelm him.
+
+Seized with panic, spite of his philosophy, dropping the all but empty
+wax-light case in his haste, he dashed madly forward, groping to save
+his head and shoulders from contact with the capacious gallery sides,
+but unable to take a step with any certainty how it would end.
+Fortunately, he had strayed back into an often-traveled path, and while
+the scamper of the rats died away at the close of his frantic race, he
+heard a sound but little above his level revealing the presence of man.
+It was not a cheerful sound; being the tolling of a bell such as is
+swung when a dead body is entering a cemetery, is carried to the chapel
+before interment.
+
+Nevertheless, fellow beings would be near and he had only to find the
+opening by which this burial-ground could be reached. He remembered that
+the old cemetery had been immensely extended, if the guide-books were to
+be credited, and, while he had no clear idea of the direction he had
+rambled, he might have reached the town of twenty thousand dead. The
+idea was gruesome of having to call for the aid of a grave-digger, but
+he felt that he could not much longer support this journey in the
+underworld without the bodily support of food or the mental one of human
+fellowship.
+
+Silence most oppressive had followed the patter of the myriad of rats'
+feet, and it checked his efforts. They were brought to a termination
+just when he looked forward with joy to a grey light dimly indicating
+some aperture on the other side of which shone the day. The ground
+seemed to give way under him, and he was hurled senseless into the pit
+which he had not suspected.
+
+When he returned to consciousness, the bell had ceased to toll; the
+silence was once more heavy. But the pangs of hunger--remorseless master
+over the young--spurred him into rising.
+
+He was thankful that he had not been attacked in his helplessness by the
+vermin, and he muttered a prayer in his first stride toward where he
+recalled the feeble light. The rats' compact column had figured in his
+dreams, and while they were led by the fair waltz-singer and dancer in
+order to devour him, unable to resist, the benignant fairy, for once
+dark--contrary to all precedent--wore the appearance of Rebecca.
+
+He could not see the light; but a current of warm air stealing steadily
+into the underground indicated the orifice. It was a welcome draft, for
+it differed in many features from the noisome, dank and earthy
+exhalations to which he had luckily become accustomed in his indefinite
+sojourn.
+
+His surmise was correct. Through a grating of iron bars, straight at the
+side and semi-circular at the top, set in massive masonry of some
+building, in the foundation of which he crouched, he saw, in the
+vagueness of clouded starlight, the domain of the dead.
+
+On being assured of this, the panic, mastering him before, resumed its
+sway; it gave him a giant's strength to escape the fancied, grisly
+pursuers, and he moved the whole series of bars far enough away to
+enable him to crawl through the gap.
+
+He stood, exhausted, panting, glad of the relief from the waking
+nightmare which the darkness encouraged. His weakness could be accounted
+for, as his wandering had lasted long; the syncope could not be brief
+since nearly thirty hours must have transpired from his rush out of the
+variety music-hall.
+
+Before him, for at his back stood the chapel for services, stretched out
+the vast cemetery. Some of the cracked, dilapidated tombs dated back to
+1600; others marked the addition in 1788 to the original God's-acre. All
+was hushed; it was difficult to imagine a phantom where neglect seemed
+to rule. It was not in this olden part that descendants of the departed
+flocked on All Saints' Day to decorate the mausoleums with evergreens,
+plaster images and artificial immortelle garlands. Except for a
+screeching-sparrow, which his first steps dislodged, not a sign of life
+appeared in this town around which the living city slept as quietly.
+
+His eyes clearing, he believed he descried the gateway and, sure that so
+large a _campo santo_ would have a warder in hourly attendance, he made
+his way, deviating as the tombs compelled, toward the entrance. To his
+surprise, all was still there, and though a lamp burned in the little
+stone lodge, it was certainly untenanted. The gate was ajar; there was
+no fear of the tenants flitting out bodily for a night's excursion.
+
+Claudius was dying for refreshment and he was not fastidious about
+intruding. A man who has traversed the underlying catacombs need not be
+delicate about taking a nip of spirits or a hunch of bread. Both were in
+a cupboard in the little domicile, supplied with a porter's chair so
+ample as to be the watcher's bed, and a stove where a fire merrily
+burned, crackling with billets of pine wood.
+
+The disappearance was the more strange, as on a framed placard, at the
+base of which was a row of brazen knobs, there was a formal injunction
+for the gatewarder never to go away without his place being taken by
+another "from sunset to sunrise and an hour after!"
+
+Claudius knew what those knobs and the instructions portended in this
+adjunct to the charnel house. The public mortuary was at the other end
+of the wires from those bells; the custom was to attach them to the dead
+so that, if their slumbers were not that knowing no waking and they
+stirred even so little as a finger, the electric transmitter which they
+agitated would sound the appeal.
+
+And now the watcher, on whom perhaps depended the duration of a worthier
+life than his, had paltered with his trust, while drinking at the
+beer-house or chattering with a sweetheart, the bell might ring
+unheeded, and the unhappy creature, falling with the last tremor of
+vitality, to obtain a desperate succor, would become indeed the corpse
+like which he had been laid out in the morgue.
+
+Claudius smiled grimly and sadly. On what flimsy bases the best plant of
+wise men too often rest! The latest power of nature had been harnessed
+to do man service in his utmost extremity; science had perfected its
+instruments, but one link in the chain was fallible man. The bell would
+tinkle--the watcher would be laughing out of earshot--and the life would
+sink back into Lethe after swimming to the shore!
+
+The student sighed as he ate the piece of bread broken off a small loaf
+and drank from the bottle out of which the faithless turnkey hobnobbed
+with the sexton, the undertaker's men and the hearse-coachman.
+
+If the bell should ring, with him alone to hear, ought he hasten out by
+the gate providentially open, and leave for the care of heaven alone the
+unknown wretch who would have summoned his brother-Christians most
+uselessly? The resuscitated man would not be "of his parish," since he
+was a wanderer from afar. Let the natives bury their own dead!
+
+At this instant, when philosophy pointed out to the student the unbarred
+portals, the bell in the midst of the row rang clearly if not very
+loudly. It sounded in his ear like the last trump. Could he doubt that
+this appeal was to him exclusively? The removal of the custodian, his
+own miraculous escape--all pointed to this conclusion.
+
+But might he not run out and, if he saw the traitorous warder on his
+road, repeat to him the alarm? Not much time would be lost, for the gong
+still vibrated, and his personal safety ranked above his neighbor's in
+such a crisis.
+
+But Claudius' hesitation had been that of physical weakness; confronted
+in this way with the problem of fraternity, he did not waver any longer.
+On the threshold of safety, he turned straight back into the jaws of
+destruction. He had not emerged from that darkness and depth of earth,
+to descend into a lower profundity and a denser darkness of the soul.
+
+He glanced at the brazen monitor: its surface still shivered, though his
+senses were not fine enough to hear the faint sound. But there was no
+delusion; the dead in the morgue had signaled to the world on whose
+verge it was balanced.
+
+It cost the student no pang now to retrace the steps he had painfully
+counted, to reach the building, out of the cellars of which he had so
+gladly climbed. On thus facing it, he knew by a window being lighted
+that his goal was there.
+
+He had found fresh energy in his mission, rather than the scanty
+refreshment, and in three minutes was at the door. Heavy with iron
+banding the oak, it was not made for the hand of the dying to move it,
+but Claudius dragged it open with violence. He sprang inside with the
+vivacity of a bridegroom invading the nuptial chamber, although here was
+no agreeable sight.
+
+A long plain hall, of grey stone, the seams defined with black cement;
+all the windows high up, small and grated; only the one door, never
+locked. Two rows of slate beds, three of which only were occupied; two
+men and a boy, nude save a waistcloth; over their heads--sluggishly
+swayed by the air the new-comer had carelessly admitted--their clothes
+were hung like shapeless shadows. They had been dredged up in the Isar's
+mud, found at a corner, dragged from under a cartwheel. No one
+identifying them, they were deposited here; their fate? dissection for
+the benefit of science, and interment of the detached portions in the
+pauper's hell.
+
+Which had rung the bell?
+
+Claudius investigated the three: the boy had been crushed by the
+sludge-basket of the steam-dredge; not a spark of life was left there,
+his companion was green and horrible; he, too, had passed the bourne.
+
+But on the other row, alone, a robust man with disfigured face, and red
+whiskers, looked like a fresh cut alabaster statue. Cold had blanched
+him; but a faint steam arose from his armpits, in the sepulchral light
+of a green-shaded gas-jet. There heat remained to prove that the great
+furnace in the frame had not ceased to be fed.
+
+The student bent over him to feel the heart, when, as promptly, he
+sprang back. Spite of the maltreated face, he recognized his combatant
+in the duel with canes; it was Major Von Sendlingen, who had been flung
+on the slab in the public dead-house.
+
+Had Baboushka commanded his death to prevent her complicity in the
+assault on Daniels and his daughter being published, and had she
+suggested the stripping which caused the police to confound the noble
+officer with the victim of the "pickers-up" of drunkards?
+
+But the major shivered in the blast from the door left open, and a brief
+flush ran over the icy skin.
+
+If his enemy did not extend relief to him immediately, he would never
+recover strength to ring the death-bell to which ran the wires appended
+to his fingers and toes.
+
+With three or four rapid strokes and twistings, Claudius broke them. He
+looked round; this waif of the gutter had no clothes, but a torn and
+shapeless garment dangled over his head; it was the old cloak of the
+student. The pockets had been torn bodily away to save time; it was the
+mere integument of the garment.
+
+But it sufficed to retain the scanty heat lingering in the unfortunate
+man, when wrapped about him. With a surprising spell of strength,
+Claudius lifted him upon his breast when so enveloped, and crossed the
+grounds for the third time.
+
+The warder had returned but he had left the gate open to close its
+sliding grate by mechanism worked within his little house. To his amazed
+eyes, Claudius presented himself with the burden.
+
+"Help him! revive him! he is living!" he said. "I will go fetch the
+police surgeon! it is my officer--Major von Sendlingen!"
+
+After the announcement of the rank, Claudius knew that the officer would
+want for nothing. He let the body fall into the large armchair and,
+taking advantage of the warder's consternation at seeing the dead-like
+body sitting between him and the only exit, glided through the narrow
+space between the sliding rails and disappeared.
+
+The boom of an alarm bell, set swinging over the gateway by the warder,
+added wings to his feet, for he feared that police and patrol would
+hurry to the cemetery from all quarters, and he wanted, above all, to
+reach the Jew's hotel before morning.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+TWO AUGURS.
+
+
+Fortunately for the student, the night birds whom he met and to whom in
+asking information to arrive at the Persepolitan Hotel, he gave
+preference over the policemen, felt a fellow feeling for a man pallid,
+tottering, and in clothes which had suffered during his scramble through
+the exhausted mines underlaying Munich.
+
+He reached the hotel before dawn and was not sorry to find it one of
+those old-fashioned hostelries continuing traditions of the
+posting-houses, where he might not expect to be challenged because of
+his appearance. In the stable yard, between a half-awakened horse and a
+sleepy watchdog, who received the new guest with a blinking eye and
+affectionate tongue, an ostler was washing down a ramshackle chaise.
+Claudius guessed that it was prepared for his flight and his heart
+warmed at this proof of the Jew having counted on his coming, though
+belated. The shock-headed man, clattering over the rounded stones in
+wooden shoes, made to fit by the insertion of straw around his naked
+feet, no sooner heard him name Herr Daniels as the one expecting him,
+than he bade him welcome in a cordial tone which his surly face had not
+presaged.
+
+"I suppose he is asleep," he said, "but he left word that he was to be
+aroused at any hour on your coming. I am not allowed within doors in my
+stable dress," he added, "but you will have no trouble in finding the
+rooms. It is that one where the candle burns, one floor above, numbers
+11, 12 and 13--the number is unlucky for a Christian, but that does not
+matter for the likes of them!--and a lamp burns at the turn of the
+stairs. The back door is on the latch."
+
+Claudius, with the satisfaction of having anchored in the harbor,
+crossed the yard and entered the house. He was closing the door behind
+him when he heard a heavy tread at the street gate where he had come in.
+and the dog began to growl. The ostler caught it by the collar as it
+made a bound, and cried out:
+
+"Who is there?"
+
+The schutzman, who had dismounted, prudently held the door close, with
+one hand, to prevent the dog gliding through, while he showed his sword
+drawn in the other, and answered with affected joviality:
+
+"What, Karlchen, am I not known by you better than by your pagan of a
+hound? But catch me putting silly questions to my boon-companion, my
+oldest friend! It is not in here that I saw a suspicious shadow creep,
+eh?"
+
+"By my faith!" replied the groom, laughing heartily, "it may have been a
+shadow--but flesh-and-blood is what my true Ogre is waiting for! We are
+up betimes, worthy Hornitz, and we have neither had our breakfast. What
+has put you on the alert?"
+
+"A general order! There was a riot at the great music hall of the
+Freyers Brothers--plague on it! What art they have in brewing beer that
+leaves a pleasant memory! and we have orders to overhaul every
+suspicious character in the streets, while none can get out of the town.
+It appears that some monstrous criminal is at large! Oh, for the reward,
+that would buy me a little cottage on the Friedplatz road with beer
+unstinted!"
+
+"Pooh! as usual, you gentlemen of the nightwatch are badly informed,"
+grumbled the ostler, pushing the dog into a corner. "I know what it was,
+for one of the theatrical players is a lady lodger of ours. She was
+unfairly supplanted by some insignificant young upstart and, of course,
+the public, always knowing true talent from shallow pretension, broke up
+the seats and pelted the manager with it along with his imposter!"
+
+"Well, good-morning, Karlchen," said the gendarme, taking the
+correction in good part, and withdrawing his booted leg from the door.
+"I may see you when I am off duty and we will make sure that Freyers
+have better taste in brewing beer than in choosing actresses."
+
+Having heard enough to convince him that Daniels was in a house guarded
+by the faithful, Claudius proceeded up the stairs dimly visible before
+him at the end of a clean, bricked passage. His progress was more easy
+when he reached the landing, as the lamp mentioned, in a recess and
+projecting its rays in two directions, shone on the door of the suite of
+three rooms where the Jew and his daughter were lodged.
+
+Pausing before he knocked, Claudius heard the soft step of slippered
+feet. On tapping discreetly, a reserved voice ordered him to come in. It
+was Daniels who spoke; he was in a dressing-gown, with bare head, and,
+having cleared the chairs back to enable him to make the circuit of the
+table in the center of the spacious room, had apparently been walking
+round it like a caged lion. On the table were various articles heaped up
+without order and an open trunk, partly packed. He looked up in emotion
+while Claudius paused on the sill, more affected than he understood the
+reason for.
+
+"Ah, heaven be praised! it is you," said the old man with grave joy, and
+holding out his hands, paternally. "I feared for the worst--that you
+would never come. It is so serious a matter: a nobleman and an officer
+who belongs to the Secret Intelligence Department--his death is not to
+go unpunished."
+
+"At least, he is not dead," said the student; and he hastened to tell
+his story.
+
+"Speak at any tone you please," interrupted Daniels, at the stage of his
+having escaped from the music-hall by the artistes' door and of the
+help of the woman whom he did not profess to distinguish. "My daughter
+is sleeping, and a sitting-room is here between her apartment and this
+one."
+
+But, though without any fear that the noble girl would stoop to listen,
+the student related the rest with a cautious voice. Others might not be
+so delicate.
+
+"You have a great heart," said Daniels, when he heard of the rescue of
+the major from the frigid slab of the morgue. "To do this for an enemy
+is lofty conduct. God grant that you have not met one of those monsters
+of ingratitude whom a kind act embitters. But it would hardly appear
+that he could survive the beating by Baboushka's gang, the ill usage
+from the street sweepers and that of the ghouls of the dead-house. All
+this makes me tremble for the plan I formed to have you conveyed hence
+in a chaise. I have the papers to cover your departure as a clerk whom a
+business firm of good standing are sending out to Buenos Ayres. Once at
+Hamburg, you may turn your face in any direction you desire. But the
+slayer of Major Von Sendlingen would not be able to cross the French or
+Italian frontier."
+
+"For a man intending to see Italy, that would be taking me greatly out
+of the road," muttered Claudius, sinking into a chair.
+
+"Then go as far as Ulm only, where you will let the train proceed
+without you. Send for a doctor whose address I will give you and I
+answer for his helping you to get into Switzerland. After all, that will
+be better. But I see that you are weak with your exertions and want of
+proper nourishment."
+
+"It is rest I most need."
+
+"Then stretch yourself on this sofa, and let me cover you with a
+traveling-rug. When you awake, refreshments will be at hand."
+
+"But you, whom I deprive of rest?"
+
+"It is true that anxiety about you, my young friend, has prevented me
+lying down, but I am not desirous of sleep now. Do as I tell you. I will
+countermand the chaise, and return with the food. This house is not a
+famous inn, but my coreligionists, who are traveling merchants, frequent
+it, and the edibles are good. As for the honesty of the servants and of
+the host, I guarantee it. Unless you have been dogged to the door, I
+believe you are safe."
+
+Claudius said that he seemed not to have been followed. At the house, a
+patrolman had caught a glimpse of him but the ostler had jestingly
+turned him off and quieted his suspicions. Before his host had reached
+the door, where he paused to look back, the young man was nodding with
+eyes closing in spite of his will, and he was soon steeped in slumber.
+
+"The sleep on the night before execution," muttered the Jew. "This is a
+sad matter! That Baboushka is a witch of malevolence, or I am woefully
+misinformed, and the major an awkward antagonist. I would a thousand
+miles separated my daughter, and this young man, from both of them."
+
+In the lobby he saw a young girl, with her hair in curl-papers and a
+candle in her hand, descending the stairs from above.
+
+"Ah, Hedwig," he said gently, "I am not sorry you have risen so early."
+The girl blushed.
+
+"You are as rosy as a carnation. Will you please bring me up some coffee
+and light food as soon as you get the hot water? My daughter and I will
+probably start before your regular breakfast-hour."
+
+The girl seemed vexed by this news, for she bit her lip, but forcing a
+smile, she continued her journey to the kitchen. No one else seemed
+afoot in the large and rambling house, through which the Jew sent
+searching looks as he took the turn to the yard. The ostler received him
+with a grin, and the dog with friendly wags of the stub tail.
+
+"We shall not use the chaise as we purposed, Karl," said the Jew. "At
+your breakfast-time, my daughter will go out alone for an airing, with
+you or your fellow to drive. The young gentleman whom you welcomed is
+quite unfit for a journey before at least three days are over.
+Meanwhile, not an incautious word that will betray where he took
+shelter. In these three days," he added to himself, "we shall know how
+the major fares. Unfortunately, his race have iron constitutions."
+
+This was said with a sorrow rare in one of a people who seldom deplore
+the survival of a brother man.
+
+Daniels was right in his fear: the student needed repose, and only the
+most vigorous counter measures drove off an attack of fever. Rebecca was
+his nurse in the same devoted and intelligent manner as her father was
+his physician, but as he was on the margin of delirium half the time, he
+saw her like one in a vision.
+
+His antagonist, Von Sendlingen, was not so blessed. After a cursory
+treatment in the cemetery gate-keeper's lodge, he was removed, wrapped
+in blankets, to his quarters in the great barracks; the iron
+constitution, of which Daniels spoke, bore him up, and before Claudius
+was on foot again, the officer was outdoors--a little pale, but
+seemingly none the worse for his horrible adventure.
+
+He took up his own case. Fraulein von Vieradlers had already tired of
+her assay in elevating the stage in a social point of view. She had
+excited the adoration of the eccentric Marchioness de Latour-lagneau, a
+very old lady of fortune, who had the habit of conceiving singular
+fancies. This lady engaged the cantatrice as a "noble companion," and
+she hurried off with her into Italy. So the story ran, and added that
+her manager found that the Vieradlers promptly repudiated any kinship
+with her when he talked of their paying the forfeit money. He had
+thereupon endeavored to win back La Belle Stamboulane to his deserted
+stage, but she was obdurate, and the beer flowed flat in the double
+absence of stars inimitable.
+
+The major, whose body, reeking with arnica and iodine, reminded him at
+every step of the drubbing he owed to the civilian, concentrated his
+searches therefore to discover him. He was sure that he had not left the
+town by the ordinary channels, but, as time passed, and the week ended
+fruitlessly, he was inclined to believe that the fiend which befriended
+Baboushka had also shielded Claudius with his wing.
+
+He did not doubt that the old hag, believing he was lifeless, had
+hounded on her followers to steal his uniform and hurl him into the
+kennel for the most hideous of fates, which even the homeless and
+hopeless dread. But for the enemy whom he hated, he might now be a
+boxful of dissected bones in the poor man's lot instead of still
+enjoying the prospect, dear to the scion of an ancient race, of
+occupying his shelf in the family vault.
+
+Although a soldier, he had such intimate relations with the civil
+powers, that the police aided him in searches which he took care
+astutely to represent as quite non-personal. They led him to the street
+of the Persepolitan Hotel, where, before he entered, he was scrutinizing
+the vicinity when he spied the well-known form of the old beggar-chief.
+Their surprise was alike.
+
+"Traitress!" he said, with a red spot blazing on his pale cheeks, as he
+played with the swordknot on his new sword as if he wanted to loose it
+and flog her. "After receiving my gold, to bring me to death's door!
+What have you to say to stay me from handing you to the town's officers
+to be whipped out of it at the cart's-tail?"
+
+To his surprise again, she met his glance firmly, and her eyes seemed as
+irate as his own.
+
+"You are mistaken," she replied, carelessly, as if the matter were of no
+consequence. "How can you expect those stalwart bullies to obey an old
+woman like me? They would have beaten me to a jelly if I had tried to
+shield you. Besides, my officer, I thought you had not a spark of life
+left in you after that beating."
+
+"He shall pay for it--with the sword if worthy--with the stick if a
+plebeian."
+
+"You need not believe he will ever meet you with the sword," said the
+hag, glad to have the dialogue turn on another head than her own in
+spite of her unconcern. "I am going to tell you all about one whom I
+hated by instinct and whom I find to be a hereditary enemy."
+
+"What do you mean? He is but a boy and cannot have wronged you or
+yours."
+
+"His father, major, murdered my loveliest daughter and interrupted her
+career of splendor! Alas! one that had a palace where kings were
+received and to whom princes often sued in vain!"
+
+"Halloa! you, to have a daughter of that calibre!" and he laughed
+coarsely.
+
+"You, who know everything, my officer, must at least have heard of the
+peerless Iza, the original of the most beautiful statue
+which--reproduced in the precious and the mean metals, in clay, in
+parian, in plaster--made the round of the civilized world? 'The Bather!'
+That was my daughter! She had her faults--even the truly lovely have
+mental flaws, though bodily they are perfect--but whilst she lived, her
+poor old mother dressed in silks and velvets--not in rags; she ate and
+drank delicately, not sour crusts and sourer wine; she slept on down and
+not in a cellar!"
+
+Von Sendlingen shook his head; he was of the new generation and he
+preserved but a dim remembrance of the noted beauties--the stars of the
+living galaxy decorating the first cycle of the Bonapartist Restoration.
+
+"I foresaw it all and I warned her; but she was so perverse! It is my
+duty to avenge her, and to see that the same blunder is not made by--no
+matter! Enough that my science--at which you smile, I see--points out to
+me that your greatest enemies and mine are in that house." She gestured
+toward the hotel, which the major had been studying.
+
+"Do you say enemies in the plural?" he said, ceasing to curl his lip in
+mocking of the witch.
+
+"In that house are the Jewish couple, father and daughter, who played at
+the Harmonista, La Belle Stamboulane and the Turkophonist Daniel, and
+the young man who belabored your excellency so that he almost died of
+the drubbing."
+
+"Hang you for being so profuse in your explanations! How do you know all
+this?"
+
+"The servant-maid is a customer of mine. I tell her fortune and she
+tells me all that goes on in her master's house. The young man has been
+cared for there these five or six days, and they only await the chance
+to smuggle him out of the city. Have him seized and secure him in
+prison, where he shall rot--for I declare to you, as surely as there are
+stars above, these letters of the divine volume in which soothsayers
+read, he will be your death in the end unless you are his."
+
+"I would not be contented with that. I want to return him blow for
+blow--and yet you say I cannot fight him in duello."
+
+"Listen, my officer. He has been brought up in ignorance of his name and
+origin, in my country Poland. He is French by birth, and his name is
+Felix Clemenceau. It was his father, a celebrated sculptor, who married
+my daughter Iza, after decoying her to Paris from her mother's side, and
+he murdered her on some frivolous pretext when they were living
+separated and he, heaven knows, had no farther claim upon her--his
+existence was pure indifference to her. I answer for it! They tried his
+father for the atrocity. Even a French jury could not find extenuating
+circumstances for that kind of cold-blooded assassin who slays in the
+small hours the wife of his bosom--after having cast her off and driven
+her to evil ways, poor, spotless angel! They brought him in guilty of a
+foul murder and he was guillotined--gentleman and artist of merit though
+he was. They were kind to his young son; his friends made up a purse and
+sent him afar to be educated and reared in ignorance. But the shadow of
+the guillotine is projected afar, and I saw its red finger point to the
+assassin's offspring. I have found him. If my hand is not too feeble to
+strike, it may anticipate yours."
+
+"I cannot measure swords with a felon's son!" muttered Von Sendlingen.
+"But I shall not cease aching in the heart until he is in the shameful
+grave he imprudently snatched me from."
+
+"You are a man after my own liking," said the hag, chuckling. "I can
+foresee that you will go far and perish in a blaze of glory! Listen!
+There are troublous times when an unscrupulous and ambitious soldier may
+make his mark and carve a good slice out of the great, rich cake called
+Europe. Aid me, and I will aid you. Yes, Herr Major, it is one potentate
+speaking with another," the singular woman went on with sinister pride,
+and trying to draw her shrunken form into straightness; "I rule an army
+of my own, camped by cohorts in the capitals of Europe--dating farther
+back than your own, and, perhaps, as formidable. It is we who spy out
+the weak spots in great cities. The next time, we shall swarm into the
+doomed city in a mass and we shall devour its wealth and luxuries until
+we are gorged. But for the day, it will be glut enough for me to have
+the life's blood of this man. You cannot honor him with single combat,
+it appears. Then, let me propose another mode to finish him."
+
+The major was silent. Standing high in the ranks of the police, he was
+not sure how closely he might ally himself with this avowed leader of
+the evil-doers, who announced the pillage of a metropolis. She took his
+silence for consent or approval, for she jauntily continued:
+
+"The house-maid has told me all they are hatching. They have a chaise
+always ready and passports to mask the departure of the young man as a
+clerk going abroad. But for precaution, they will not have him go to the
+train at the depot; he might be questioned and the discrepancies in the
+passport be perceived. The chaise is to convey him down the line, and he
+will get on the cars at a rural depot where the gendarme and
+ticket-seller will be dull and easily hoodwinked."
+
+"Very neat," said Von Sendlingen, appreciating the plan at its due
+value. "I always said old Daniels was no fool."
+
+"What more easy than to post a couple of the horse patrol on the
+road--young, hot-headed fellows with restless fingers on the triggers?
+The youth will certainly refuse to surrender, whereupon, bang, bang! he
+falls into the ditch with a brace of bullets in his body. You and I will
+have an enemy the less. This is not the way I planned it in my dreams,
+but we must take our revenge with the sauce fate serves it up to us 'on
+the table of Fact.'"
+
+"The scheme is plausible."
+
+"Feasible! especially will it work like well-oiled machinery if you play
+your part of lure creditably."
+
+"My part?" questioned the major.
+
+"Yes, yours. With a sorrowful eye and a smooth face, I confess I could
+not confront the man I hate as strongly as his father. You are
+different--you are an arch-villain--a born diplomatist who wears the
+very mask for this task and has no face, no compunction, no pity of his
+own. Go into that house, ask for Herr Daniels--that is the Jew player's
+non-professional name--and see him and his daughter, perhaps, the young
+student, too. Boldly proclaim your position as the Secret Intelligence
+Agent, by which you learned their whereabouts, and that they harbor the
+charitable young man who saved your life. Touch lightly on his thumping
+you within an inch of it, and enlarge on your undying gratitude.
+Apologize to the young lady--lay all blame on her irresistible charms
+and abuse a little the fair and fickle Fraulein von Vieradlers who has
+eloped without so much as an adieu to you! Depend upon it, Jews though
+they are, they will applaud your Christian forgiveness, and, I do not
+doubt, Frenchman though he is, young Clemenceau will give you his hand.
+Dilate not at all, but urge him to leave the town without delay. From
+the maid I will get to know the hour of the chaise's starting and the
+route so that you can plant your men. I grant that this has the air of a
+highwayman's attack, but, after all, the uniform covers a host of civil
+sins, and, really, I do not see a better way to have done with the
+youth. It will never do to have him strut about Paris boasting that he
+snatched the sword away from an officer and drubbed him with a cane into
+the bargain."
+
+Sullen fire burned in the hearer's eyes. He stamped his foot, suppressed
+an oath, and when he looked up, had a serene countenance.
+
+"You have said enough. A willing steed does not need the spur. I will
+lay the train and prepare the match. Let each look to himself lest he
+suffer by the explosion."
+
+Successful though the old woman had been in her arrangement to convert
+an offended employer into a vigorous ally, she shuddered as if he were,
+in these ominous words, as good a soothsayer as he pretended to be.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+ONE GOOD TURN DESERVES--A BAD ONE.
+
+
+Probably no more terrifying a figure could have presented itself at the
+Persepolitan Hotel than the major of cavalry, and he looked the type of
+his class, insolent with aristocratic hauteur, martial to the point of
+arrogance, and domineering and as blustering toward inferiors as he
+would have been bland and meek to his superiors. The landlord, one of
+the hybrid Levantines in whose blood that of a dozen races flowed, was
+as alarmed as the maid, whom he sent up the stairs to announce the
+visitor to Herr Daniels. Strange to say, the officer, who had taken a
+seat in the sitting-room, unasked, with his heavy sabre held upright
+between his knees, bore the somewhat lengthy delay with patience. The
+girl returned to say that Herr Daniels would be honored with the visit,
+although, he had said, he had not a pleasant remembrance of the
+gentleman. In fact, before his assault in the street upon La Belle
+Stamboulane, the major had persecuted her and deserved the reproof from
+her father which it was too dangerous, as Munich society was ruled, for
+him to utter.
+
+But, contrary to all precedent, the military Lovelace quietly walked
+into the room where Claudius was restored to health and whence he had
+been removed to the inmost chamber vacated by the young singer. The
+major's accident might account for his meekness, but his manners and
+voice accorded with his speech so that one attributed the change to an
+altogether different cause than a purely physical one.
+
+He approached the Jew with open countenance, wearing a chastened and
+subdued expression, and extended his hand as to a brother officer.
+Daniels accepted it, struck by the unexpected mien, although he could
+not, in his astonishment and inveterate prudence, return the pressure.
+The major spoke an apology for his outrageous conduct, in a faltering
+voice and with moist eyes, spacing the apparently unstudied phrases with
+a cough as if to master tearfulness unbecoming even an invalid soldier.
+He laid the blame on the surpassing charms of the songstress who had
+enflamed him beyond his self-control and, partly, on the infernal French
+wine in which he had imprudently over-indulged at the evening's garrison
+officer's dinner. Had he but patriotically stuck to the beer! But that
+was not worth lamenting now. He tendered his regrets to the father of
+the young lady and promised to use his poor influence--here he smiled at
+the disparagement as if he knew his power and that his hearer was sure
+of it--for her professional advancement as long as she rejoiced Munich
+with her beauty and accomplishments.
+
+The night in the dead-house, on the very brink of the deathpit, had
+transformed him, he freely acknowledged. He hardly recognized his own
+voice in communicating the sentiments that carried him into new
+directions, so strange was it all, but he was eager to show by deeds
+that his conversion was great and sincere. He had engaged his protection
+for the distinguished turkophone-player and his unparalleled daughter,
+but he felt that was enough.
+
+"Ample," said Daniels, at last able to speak a word on the torrent of
+glib language momentarily pausing; "but we are going away to fulfill an
+engagement in Paris."
+
+"One moment," said the major, politely lifting his hand from which he
+kept the buckskin gauntlet as if he meant again to shake hands with the
+Ishmael at their farewell. "Perhaps I cannot, then, be of service to
+you, but there is another to whom my assistance is of other value--nay,
+of the highest consequence. I am not referring to the young lady--whom
+Munich will be so sorry to part with and whom I do not expect to see
+again even to accept my excuses--but the student from the Polish
+University who deservedly corrected me and brought me to my sober
+senses--although, perhaps, he had a heavy hand." He spoke with an
+assumption of manly regret, which enchanted the hearer and completed his
+revocation of the bad opinion of the rough suitor of his daughter. Still
+the Jew had not laid aside all his habitual caution and he did not by
+word or movement betray that he had an acquaintance with his champion.
+
+"I see that I must drop all flourishes and speak unfettered," went on
+the major, bluntly. "In two words, our brawl has got to the ears of the
+provost-marshal as well as those of the town guardians, and the search
+is going to be thorough for that young gentleman. I know it is absurd,
+and I protested against it, but the idea has penetrated their wooden
+heads that he is one of those tramp-students who are permeating the
+masses--worse, the dangerous classes--with seditious ideas, and they
+think he and Baboushka's gang too long lording it in the poor quarter,
+are hand and glove. In fact, in a day or two--perhaps now--the forces
+will be a-foot in uniform and in disguise to make a keen and searching
+inspection of the dwellings suspected of harboring the liberal-minded;
+and God knows that you have, Herr Daniels, chosen a veritable hot-bed!
+Two months ago, we arrested a Nihilist with a portmanteau full of glass
+bombs, luckily uncharged, in the attic upstairs; not three weeks since,
+two Hungarian malcontents were stopped at the door--but why enter into
+these details, fitter for the police than a soldier to relate? You, of
+course, were not told of these blots on this hotel's fame or you would
+have selected it as the last roof to shelter your talented daughter. It
+is one thing to cross swords--I mean staves--with a man, and another to
+guide the watchmen to clap their coarse paws on his shoulder. I have
+made honorable amends, I hope, to the lady and yourself, for my
+rudeness; as for the gallant fellow, I bear him no ill will--on the
+contrary! since I could wish to meet with him again, and tell him that
+the Great Prison of Munich is not badly constructed and promises little
+chance of an escape. I beg you to convey the warning to him that he must
+lose not one instant if he can escape beyond the walls."
+
+Still Daniels believed it prudent, if not polite, to make no
+compromising admission. But the speaker was not offended. He smiled
+wisely, not without good humor, and offered his hand so frankly that the
+Jew again took it and this time slightly returned the generous pressure.
+
+But on the way to the door, he was stopped by the entrance of Rebecca.
+Although she was clad in the plain garments affected by the Jewess in
+ordinary days, and they were in the most striking contrast with the
+stage flippery in which the officer had previously seen her, her
+loveliness was as manifest as the stars when even a fleecy cloud veils
+them on an autumnal eve. In her anxiety as regarded her father--or,
+perhaps, the student, who can tell?--she must have stooped to listening
+to some portion of the singular and one-sided dialogue. For she said,
+without any prelude:
+
+"Herr Officer, you have acted a noble part and it would be a grief if I
+had not taken the occasion to accept your apology and thank you for the
+warning which may save the life of one who--believe me--is no longer
+your foe, if he had been one. I am not able to judge the greatness and
+loftiness of your act from your people's point of view, but I shall no
+longer have a mean opinion of the creed which can perform such a
+conversion as yours--that is, making you a true gentleman instead of
+leading one to believe you a heartless libertine."
+
+She held out her hand and he took it so reverently, without haste and
+with tenderness, and kissed it so respectfully that her last doubt
+vanished--although she scarcely had the ghost of one.
+
+He had triumphed completely, and he retired with an airy step and a
+heart replete with gratification.
+
+"If he is dragged into the prison and locked up to rot in the dungeon,
+they will blame me the last of all," he muttered. "Heavens, how
+supernally beautiful she is! There are times when I think that if she
+and her rival occupied the scales of the balance, a butterfly's wing
+would turn them. My heart would be divided in their mutual favor."
+
+With the same aerial step, he passed two or three men in threadbare
+suits and shabby hats, who were hovering about the Persepolitan, and who
+carefully exchanged glances of understanding with him. He went straight
+to the superintendent-inspector of police, and sat down in his cabinet
+to concert with him on the best way to suppress, without scandal, the
+dangerous emissary from ever-restless Poland, lodged in consultation
+with the Jew, the bugbear of the monarchies of Europe.
+
+"Tut, tut! tell not the official that Daniels and his daughter, for the
+paltry lucre of the drink-halls or for artistic satisfaction, made the
+tour of the capitals!"
+
+In the meantime, the "suspects," not themselves suspicious, commenced,
+with Rebecca a listener, upon the move counseled by the chivalrous
+major. It was one they had almost settled upon and they determined to
+put it all the sooner into execution. The post chaise was kept in a
+state of readiness, alike with the horse that drew it on these important
+occasions, a surefooted nag whose pace was better than her appearance.
+Claudius, to be sure, rested under the disadvantage of being a stranger
+to the roads, as he had traveled only upon one to enter this
+city--commonly accounted dull, but so far crammed with serious
+adventures. This blank in his topographical lore was easily filled: the
+bright-eyed Hedwig was to meet him at the first corner, mount into the
+vehicle of which the capacious hood of enameled cloth would hide her,
+and there pilot him in steering to the Sendling _Thur_ or gate. Once in
+the open country, the road was plainer--in fact, he could be guided
+by the locomotive's smoke and whistle till he reached the little
+station. Even twenty miles out, the Persepolitan's landlord had
+acquaintances--perhaps they were brothers in some occult league--and the
+vehicle could be left without misgivings at any of the inns which he
+named.
+
+There was nothing in this plan, so simple as to promise success, to
+trouble the brain, but, all the same, Claudius had a sleepless night,
+though he retired early to be prepared for the probably eventful
+morrow.
+
+He wished to think only of Rebecca, who had added sound hints to her
+father's and the host's experienced advice; but, do what he could, it
+was another's image that haunted him. It was the winning one of the
+aristocratic singer. Again he beheld her matchless shape, her caressing
+and enthralling eyes, her supple undulations in the waltz and her
+shimmering golden curls. And whatever the sounds in the street, where
+there seemed more footfalls than before that evening, all though actual,
+were overpowered and formed the burden to the ghostly but delightful
+strains from that silvery voice. He was not only at the age to be
+impressionable, but he had not known one of those college amorettes
+which may be as innocent as a page of a scientific text-book. No woman
+even in the poetry had caused him to vibrate in the untouched
+heart-chords like this unexpected star in the firmament of beer fumes
+and tobacco smoke! But it was not joyous to muse upon this vision for he
+had no doubt that she marked a new starting-point in his life.
+
+Did he love her, or Rebecca? They had appeared to him so closely
+together that he was confused. He viewed them as a double-star, without
+yet having the coolness to separate them. He was a man to love once
+only, and there is but one love. There are different phases of it as
+there are different lodgers in the same house; they do not know each
+other, but they come in and go forth by the same staircase-way.
+
+Of this he was instinctively certain that if he loved Kaiserina, she
+would guide him in altogether another direction than he had looked and
+whither his proud and admiring professors had pointed. Enormous wealth
+in our days is to the monopolist, immense fame to the specialist. To
+rise above contestants, one must be patient, resigned, long toiling and
+abhorrent of the social ties which fetter one when most of the time is
+demanded to solve a problem, and pester one to recite the two or three
+letters he has learnt when he ought to study till he masters the entire
+alphabet. A man must immolate himself.
+
+Oh, he had been so happy at whiles with the thought, accounted
+providential, that he stood alone, with no one to distract him, to
+impose burdens on him and to claim a right to make inroads on his
+precious hours. He loved the loneliness in which he sank when he stepped
+out of the lecture-room and the amphitheatre. He had not felt the need,
+which others confessed, of some one with whom to share griefs, debate
+enigmas and communicate projects. Since he saw Rebecca, he had, indeed,
+had an almost momentary glimpse of a home where a dashing woman, moving
+silently and airily, guarded his meditations from the external plagues.
+Such a woman was created to comfort, cheer and encourage if he flagged.
+But the love she inspired was ideal, perceived hazily during the hours
+when he was out of health, and divined rather than watched her tender
+ministrations.
+
+The courtships are long when love is based on respect. She gave repose
+to the soul, not excitement to the spirit. He saw that she admired him
+for his courage in daring so much--more than he had fully realized--for
+the despised and trampled-upon, and she pitied one before whom yawned
+the dreadful prison which rarely lets out the political prisoner with
+enough life in his wrecked frame to be worth living out. But he did not
+see that she was truth and that he should follow her. As the sailors
+drive the ship toward the false beacon, near them and garish and
+flaring, so he thought the erratic orb brighter than the serene fixed
+star.
+
+He felt ungrateful. This sneaking out of the town was ridiculous after
+the heroic introduction to La Belle Stamboulane. He examined a pair of
+pistols which the host had generously presented him with, when, after
+the restless night, he rose with the dawn, and he determined to use them
+if assailed. It is the inoffensive, quiet man who works most mischief
+when roused--nothing so terrible even to the wolves as the sheep gone
+mad. The student, having dipped his hand in blood, was now eager to be
+attacked on the highway by a company of unrepentant Von Sendlingens.
+
+This was no mood, however, in which to start on a journey of possible
+peril. Rebecca did not appear at the breakfast table. She, too, had
+passed a wakeful night, but it was in prayer for the safety of the first
+real friend she had so far met among the Gentiles. The host looked in at
+the conclusion of the meal. Nothing could wear a fairer aspect. Even the
+hovering figures which he, for good reason, set down as spies, had
+become tired of their useless quest, and disappeared with the fog that
+floated amid the smoke of the numerous brewery chimneys.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+
+A SECOND DEFEAT.
+
+
+The sun was well up, showing a jolly red face, which indicated that he
+had been passing the night in the tropics, when Claudius, having said
+his farewell within the hospitable house where his bill had been
+obstinately withheld from him, took the reins in the chaise. The
+grinning ostler held the unbarred door of the yard ready to open it
+quickly and slam it behind him. At least, he had not the host's delicacy
+and he had accepted his gratuity.
+
+"Good speed, master!" he had hastily cried out as the equipage rolled
+out into the street.
+
+It was deserted. The horse and vehicle aroused no curiosity where odder
+animals and more curiously antiquated rattletraps were also out. He
+traversed the town as unimpeded as a Czar environed by secret guards.
+The officer at the gate, yawning behind the passport which he did not
+trouble to read, wished him a good dinner at the rural friend's, where
+it was hinted he would put up, and returned into the guardroom to resume
+telling a dream which he wished interpreted. Since Joseph, these
+functionaries at the gate and in prison seem to be tormented with
+puzzling visions.
+
+All had gone well but for one serious omission: Hedwig had not appeared
+to be taken up; yet he had not mistaken the streets laid down in the
+itinerary. But once outside the walls, he was forced to go slowly and
+foresaw the moment when he must stop. It was hazardous to inquire, for,
+while he was dressed, by the hotel-keeper's provision, like a citizen of
+Munich, he had not the speech of the residents.
+
+In his quandary he was greatly relieved when the horse pricked up his
+ears and gave a whinny in a kind of recognition. Claudius glanced to the
+roadside gladly and hopefully, as a young, feminine figure stepped out
+from the cover of a post painted in stripes to indicate parish, township
+and other boundary marks. But although the short frock, coarse woolen
+stockings, cap and velvet bodice were Hedwig's Sunday clothes, sure
+enough, in which the student had once seen the pretty maid, this girl
+was no rustic slightly polished by the hotel experience.
+
+He felt his heart melt like wax in a cast when the bronze rushes within
+the clay--it was Kaiserina von Vieradlers!
+
+A strange feeling nearly mastered him! Instinct bade him run and,
+whipping the horse, flee at the top of speed anywhere beyond the charm
+of this unexpected apparition. And yet she came forward so brightly, and
+so frankly, and her first words were so reassuring that he was ashamed
+of the impulse which--he was yet to know--had all the worth of heavenly
+inspired suggestions.
+
+"Herr Student!" she said sweetly, "it is fated that I shall be of
+service to you. Do not go farther in this course. They lie in wait for
+you. Luckily, I know of a cross-country lane--if you will only let me
+accompany you to set you right, and help me to roll some stones and logs
+from the mouth. It saves time, and you will baffle your foes. Oh, I know
+all. The faithful Hedwig, whose clothes I have borrowed, is a daughter
+of a tenant on my father's estate. She means well, but she has no brains
+for these steps out of her even tenor, and she was glad to have me
+replace her in her mission. Help me up!"
+
+There was no denying her anything. The horse had appeared to greet her
+with pleasure, though it was probably the clothes of Hedwig that he
+recognized with the whinny after a sonorous sniff.
+
+As she held out her hand, he offered his and, like a fawn clearing a
+hedge, she bounded up, just touched with a winged foot the iron step,
+and cleared the seat with a second leap. Crouching down within the
+hood, she began merrily but spoke with gravity before she had finished:
+
+"Drive on after turning."
+
+He turned the horse and vehicle. At the same moment a shrill whistle
+sounded in the opposite direction.
+
+"That's the gendarmes," she said. "The watchman's horn in the old town;
+the military whistle without. They are keeping good guard for you--but
+we shall cheat them, I tell you again!"
+
+She laughed that purely feminine laugh at the prospect of somebody being
+deceived.
+
+"Take the northern fork, although you would seem to be going very
+different to your aim. At the lane I spoke of, stop--but I shall be at
+your elbow to prompt you."
+
+The drive was resumed in this singular way; there was something piquant
+in not seeing his companion, her presence manifested only by her sweet
+breath, the slight rustling of the glazed cloth which afforded her such
+scanty room, and the prattle which flowed from her lips.
+
+She was happy to serve him again; she had liked him from the first sight
+in the hall; they did not seem to be strangers; he was like she knew not
+whom, but she could swear the resemblance was perfect! She had been read
+such a lecture by her manager and the police sub-chief, but, pooh! what
+were such men but the knob on a post--the post remained and the knob was
+unscrewed for another to be put on every now and then. They had
+threatened but she was not a strolling player who feared the lock-up and
+the House of Correction. They would think twice before they sent a
+child of the Vieradlers into the Home of the Unrepentant Magdalens! and
+all this intermixed with snatches of song and flashes of original wit at
+the expense of the police and soldiers and the citizens.
+
+And the flight into Italy with the Marchioness famous for protégés as
+other old ladies for keeping cats or parrots? It was true she had made
+her an offer and she had connived at the police being made to think she
+had accompanied the eccentric dame. But she had remained in Munich to
+help the man who was endeared to her.
+
+Not a word about Baboushka and a fear to break the spell kept Claudius
+quiet on that point.
+
+Eight minutes passed like one, when--"Stop!" she exclaimed, and was out
+beside him without a helping hand and upon the dusty road.
+
+The walls had a gap here, roughly choked up by a higgledy-piggledy heap
+of rubbish. Fraulein von Vieradlers had attacked it before her
+astonished companion, also alighting, came to her aid. There was
+witchery in the creature, for her delicate, ungloved hands, covered with
+rings, tugged at the roughly hewn tree-trunks and misshapen blocks of
+stone without a scratch and, as her frame offered no suggestion of
+strength, the swiftness with which they were moved, confirmed the idea
+of the supernatural. As soon as he recovered from his amazement, he
+aided her energetically, and in an incredibly short space the two
+cleared a passage for the horse to scramble over and the wheels to be
+lifted clean across. Without pausing, they replaced the beams and
+boulders, and made good the breach.
+
+"Excellent!" ejaculated the vocalist, contemplating the work. "But I am
+wrong to delay. We are not out of the vale of tribulation. Help me in
+and tan the horse's hide well! We must, without farther delay, reach the
+farmhouse whose red-tiled roof gleams under the lindens. Help me in, and
+lay on the whip!"
+
+This drive, at redoubled speed, despite its being in broad daylight, had
+to the student the fascination of the gallop of the returned dead lover
+and Lenore in the ballad. Though never cruel before, he now spared the
+horse not a stroke or impatient shout, however imprudent the latter was.
+On the rutty, ill-kept lane the wheels bounded unevenly and the driver
+had hard work to keep his seat; but the girl, by a miracle of balancing,
+held her half-crouching, half-standing position in the _calash_, and
+only now and then, flung forward by a jolt, rested her hands on
+Claudius' shoulders. At this contact--at the sight of those roseate,
+dimpled hands--he was electrified and in the headlong rush he pictured
+himself as Phaeton, careering behind the glancing tails of the steeds of
+the solar chariot.
+
+Such a pace overtasked the poor mare. At any moment now her sudden
+collapse after a stumble might be expected. On the other hand, the
+farm-house, winning-post of the race, loomed up clearly, and, luckily,
+the road improved a little by becoming harder and descending gradually.
+On one side rose a willow coppice, in the trailing branches of which a
+musically rippling brook was running; on the other, the ruins of a barn,
+which a flood had demolished.
+
+On the knoll beyond, the haven stood, and Kaiserina smiled as she leaned
+her head forward so that her cheek was next his.
+
+Again she had saved him!
+
+No; not yet!
+
+From both sides of the road at the hollow, three horsemen came solemnly
+forth, two from the right, one from the ruins.
+
+The girl turned pale and shrank back. Claudius flung down the broken
+whip, and, taking the reins in his teeth, held a pistol in each hand. He
+had recognized in the most prominent rider Major von Sendlingen, and in
+an instant he comprehended that this was a trap and that his chivalric,
+Christian conduct was the most base of impudent tricks.
+
+Was Kaiserina also a betrayer? He did not believe that.
+
+Each horseman had a pistol as well as a sword drawn, and, besides, the
+two inferiors were armed with carbines. This had the air of an
+assassination, and, infuriated by the treachery, Claudius resolved to
+begin the attack. It mattered little whether Fraulein von Vieradlers was
+in the conspiracy or not. Once she had saved his life, and he was bound
+not to molest her now, so long as she remained neutral. She had cowered
+down, from fear or because her guilt oppressed her. Perhaps his contempt
+would punish her sufficiently.
+
+The old mare bore the unusual exertion bravely and charged down the
+incline against the odds like a war-stallion.
+
+"Take him alive!" shouted the major, beating down the pistols with his
+sword flat, as a second thought changed his first intention.
+
+He had spied the young singer in the shadow of the hood, and he had no
+wish to injure her.
+
+"That's not as you decide!" retorted Claudius, and he fired both shots
+at the same time.
+
+But he had not allowed for the steep descent. One bullet stung the
+major in the thigh, the other so cruelly lacerated the horse of the
+gendarme on his right that it screamed, reared and fell sidewise with a
+crash into the brook. The man, although encumbered by his heavy boots,
+contrived to disengage himself and stood up, furious at being unhorsed.
+
+At the same moment, out of the reeds, much as though the disappeared
+horse had suffered a transformation, an old woman leaped up into the
+lane. Her grey hair was disheveled and her pelisse was shredded by the
+brambles. She ran to place herself before the horse in the chaise and
+the gendarmes, and screamed, with her eyes fastened on the girl in the
+vehicle:
+
+"Hold! do not shoot! God is not willing!" But the major alone obeyed the
+injunction; the others, in the saddle and dismounted, were wild with
+rage and pain. Their two firearms rang out as one, and the old woman had
+only time to cover the mark by drawing herself to her full height, with
+an effort unknown for thirty years. Both bullets entered her chest, for
+she fell under the horse's feet, as it stumbled and went down beside
+her.
+
+As the vehicle abruptly came to a stop, quivering in every portion,
+Claudius clung to the frame of the hood to save himself from being cast
+out. The girl was hurled against him, but she did not think of herself.
+She thrust into his hand a revolver and whispered rapidly:
+
+"Quick! they are going to fire again!"
+
+It was true; excepting, this time, the gendarmes had recourse to their
+carbines, the dismounted one having picked his up from the briars, and
+found the cap secure. At that short range, the student would be a dead
+man if he awaited the double discharge.
+
+Heated with the action, inhaling the acrid smell of gunpowder, the
+demon possessed him which at such moments hisses: "Kill, kill, kill!"
+into a man's ear. The angelic demon there had supplied him with the
+weapon, and he fired three shots as rapidly as the mechanism would work.
+
+The dismounted gendarme had come out on an unlucky day; a bullet in his
+neck laid him lifeless in the rushes beside the strangled horse; his
+comrade, pierced so that he bled internally, drew off to the roadside
+mechanically--the image of despair; nothing more heartrending than the
+anguish on his convulsed visage and the increasingly hopeless
+expression.
+
+Here was a double tragedy, but it was the major who, under the eyes of
+Fraulein von Vieradlers, was to furnish the comedy of the incident. His
+horse took the bit in its teeth and ran away with him along the bank of
+the brook, threatening at any moment to lose footing and roll the two in
+the water.
+
+"Victory!" said the girl, with a joy-flushed cheek, alighting and
+displaying no more compassion for the soldiers slain in doing their duty
+than for the chaise horse--or the old woman beside its heaving carcass.
+
+"She is dead," remarked Claudius. "But what did she say? She spoke in
+Polish--I understand it--I caught the words, but they were not
+intelligible."
+
+"Were they not?" continued the girl, not displeased.
+
+"She said, 'my child!'"
+
+"Very well! I am her grandchild. That was not all, though--she
+affectionately recommended you to me, as my cousin."
+
+"Cousin? your cousin?" repeated Claudius, without contradicting the
+speaker on his impression that Baboushka's face had not worn a soft
+expression, in his eyes.
+
+"It would appear that you do not know yourself as Felix Clemenceau?"
+
+"Clemenceau?" echoed the student, remembering what he had heard in the
+music-hall.
+
+"Yes; your father was the famous sculptor."
+
+Was his predilection for art a hereditary trait? the son of a celebrity?
+then his essays in design were unworthy of his name. Abashed, inclined
+to despair, having a glimpse of a tumultuous rabble shouting: "At last
+he is here!" before the ruddy guillotine on a raw morning, a pale, prim
+man between the executioner's aids, the young Clemenceau listened to the
+girl, who probably resembled the Lovely Iza, but looked at the dead
+woman at their feet.
+
+"Yes, we are cousins! that is why I took a fancy to you at the sight. I
+knew this time I loved for a good reason. The band of nature--the bond
+of blood--connected us! But this is not the place or time to pluck
+leaves, and compare them, from our genealogical tree. The major has
+succeeded in reining in his horse, but, who cares? the old farmhouse
+stood a siege in the Great Napoleon's time and could mock at him now.
+Leave all--all these cooling pieces of carrion, and my dear grandma!"
+she sneered, "and let us hasten to the house where I have friends."
+
+Like a man in a dream, Claudius, or, better, Felix Clemenceau, since
+this was his true title, holding the half-emptied revolver by his side,
+automatically allowed the strange creature to lead him from the
+battlefield. He was oppressed by the magnitude of the ruin he left
+behind: the peaceful student to whom the pencil and the eraser were
+alone familiar had handled firearms like "the professor" in a shooting
+gallery. And then the assertion--or revelation--that he was of kin not
+only to the old witch, who had perished in shielding him unintentionally
+in saving her grandchild, but to the latter. Fair as a sylph but
+icy-hearted as a woman of five social seasons! But the son of the
+guillotined wife-murderer should not be fastidious about those relatives
+who deigned to recognize him.
+
+The farmhouse was a large stone and brick structure, moss-grown but firm
+as a castle; at its porch, three men had tranquilly awaited the result
+of the conflict; most of the episodes had been observed by them. Two
+were comfortably clothed like farmer and overseer, and showed a
+respectful bearing to the third. This was a man of about thirty years,
+but looking younger, tall, slender, elegant and proud. Not yet calm,
+Clemenceau vaguely recalled the refined, winning, though dissipated
+visage; this was the gentleman in the Harmonista who had enlightened him
+unawares on the antecedents of Fraulein von Vieradlers. He did not
+notice her companion but his stiffness disappeared as he bowed to her.
+Without asking for any explanation on the affray, he said to her:
+
+"Can he--your companion--ride? The horses are under saddle. If not--"
+
+Clemenceau replied in the affirmative to Fraulein von Vieradlers,
+instead of to the gentleman. He conceived an aversion to him on the
+spot, although his intention to include him in the pre-arranged flight
+was manifest. But he was the victim of circumstances and for the present
+he had to yield. Besides, the prospect held out was for him to continue
+beside the dazzling beauty, whose influence seemed more wide than her
+deceased ancestress.
+
+Like many bookworms, he had entertained a humiliating opinion of the
+sex that makes the world move round; he was beginning to doubt, and he
+would retract it before long.
+
+Kaiserina related the events briefly, while one of the farmers brought
+two magnificent saddle-horses round to the long, high side of the house,
+facing the northwest. Clemenceau mechanically mounted the bay, and the
+gentleman assisted the lady upon the black. Both animals were impatient
+to be gone, and when given the head, started off madly. This exciting
+pace roused the student from his lethargy, and when the steeds had
+settled down to a less frenzied gait, he asked what was his guide's
+intention.
+
+"It is plain. You must be put across the border into France."
+
+"France!" it seemed to him, since the revelation of his birth in that
+country, that the name had a charm unknown heretofore. Yes, he ought to
+make a pilgrimage into that sunny land where his father had been a gem
+in its artistic crown.
+
+"It is your native country and you will be safer there than in Italy or
+Austria. Our next stage will be the little railway station to which you
+may see that long double silver serpent, the metal tracks, stretching
+across the plain."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX.
+
+REPARATION.
+
+
+Fortunately for the fugitives, the poorly paid railway officials in
+these parts are the obsequious servants of those who liberally bribe.
+The station-master, though a very grand personage, indeed, in his
+uniform and metal-bound cap, became pliant as an East Indian waiter and
+accepted without question the explanation of the lady. It was she who
+was spokesman throughout. She said that she and her companion were
+play-actors and that their baggage was detained by a cruel manager of a
+Munich musical beer-hall; this was a wise admission as the man might
+have seen her at the Harmonista, or, at least, her photograph in the
+doorway. But they were compelled to reach Lucerne without delay or lose
+a profitable engagement, by the proceeds of which they could redeem
+their paraphernalia. While listening, the man dealt out the tickets,
+pocketed the gratuity which was handsomely added to a previous donation,
+and, without any surprise, agreed to let any one calling take away the
+horses; they certainly were above the means of strolling singers who had
+to flee from a town. Farther discussion, if he had sought it, was
+curtailed by the electric signal heralding the coming of a train. In
+eight minutes, the two were ensconced in a first-class compartment and
+hurried along toward the Land of Lakes.
+
+In the sumptuous coach, the girl unburdened herself, but, with rare art
+or imperfect knowledge of her origin, she was more explicit on the
+family of her cousin than on her own. However, it was his that had made
+a niche in art and scandalous story.
+
+As for Kaiserina, her mother was the eldest daughter of a Count
+Dobronowska, of a Polish branch of the Vieradlers, who had settled in
+Fuiland. The count had meddled with politics and the Czar had promptly
+confiscated his landed property. The loss and fear of Siberia had broken
+his heart. After his death, the widow passed the intervals of her grief
+in besieging persons of influence to obtain a restitution of the
+estate. Unfortunately, she had no son to fight the battle with the Czar,
+but two daughters were growing up with such a superabundance of charm
+that they promised to be no mean allies in the enterprise. But fortune
+did not altogether favor the widow; it is true that she interested a
+Russian of great wealth and political sway, but when the time came for
+his co-operation to be active, he played her a wicked trick. He
+attracted her elder daughter to him and married her. Not liking to have
+a mother-in-law in his mansion, he pensioned her off, with the proviso
+that her presence should never clash immediately with his own in any
+country. It is regrettable to add that Wanda, Madame Godaloff, agreed to
+this arrangement, and, indeed, having attained woman's goal, troubled
+herself not once about her parent who had schemed and plotted tirelessly
+for this end. The countess had brought her deer to a pretty market; but,
+unhappily, she gained little by the bargain compared with what she had
+dreamed.
+
+She had a brother-in-law who had acted very differently from her
+husband. Instead of playing the patriot--and the fool--he had submitted
+to the tyrant and won a lucrative post at St. Petersburg. He was afraid
+to injure himself by giving countenance to his brother's relict, who was
+always seeking an audience of the Emperor. It was strongly suspected
+that she intended, since Wanda was out of the lists, to throw the next
+daughter, Iza, at the head of a Grand-duke with whom the two girls had
+played when all three were children at Warsaw.
+
+The countess seemed to have educated the girl, as soon as her elder was
+out of the way, for a royal match. Like most Poles, Iza spoke several
+languages fluently, sang and played the harp and piano. She was growing
+lovelier than her sister because she was a purer blonde, and yet Wanda
+had been accounted a miracle. Remembering that, at a later period, a
+foreign adventuress almost inextricably ensnared one of the imperial
+family, the Countess Dobronowska's matrimonial project was not so
+insane. Some other pretender to the grand-ducal left or right hand
+thought it feasible, for everybody said that it was feminine jealousy
+that led to the countess and her "little beauty" being ordered out of
+the White Czar's realm. The pair, spurred on by the police of every
+capital, and all are in communication with St. Petersburg, at last
+rested in Paris. It was a favorable moment; the French government had
+offended the older powers by its presumption in chastising venerable
+Austria almost as severely as the Great Napoleon had done. The
+Dobronowskas were let alone in the imperial city on the Seine; but,
+unfortunately, the important state functionaries soon became as tired of
+the countess's plaints as their brothers on the Neva. Reduced to the
+shifts of the penniless aristocrats, the two lived like the shabby
+genteel. They made a desperate attempt to entrap their Grand-duke again.
+But the victim had warning and the pair were stopped at Warsaw. Here a
+beam of the sun, long withheld, glanced through the clouds and
+transiently warmed "the marrying mamma." A distant relative of hers, one
+Lergins, was an attaché of the embassy and he fell in love with his
+"cousin" Iza, as the mother allowed the youth to call her. As he had
+splendid prospects and seemed to be quite another man as regarded
+maternal control of Wanda's husband, mamma dismissed her brilliant
+_ignis fatuus_ and tried to have a clandestine marriage come off. But
+the young secretary of embassy was not of age and again she was forced
+to depart for Paris--that sink-hole for refugees of all sorts. His
+family put pressure on the officiale who in turn applied it to the
+luckless _intriguante_.
+
+Farewell, the future in which a semi-imperial coronet hand gleamed! even
+that where a cascade of gold coin inundated the new Danae. Wearied of
+this constant grasping at the unattainable Iza, who had something of a
+heart, chose for herself, much as her elder had done, with happiness at
+home as the object; one fine morning, married M. Pierre Clemenceau, a
+young but rising sculptor. He had on the previous visit of theirs to
+Paris, materially befriended them. It was only gratitude after all,
+although he, enamored like an artist of this unrivaled beauty, would
+have sacrificed fortune to possess her. Indeed, he sacrificed all--even
+his honor, for he suffered himself to be gulled by her wiles as
+profoundly as he was infatuated by her charms.
+
+At this point, as became a young woman telling of a relative's iniquity,
+Kaiserina glazed the facts and gave a perversion. It was later,
+therefore, that Felix Clemenceau learned in detail the whole mournful
+tale of a beautiful wanton's ingrained perfidy and a loving husband's
+blind confidence. The end was inevitably tragical. Lergins was decoyed
+by the countess to Paris, where she languished like a shark out of
+water. The sculptor's income did not come up to her dreams of luxury,
+any more than those she inspired in her daughter. She brought about a
+separation of the wedded pair and rejoiced when a fresh scandal
+necessitated a duel between the young Russian and the Frenchman.
+Unhappily for her revengeful ideas, it passed over harmlessly enough.
+
+Iza remained the talk and admiration of the gay capital, although women
+of superior physical attractions rendezvous there. Nothing blemished her
+appearance; no excesses, no indulgements, not even bearing a son had a
+blighting effect. Unfortunately for the dissevered artist, she had been
+his model for the most renowned of his works and her name was
+inseparably intertwined with his own.
+
+Although "crowned" as the favorite of a king who came in transparent
+incognito to Paris to visit her, though occupying princely quarters,
+outshining the fading La Mesard and the rising Julia Barucci in
+diamonds, Iza was still known as "the Clemenceau Statue."
+
+Her mother, as lost to shame, was the mistress of the wardrobe in this
+palace; she was spiteful as a witch, and began to resemble one in her
+prime, bloated, red with importance and self-indulgence, before the
+wrinkles came many and fast. One day, annoyed at the persistency with
+which a friend of Clemenceau's watched the queen of the disreputable in
+hopes to make her flagrancy a cause for legal annulment of the marriage,
+she denounced him as a traitor in an anonymous letter to the fretting
+husband, then in Rome. Her daughter agreed to make good the assertion
+that the friend had failed monstrously in his trust.
+
+Like Othello, Clemenceau swore that this demon of lasciviousness should
+betray no more men. The force of depravity should no farther flow to
+corrupt the finest and best. He entered the boudoir of the royal
+favorite and stabbed her to the heart. In the morning, he gave himself
+up to the police.
+
+The victim was so notorious that the Clemenceau trial was a nine days'
+wonder. His advocate was eloquent to a fault, but that inexplicable
+thing, the jury, found no extenuating circumstances in the act and
+brought in the verdict of murder. The good men were incapable of
+appreciating the right he claimed to stop the blighting career of
+Messalina--to divorce with steel where the state of the law, then meekly
+following the ecclesiastical ruling, forbade any sundering of the
+connubial tie except by death.
+
+He met his doom calmly and laid his head beneath the axe with a martyr's
+brow. Kaiserina acknowledged this.
+
+Felix Clemenceau understood everything now. The trustees to whom he owed
+his subsistence-money, M. Rollinet the imperial counsel, and M.
+Constantin Ritz, a famous sculptor's son, and the life-companion of
+Clemenceau, were characters in the momentous drama which Kaiserina
+recited, whom he knew by correspondence.
+
+The finger of fate, which had urged the artist to commit a homicide for
+morality's sake, had pointed out to his son the way which had to be
+followed over corpses of the young student's slaying.
+
+Brooding over the alteration in his future, he exchanged hardly a word
+with his cousin, during the prolonged journey, which they continued
+together, as though mutual reluctance to part bound them indissolubly.
+Logic said there should be a powerful repugnance between those whom the
+shadow of the guillotine's red arm clouded. But, spite of all, Felix
+felt that Kaiserina was, like himself, well within the circle of infamy.
+Her mother was the sister of the shameful Iza, and her husband's careful
+guard of her proved that he doubted her walking virtuously if her
+unscrupulous mother stood by her side. This old Megara--who sold her
+offspring to worse than death--was living--seemed eternal as evil
+itself. It were a pious act to save Kaiserina from her as his father had
+tried to do with Iza. He was pleased that she seemed inclined to cling
+to him as though wearied of the erratic life she seemed to have led
+after a flight from her mother's, and which she did not describe
+minutely. He was also grateful that, in her allusions to his father, she
+did not speak with the bitterness of a blood-avenger.
+
+They made the journey to Paris without any stoppage. He had to visit M.
+Ritz, for M. Rollinet was no longer there, having accepted a judgeship
+in Algeria. In the vehicle, carrying to a hotel where he purposed
+leaving her, Felix said, feelingly:
+
+"I think I see why we were brought together. I am not to lead the life
+of an artist, lounging in galleries, sketching ruins and pretty girls,
+but one of expiation for my poor father's crime."
+
+"Perhaps. More surely," she replied with a smile which, on her peerless
+lips, seemed divine, "_I_ should make the faults of the Dobronowskas be
+forgotten."
+
+They had arrived at the same conclusion as the journey ended, but the
+means had not occurred yet to either.
+
+"Here we are," he exclaimed, as the carriage horse came to a stop.
+
+He alighted, entered the hotel and settled for the young lady's stay.
+Returning, he came to help her out.
+
+"My door will never be closed to you," she said, remembering how, in her
+story, her notorious ancestors had playfully suggested in a letter
+announcing her renunciation of her scheming mother's toils and her
+return to marry Clemenceau, that he might leave his door on the jar for
+her at all instants. "And yet, what will be the gain in our meeting
+again?"
+
+"Everything for our souls, and materially! Here in France, where La
+Belle Iza and the executed Clemenceau point a moral, neither of us can
+find a mate in marriage easily. If blood stains me, shame is reflected
+on you. Let us efface both blood and shame by an united effort! Let our
+life in common force the world to look no farther than ourselves and see
+nothing of the disgrace beyond."
+
+"I do not care a fig for what people think or say," said the one-night
+_diva_, with a curl of the lip. "And I do not understand you fully."
+
+"Wait till I see you again, when all shall be made clear. Meanwhile,
+cousin--since without you I should have lost my life, or, certainly my
+liberty--I am eternally bound to you. It is left to you to have the
+bonds solemnized in the church, here, in France--my country!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X.
+
+THE FOX IN THE FOLD.
+
+
+Among the secluded villas that dot with pretty colors the suburb of
+Montmorency, there is none more agreeable than the Villa Reine-Claude,
+which was in the hands of the notary who had managed the transmission of
+the maintenance money to young Clemenceau. At the hint from M. Ritz, who
+had a debt of honor to pay the son of his dead friend, the house was
+rented at a nominal sum. Here Felix, as he boldly described himself by
+right, though the name had a tinge of mockery, installed himself with
+his bride. He had a portfolio of architectural sketches soon completed
+and, thanks to the fellowship to which his name might exercise a spell,
+all the old artists who had known his father, helped him manfully.
+Luckily, there was something markedly novel in his work.
+
+His odd training helped him. He came from the Polish University into an
+unromantic society which, after its stirring up by the Great Revolution,
+was so levelled and amalgamated that everybody resembled his neighbor as
+well in manners and speech as in attire. Strong characters, heated
+passions, black vices, deep prejudices, grievous misfortunes, and even
+utterly ridiculous persons had disappeared. The country he had been
+reared in still thrilled with patriotism and meant something when it
+muttered threats to kill its tyrant--meant so much that the Czar did not
+pass through a Polish town until the police and military had "ensured an
+enthusiastic reception." But in France, tyrants and love of country were
+mere words to draw applause from the country cousins in a popular
+theatre.
+
+Felix, though a youth, stood a head and shoulders above the level of the
+weaklings excluded as "finished" from these commonplace educational
+institutions--schools called colleges and colleges called universities,
+resulting necessarily from the proclamation of man's equality. He
+sickened at seeing the neutral-tinted lake of society, with
+"shallow-swells," more painful to the right-minded than an ocean in a
+tempest.
+
+He soon became like the French, but not so his wife. She suffered the
+change of her unpronounceable name, being euphonized as "Césarine,"
+smilingly, but life at home in a demure and tranquil suburb little
+suited the young meteor who had flashed across Germany. Felix saw with
+dismay that domestic bliss was not that which she enjoyed. For a while
+he hoped that she would content herself as his helpmate and the genius
+of the hearth when a mother.
+
+But maternity had nothing but thorns for her. She chafed under the
+burden and her joy was indecent when the little boy died. Until then he
+had believed that the path of duty was wide enough and lined
+sufficiently with flowers to gratify or at least pacify her.
+
+But Césarine was, like her aunt, a born dissolvent of society's vital
+elements. Ruled by a strong hand, and removed from the pernicious
+influence of the vicious countess, her mother had never inculcated evil
+to her child; on the contrary, impressed by the lesson of Iza's career,
+she had perhaps been too Puritanic with Césarine, whose flight from home
+at an early age, was like the spring of a deer through a gap in a fence.
+Césarine, wherever placed, sapped morality, faith, labor and the family
+ties.
+
+In the new country she feared at first that she had but exchanged
+parental despotism for marital tyranny. But soon she perceived that
+nothing was changed that would affect her. On the contrary, France, in
+the last decade of the Empire, was more corrupt than Russia's chief
+towns and the dissoluteness, though not as coarse as at Munich, was more
+diffused. Here she was assured that she could gratify her insatiable
+appetite at any moment. She saw that the manners excused her; the laws
+guaranteed the unfaithful wife, and religion screened her; that the
+social atmosphere, despite slander and gossip, enveloped and preserved
+her; in short, it was clear that to a creature in whom wickedness
+developed like a plant in a hot-house, the freedom society accorded her
+was as delicious as that given by her husband in his trust and his
+devotion to art.
+
+It seemed to her that, after the death of their first-born, his silence
+signified some contempt for her; in fact, she had, stupidly frank for
+once, expressed relief at this escape from the cares of maternity. Did
+he suspect that she had, not with any repugnance, precipitated its
+death? She feared this passionate man who, by strength of will, made
+himself calm, alarmed her more than an angry one would have done. Moved
+by instinct, for she really felt that his sacrifice to her in marrying
+had condoned for his father's blow at her ancestress, she tried to
+return him harm for good. But it is not easy for a serpent to sting a
+rock.
+
+Recovered from the slight eclipse of beauty during her experience as a
+mother, she endeavored to make him once again her worshiper. But her
+tricks, her tears and her caresses seemed not to count as before when
+they fled from Von Sendlingen's vengeance. He remained so strictly the
+husband that she could perceive scarcely an atom of the lover. Then she
+vowed to torture him: he should no longer find a wife in her--not even a
+woman, still less a lovely companion; she would implant in him
+intolerable longing and guard that he might not gratify it--not even
+lull it on any side, while she would become a statue of marble to his
+most maddening advance. He should have no more leisure for study, but be
+thrilled with the incessant and implacable sensation which relaxes the
+muscles, pales the blood, poisons the marrow, obscures reason, weakens
+the will and eats away the soul.
+
+Unfortunately for her hideous project, it was in vain that she painted
+the lily of her cheeks and the carmine of her lips, studied useless arts
+of the toilet harder than a sage muses over nature's secrets to benefit
+mankind, and was the peerless darling of three years ago.
+
+He resisted her till she grew mad.
+
+The progression of vice is such that while she believed she was simply
+at the degree of passion, she contemplated another crime.
+
+She ruled the little household, for she had brought from Germany the
+girl Hedwig, who had been the tool of her grandmother; this silly and
+superstitious girl had gone once to the witch to have her fortune told
+and had never shaken off the bonds; these Césarine took up and drove her
+by them. She had led to the entrance of the girl under her roof
+ingeniously; Felix was cajoled into believing that she came rather on
+the hint of Fraulein Daniels, the Rebecca, of whom he often had
+agreeable and soothing memories in his distress.
+
+Ah, she would not have interrupted his studies; she would have
+encouraged them; she would never have urged him to accumulate wealth to
+expend it in social diversions; while Césarine fretted at her splendid
+voice going to waste in this solitude--the house in the suburbs where no
+company comes.
+
+She dreamed of holding a Liberty Hall, where her fancies might have
+unlicensed play and her freaks have free course. While gliding about the
+quiet house in a neat dress, she imagined herself in robes almost regal,
+with golden ornaments, diamonds and the pearls and turquoises which
+suited her fairness. What if the gems were set in impurities?
+
+Alas! perfect as a husband, denying her nothing which his limited means
+allowed, Felix had not once an inclination to tread beside her the
+ballroom floor, the reception hall marbles, and the flower-strewn path
+at the aristocratic charity bazaar. Yet he felt firmly assured that he
+was destined to a great fortune. He saw the gleam of it although he
+could not trace the beam to its source, too dazzling. But she had no
+faith in him, she did not understand his value, and from the time of his
+certainty that they were not the unit of two hearts to which happiness
+accrues and where it abides, he merely resigned himself to the
+irremediable grief. Having vainly tried to make of her a worthy wife,
+and seeing that motherhood had not saved her--earthly redemption though
+it is of her sex--he could only watch her and prevent her resuming that
+orbit which would no doubt end badly, as her race offered too many
+examples.
+
+On one occasion, fatigued with watching that she did not take a faulty
+step, he had written to Russia to see if she would find a harbor there,
+but the answer came from her father and sealed up that outlet. Her
+elopement had caused her mother fatal sorrow, and her father said
+plainly that he regarded her as dead. Though she came to his gates,
+begging her bread, he would bid his janitor drive her away. Her mother
+had been a good wife, but her grandmother had extorted a mint of money
+and, after all, nearly ruined him in the good graces of his Emperor out
+of spite, from her blackmail failing at last to remunerate her.
+
+Since in Césarine, Felix found no intelligent and sympathetic companion,
+he took into intimacy a kind of apprentice whom he had literally picked
+up on the road. A slender lad of southern origin, whom a band of
+vagrants, making for the sea to embark to South America, had cast off to
+die in the ditch. Clemenceau gave him shelter, nursed him--for his wife
+would have nothing to do with a beggar--and to cover the hospitality and
+soothe the Italian's pride, paid him liberally to be his model. He was
+named Antonino and might have been a descendant of the Emperor from his
+lofty features, burning eye and fine sentiments. Healed, able to resume
+his journey and offered a loan to make it smooth, he effusively uttered
+a declaration of gratitude and devotion, and vowed to remain the slave
+of the man who had saved him from a miserable death.
+
+A good work rarely goes unrewarded. Antonino, who had never touched a
+piece of colored chalk to a black stone, soon revealed strong gift as a
+draftsman and served his new master with brightness and taste.
+
+Left lonely by his wife, each day more and more estranged, Felix loved
+to labor with the youth in the tasks to both congenial. That Césarine
+should grow jealous would be natural, but it was pique that she felt
+toward Felix. In Antonino, she saw the possible instrument of her
+vengeance. His good looks, fervid temperament, youthful
+impressionability, all conspired in her favor as well as the innate
+artistic craving which had at the first sight lifted her on a pedestal
+as his ideal of the woman to be idolized.
+
+Nevertheless, the vagabond had a stronger spirit than she anticipated,
+and the emotion which she set down as timidity, and which protected him
+from the baseness of deceiving his benefactor, was due to honor. She
+flattered herself that she could pluck the fruit at any time, and, since
+this moneyless youth could not in the least appease her yearning for
+inordinate luxury, she cast about for another conquest.
+
+Clemenceau would not hear of his home being turned into the pandemonium
+of a country-house receiving all "the society that amuses," and rigidly
+restricted his wife from visiting where she would meet the odd medley in
+the suburbs of Paris. Retired opera-singers, Bohemians who have made a
+fortune by chance, superseded politicians, officials who have perfected
+libeling into an art, and reformed female celebrities of the
+dancing-gardens and burlesque theatres. But, as society is constituted,
+it would have earned him the reputation of a tyrant if he had refused
+her receiving and returning the visits of the venerable Marchioness de
+Latour-Lagneau, to whom the Bishop always accorded an hour during his
+pastoral calls. This was a neighbor.
+
+In her old Louis XIV. mansion, conspicuous among the new structures, the
+old dame, in silvered hair which needed no powder, welcomed the "best
+people" in the neighborhood and a surprising number of visitors who "ran
+down" from the city. Considering her age, her activity in playing the
+hostess was remarkable. On the other hand, the "at homes" were most
+respectable, and the music remained "classical;" not an echo of
+Offenbach or Strauss; the conversation was restrained and decorous and
+the scandal delicately dressed to offend no ear.
+
+Not all were old who came to the château, and the foreigners were
+numerous to give variety to the gatherings; but the white neck-cloth and
+black coat suppressed gaiety in even the rising youth, who were destined
+for places under government or on boards of finance and commerce.
+
+It may be judged that an afternoon spent in such company was little
+change to Madame Clemenceau, and that the five o'clock tea, initiated
+from the English, was a kind of penitential drink. But she became a
+habitué, and took a very natural liking to hear again the anecdotes
+indicating how matters moved in Germany and Russia, where her childhood
+and early girlhood had passed.
+
+One evening, she arrived late. She was exasperated: Antonino had imbibed
+his master's imperturbability and seemed to meet her advances with
+rebuking chilliness. A marked gravity governed them both of late; they
+shut themselves up for hours in their study, but instead of the silence
+becoming artists, noises of hammering and filing metal sounded, and the
+chimney belched black smoke of which the neighbors would have had reason
+to complain.
+
+"A fresh craze!" thought Césarine, dismissing curiosity from her mind.
+
+Dull and decorous though the marchioness' salon was, it might be an
+ante-chamber to a more brilliant resort beyond, while the laboratory of
+science leads to no place where a pretty woman cares to be.
+
+The Marchioness had remembered her meeting with Césarine at Munich and
+was polite enough to express her regret that her offer of a
+companionship had not been accepted. "All her pets had married well,"
+she observed, as much as to say that she would have found no difficulty
+in paving the lovely one with a superior to Clemenceau.
+
+Soon Madame Clemenceau had become the favorite at the château; and,
+tardy as she was, the servant hastened to usher her in to her reserved
+chair. It was placed in the row of honor in the large, lofty
+drawing-room, hung with tapestry and damask curtains, and filled with
+funereally garbed men and powdered old dowagers. The late comer was
+struck by their eyes being directed with unusual interest upon a
+vocalist. He stood before the kind of throne on which the marchioness
+conceitedly installed herself.
+
+He was singing in German, and he accompanied himself on a zither. He had
+an excellent baritone voice, and the ballad, simple and unfinished,
+became a tragic _scena_ from his skill in repeating some exceptionally
+talented teacher's instructions.
+
+To Césarine, the strains awakened dormant meditations; aspirations
+frozen in her placid home, began to melt; a curtain was gradually drawn
+aside to reveal a world where woman reigned over all. What she had heard
+from her grandmother of the magic splendor which Wanda had missed and
+Iza enjoyed, flashed up before her, and her heart warmed delightedly in
+the voluptuous intoxication of unspeakable bliss. On the wings of this
+melody, which, in truth, merely sought to picture the celestial dwelling
+of the elect, she was carried into one of those bijou palaces of the
+best part of the Queen City of the Universe, where the bedizened Imperia
+at the plate-glass window reviews an army of faultlessly-clad gentlemen
+filing before her, and sweetly calls out:
+
+"This, gentlemen, is the spot where you can be amused!"
+
+Yes, Césarine was intended to entertain men! She longed to be the
+central figure in the scene, however brief, of that apotheosis where
+Cupid is proclaimed superior to all the high interests of human
+conscience; this glittering stage sufficed for her, although it would
+have limited Felix's ideal of man's function.
+
+In a struggle between duty and passion, she expected passion to
+overcome, and she concurred beforehand with this troubadour who
+protested that the gentler sex really held the under one in its
+dependence.
+
+Radiant with pleasure and farther delighted to recognize a well-known
+face on the minstrel's shoulders, she hastened at the conclusion to give
+him her compliments. It was the young nobleman who had aided her flight
+with Clemenceau at Munich, and of whom she had not cherished a second
+thought! Better than all, while titled a baron in Germany, he held a
+viscount's rank in France, and his aunt, the marchioness, presented him
+as the last of the Terremondes.
+
+She had not expected to meet in this coterie a gentleman who patronized
+the singers of a beer-hall, but the frock does not make the monk, and
+Baron Gratian von Linden-Hohen-Linden, Viscount de Terremonde in France,
+was of another species than the frequenters of Latour château.
+
+From his income in both countries, he had the means to maintain what
+would have been ruinous establishments; he had the racing stud which no
+English peer would be ashamed of, a gallery of masterpieces acquired
+from living painters, an unrivaled hot-house of orchids, wolf-hounds and
+fox-hounds and other dogs, and the rumor went that the famous Caroline
+Birchoffstein, in consideration of his being a fellow-countryman, was
+more often seen in his box at the Grand Opera House than in her own.
+
+The imperial court, also, not averse to being on good terms with South
+Germany, since Prussia was supposed to be France's greatest opponent in
+case Luxembourg were clutched, petted the Franco-Teuton, and regretted
+that he was so pleasure-loving.
+
+To continue her thraldom over him, Césarine left not a word unsaid or a
+glance undelivered. In this attack, she was met halfway, for, had she
+been less eager, she must have seen that the viscount-baron's joy at
+seeing her again was sincere.
+
+"You hesitate to ask what happened after your fortunate escape with that
+young student," he said, when they were allowed a few minutes together
+by the artful management of the hostess. "I can tell you that I had to
+pass through a fiery ordeal and I hope you preserved a kindly memory of
+one who suffered tremendously for you. Major Von Sendlingen was not an
+undetached person whose quarrel could be kept among private ones. On the
+contrary, he moved the authorities like a chess-player does the pieces,
+and he moved them against me. At the first, they talked of nothing less
+than trying me for treason, since the projected arrest of the Polish
+conspirator and yourself--kinswoman of the Dobronowska inscribed in the
+black book of the Russian and Polish police--was foiled on my territory.
+The major affirmed that he had seen me not only looking on at the defeat
+of his posse, but holding my farmers in check not to hasten to their
+assistance. He alleged that I had lent racehorses to you and your
+accomplice, for your continued flight. This Polander--"
+
+"You can say Frenchman, now," returned Madame Clemenceau; "he is one,
+and my cousin. The story is long and involved and will keep to another
+day. It is he I married."
+
+"Your husband!" he exclaimed, and she nodded apologetically.
+
+"Then," sighed he, "my dream ends here--on that day when we last met."
+
+"A learned man has said, in a lecture here, that dreams can be repeated
+and continued, by an effort of the will. My advice to you is to try it."
+
+"Do not jest with me! You can see--you can be sure if you will but
+question--that I narrowly escaped the State's prison for helping you.
+Spite of all, I can love no other woman but you--"
+
+She held up her closed fan and touched his lips with the feathery
+edging.
+
+"You must not talk so--at least--here," she said, with her glance in
+contradiction to her words. "I am happy, or contented, strictly
+speaking, in my home, and as soon as my husband realizes one or two of
+the ideas over which he is musing, happiness must be mine. A success in
+art will drag him forth; he must go to Paris to be feasted in the salons
+and lionized in the conversaziones."
+
+And her eyes blazed as she figured herself presiding at an assemblage of
+artists and patrons.
+
+"Pardon me," said the viscount-baron. "I am afraid I add to your worry.
+I see that you are pining for the sphere to which your grace and charms
+entice you. I will do anything you order; but yet, since I, too, am an
+exile, and for your sake, pray do not ask me not to see you and speak of
+love."
+
+"It must be thus," she replied, with half-closed eyes, turning away
+abruptly, as if she feared her virtuous resolution were failing. "Let
+our parting be forever!"
+
+"Forever!" he repeated, following her into the window alcove, although
+thirty pairs of eyes regarded them. "You cannot mean that. At least, I
+deserve--have earned--your friendship by what I have undergone for you.
+Let me have a word of hope! Though divorce is not allowed in this
+country, death befalls any man, for while your statisticians figure out
+that the married live longest, they do not assert that they are
+immortal. Clemenceau dead, his widow may remarry. You say he is an
+enthusiast--one of those college-growths which run to seed without any
+fruit. I thought the contrary from the way he rode my horse and handled
+the pistols. But, being an enthusiast, how can you expect to do anything
+but vegetate? You will always be poor, for, if the man's ideas bore
+fruit, he would only sink the gains in fresh enterprises. These artists
+are always unthrifty, and they should wed their laundresses or their
+cooks. But I--though they have tied up my German revenue, and I have
+been practically banished--enjoy a tolerable return from my property in
+this Empire. I have been offered a very handsome present if I wholly
+transfer allegiance to the Napoleons. Would you not like to have the
+_entré_ to the Empress's coterie and shine among the acknowledged
+beauties? I give you my word that your peer is not among them, and the
+leader would be enchanted with you. Come, suppose a little fatal
+accident to Monsieur--may he not suck poison off his paint brush or cut
+an artery with his sculptor's chisel? And, after a sojourn at Bravitz,
+you might return to Paris a viscountess--a countess, perhaps, and rule
+in a pretty court of your own!"
+
+For a woman who had said adieu! she had lingered still listening much
+too long. They continued the conversation, turned into this ominous
+channel, in the same low key.
+
+Césarine returned home with the sentiment of loneliness which had
+oppressed her almost utterly removed. She did not love Gratian, but one
+need not be a prisoner to understand how admirable the jailer with the
+outer door-key may appear. She saw in him a precious friend and ally--a
+worshiper who would obey a hint like a fanatic. Cautiously, at the
+marchioness's, and more deeply than at Munich, she made inquiries upon
+his pecuniary standing and was rejoiced to learn that he had not
+deceived her in that respect. It was left to him to be a favorite in the
+court, which, not succeeding in weaning away the scions of the
+Legitimist nobility, greeted the foreign nobles cordially and sought to
+attach them to its standard in foresight of a European war. One thing
+was certain: Gratian had illimitable resources, and the sharp-witted,
+who had sharp tongues, did not hesitate to aver that he was one of those
+spoilt children of politics who are fed from State treasuries--not such
+a shallow-brain as he pretended. The new type of diplomatist was like
+him, the Morny's, not the effete Metternich's, gentlemen who settled
+affairs of the State in the boudoir not in the cabinet.
+
+Brave, gallant, dashing, craftier than his manner indicated, he was
+destined to play no inconsiderable part in the conflict impending; such
+an one might emerge from the smoke a lieutenant of an emperor and
+holding a large slice of territory which neither of the two contestants
+cared yet to rule.
+
+Compared with a sculptor who had produced nothing--an architect whose
+buildings had appeared only on paper--this young noble was to be run
+away with, if not to be run after.
+
+The marchioness favored their future and less public meetings, and her
+gardens were their scene. But while the relations of the treacherous
+wife with her cavalier became closer, a singular change took place in
+him. Instead of growing bolder, he seemed to hold aloof, and he fixed
+each new appointment at a longer interval. He was gloomy and absent,
+and she began to feel that her charm was weakening. She reproached him,
+and tried to find excuses for him. Everybody knew what he had lost at
+the races or over the baccarat-board; and she knew, according to a
+rhymed saying, that "lucky at love is unlucky at gambling."
+
+"It is not that," he answered slowly, with an anxious glance around in
+the green avenues of trimmed trees. "I do not know why I should speak of
+politics to a woman; but you and I are as one: you should know the
+worst. I am not my own master, and they who rule me presume to dictate
+my course as regards my heart. Brain and sword are theirs, but I shall
+feel too ignoble a slave if I sacrifice my love for you to _la haute
+politique_."
+
+"Sacrifice your love! That would be odious--that must not be! Do you
+mean that they want you to marry? How cruel!"
+
+He did not smile at the absurdity of her protest, it was so sincere.
+
+"Well, Césarine, they are blind here, and deaf to the signs along their
+own frontier. The French rely on a Russian alliance, when already Herr
+von Bismarck, the Prussian ambassador at St. Petersburg, long ago
+secured its suspension. Besides, the Crimean War will always be
+remembered against Napoleon--it is so easy not to ally oneself with
+England, and, considering her proverbial ingratitude, so rarely
+profitable. I spoke of Bismarck! This man of a million, with deep, dark
+eyes, fixed and unreadable, with a cold, mocking mouth, iron will and
+mighty brain, is soon to be pitted against Napoleon, the shadow whom you
+have seen. I am no soothsayer, but I can tell which must go down in the
+charge, and never to hold up his head again. I am one of the flies on
+the common wheel who will be carried into the action and smashed,
+whoever is the victor. I am unwilling to perish thus, when I can find in
+love of you a paradise on earth wherever you consent to dwell with me.
+Listen: I am entrusted with a prodigious sum in cash by a political
+organization, the headquarters of which in France are here, at the old
+marchioness's--a veteran puller of the wires that move the European
+puppets. They have practically seized my German bands, and unless I
+retake them at the head of a column of victorious French, I may as well
+say good-bye to them. As for Terremonde, the revenue is falling every
+quarter. If it were not for this secret service, I should be bankrupt,
+for the Tuileries, perhaps, suspecting my good faith, pay me only in
+pretty words--_a la française_. This bank which I hold tempts me sorely,
+Césarine, but only if you will dip into it with me. Only once in a life
+does a man have his great opportunity. Mine is the present. A fortune--a
+beauty! Never will I have such an opportunity again to found a
+principality in Florida or the South Seas or South America--wherever we
+choose to come to a rest. Speak, Césarine, are you with me? After a
+while, when the modern Attila has swept over France, perhaps we will
+like to come and view the ruins and fill our gallery with the
+art-treasures which the impoverished defeated ones will gladly sell."
+
+"A large sum!" repeated the woman, frowning as her thoughts
+concentrated.
+
+"Enormous! I have been changing it into sight-drafts, and we can put on
+our wings at a moment's notice."
+
+"It belongs to a political organization, you say?"
+
+"Have no qualms--it is a few drops out of a reptilian fund! No one can
+claim what was handed over to me without witnesses, and no receipt
+demanded. I make no secret: I am offering for your love the price of my
+honor. Only let us flee to a distance for a while. The money could not
+be claimed of me in a public court, but they might punish me with an
+assassin's bullet."
+
+"And for me, for my happiness, you would do this? I cannot doubt you any
+longer, if ever I did. Enough, Gratian, I will go to the world's end
+with you!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI.
+
+A SPRAT AND THE WHALE.
+
+
+A few moments were enough for the two to enter the château again, where
+their absence had begun to arouse curiosity, though the guests were too
+well bred to make general remarks. With the cue that these "slow," tame
+gatherings were but the cloak to more important conclaves, Césarine
+studied them as never before. It was clear. Here and there were groups
+which did not waste a word on the accent of Mademoiselle Delaporte, the
+early history of Aimée Derclée, or the latest episode in the stage and
+boudoir history of "the Beauty who is also the Stupid Beast." For a
+certainty, conspiracy went on here at the gates of the capital; perhaps
+from the pretty belvedere, where the large telescope was mounted for
+lovers to see Venus, the sons of Mars ascertained where the batteries of
+siege guns should be planted to shell Parisian palaces and forts.
+
+Two of a trade never agree, says the wisdom of our ancestors, and from
+that time Césarine detested Gratian. If he so easily betrayed his
+friends, countrymen and employers for her, what might he not do as
+regards her when she was older and her bloom vanished? Better not place
+herself under his thumb and be cast off, in some remote, barbarous
+region, when the caprice had worn out. But the money! What was this
+political league and its aims to her? For her limited education, that of
+a refined and expensive toy, she was ignorant of the laws and
+regulations governing even herself, and these laws were too subtly
+interwoven and inexorable for man alone to have formed them. She did not
+suspect the great reasons of the State in setting them in motion to
+accomplish collective ends and destinies, whether they wrought good or
+evil to individuals. Enough that they were necessary for a dynasty or a
+class; but in all cases, the rulers knew why they were made.
+
+Little by little, but without loss of time, her perspicacity penetrated
+the disguises, although not to the motives that impelled the plotters.
+She centered her thoughts on the old, white-locked pianist, who silently
+listened to all the parties and was tolerated even when the piano was
+closed; he was taciturn, always blandly smiling and bent in a servile
+bow. Nevertheless, this was the principal of the conspirators and even
+the viscount-baron treated him with some deference as representing a
+formidable power.
+
+One morning, Césarine came over to the marchioness's and took advantage
+of the drawing-room being open to be aired, to open the piano and
+practice an aria which she had promised at the next soirée. There was
+nothing but praise for her singing, and old, retired tenors and obese
+soprani had assured her that she had but to have one hearing in the
+Opera to be placed among the stars. The aged pianist had often listened
+to her vocalism with enraptured gaze, and she believed he, too, was her
+slave.
+
+He had now glided into the room and upon the piano stool, and, as if by
+magic divining her wish, silently opened the piece of music for which
+she had been hunting. For the first time their eyes met without any
+medium, for he had discarded the tinted spectacles he usually wore.
+These were not the worn orbs of a man who had pored over crabbed
+partitions for sixty years. They were eyes familiar to her.
+
+"Major Von Sendlingen!" she exclaimed, in a kind of terror; for women,
+being judges of duplicity, are alarmed by any one successful in
+disguises.
+
+"Precisely, but do not be alarmed. You struck me in warfare, and I
+forgive your share in that paltry incident. I am your friend, now. By
+the way, as a proof of that assertion, let me tell you that the viscount
+is no more worthy of you than that ever-dreaming student. You think he
+adores you? _pfui_! only so far as you will aid the realization of his
+ambition. Besides, he is only an officer in our ranks; he is not
+unbridled, and at any moment he may be ordered away. Renounce this kind
+of love, my child, not durable and unendurable!"
+
+Was this the major preaching? He who had held with the hare and run with
+the hounds, that is, tried to win the ascending and the declining star!
+
+"Tell me," he continued, seriously, "tell me when you can control your
+heart, and it is I who will set you on that stage where you should have
+figured long since."
+
+She had turned pale and she bit her lip. Her dullness in not suspecting
+the identity of this spy, her lover, pained her acutely. She had thought
+to read the Sphynx, and it had its paw upon her. Her exasperation was so
+keen that she determined to be revenged on both the speaker and Gratian,
+whose inferiority to the major was manifest.
+
+"They shall see how _I_ can plot," she thought, "and best of all, how I
+carry off the prize which I need to obtain a station of my own selection
+in society."
+
+One thing she saw clearly, that Von Sendlingen was out of her clutches.
+He still acknowledged her attractions, but he was obedient to a master
+more paramount. If only he had been capable of jealousy! But, no, he had
+alluded to the Viscount de Terremonde's flame with perfect indifference.
+Like Clemenceau, he would not have fought a duel for her choice.
+Nevertheless, her husband might have another burst of the homicidal
+instinct which his father showed in Paris, and he in Germany. While
+refusing a duel as illogical, he might fell Gratian after the model he
+had displayed for Major Von Sendlingen's profit in Munich.
+
+Perhaps, though, Clemenceau was no longer jealous.
+
+Hedwig had told her of letters addressed to Daniels which she had to
+mail, if Clemenceau was in correspondence with the old Jew, he would not
+have forgotten his daughter, the only woman of whom Césarine harbored
+jealousy.
+
+But she could attain her end, profound, treacherous and bloody, like the
+dream of a frivolous woman going to extremes. The revelation of Von
+Sendlingen's presence enlightened her and filled the gap in her plan.
+
+Meanwhile, she redoubled her efforts to entrance Gratian, and the day of
+their flight had but to be fixed. On hearing from Madame Clemenceau
+that Von Sendlingen was the chief of surveillance at the coterie, the
+dread that he was his rival in the contest for Césarine, filled his cup
+to overflowing with disgust. He had believed himself chief of the
+fraternity in France, and behold! another was set over him and probably
+reported that he neglected the business to pay court to a married woman.
+He felt that he was lost and that his only chance to secure the beloved
+one was to step outside the circle which he knew would be the vortex of
+a whirlpool once war was proclaimed.
+
+"You speak most timely," he answered gravely, when she said that she was
+ready; "I have been notified to transfer the funds to another, in such
+terms as would better suit a clerk than a gentleman--a noble
+intelligence officer. That cursed major who learned the piano to be a
+means of torture to his fellow man! he has done it. He loves you no
+longer, and he is my enemy since I looked at him being run away with,
+like a raw recruit, on his first troop-horse. He will, believe me, be
+our destroyer unless we levant."
+
+Nothing was easier. Since four days, Clemenceau had been invisible, even
+at meals. Closeted with his disciple Antonino, they worked out some more
+than ever preposterous conceptions into substance, in the studio where
+the uncompleted artistic models had been neglected. Hedwig was the false
+wife's bondwoman and would actively help in the removal of her trunks.
+The viscount had but to send a trusty man with a vehicle, and the lady
+could meet him at a station of the Outer Circle Railway and thence
+proceed to a main station for Havre or Marseilles, as they selected. The
+famous sight-drafts were safe on Gratian's person. With the simplicity
+of a child, Césarine wished again and again to gloat over them; never
+could she be convinced that those flimsy pieces of paper stood for large
+sums of ready money and that bankers would pay simply on their
+presentation. It was reluctantly that she restored the wallet to his
+inner pocket, of which she buttoned the flap, bidding him be so very,
+very careful of what would be their subsistence in the mango groves.
+
+"Oh, how I love you," he said, bewildered and enthralled; "I love you
+because you retain, after the finished graces of woman have come, the
+naive traits of the guileless girl. What a joy that I divined your
+excellences when you were so young and that I was favored by your
+regard, and now am gladdened by your trustful smiles."
+
+"I trust you so much that I could wish this money did not weigh on your
+bosom. I love you without it, and I shall love you as long as you live."
+
+Seeming to be as exalted as he, she grasped both his hands and drew his
+face nearer and nearer hers to look him in the eyes.
+
+"I do not ask anything of you but to be good to me. Do not reproach me
+for leaving my lawful lord for you! If there is a fault in quitting him
+who neglects me, never cast it upon me. Let us go! anywhere, if but you
+are ever beside me, to protect, to support and cherish!"
+
+Her moist eyes were as eloquent as her lips, and to have doubted her, he
+must have doubted all evidence of his senses. And yet it was that same
+hand on which he had impressed a score of burning kisses that wrote
+these lines:
+
+"The faithless one will take the train at Montmorency Station this night
+at nine."
+
+And she deposited it, as had been agreed between her and Major Von
+Sendlingen in a vase on the drawing-room mantel-shelf at the
+marchioness's, where the viscount conducted her before their last
+parting. It was one of those notes which burn in the hand, and so
+thought the major, for he took measures, by a communication which he had
+established, to send it to M. Clemenceau.
+
+Except on holidays and Sundays, when the Parisians muster in great force
+to promenade the still picturesque suburbs, the country roads are
+desolate after the return home of the clerks who have slaved at the desk
+in the city. One might believe oneself a hundred miles from a center of
+civilization.
+
+To the station, a little above the highway level, three paths lead. On
+the road itself the village cart which had taken Madame Clemenceau's
+baggage, leisurely jogged. The lady herself, instructed by her
+confederate Hedwig that there was no alarm to be apprehended from the
+studio, strolled along a more circuitous but pleasanter way. Her husband
+and his pupil were, as usual, shut up in "the workshop." The studio had
+been changed for some new fancy of the crack-brained pair; they had
+packed aside the plans and models and had set up a lathe, a forge and a
+miniature foundry. To the clang of hammer and the squeak of file was
+added the detonation now and then of some explosive which did not emit
+the sharp sound or pungent smoke of gunpowder or the more modern
+substitutes' characteristic fumes.
+
+At each shock, Césarine had trembled like the guilty. They had told her
+that she was born in St. Petersburg when her mother was startled by the
+blowing up of the street in front of their house by an infernal machine
+intended to obliterate the Czar; in the sledge in which he was supposed
+to be riding, a colonel of the _chevalier-gardes_, who resembled him,
+had been injured, but the incident was kept hushed up.
+
+One of the old servants whose age entitled his maunderings to respect
+among his superstitious fellows had, thereupon, prophesied that the
+new-born babe would end its life by violence.
+
+"It is time I should quit the house," she muttered, drawing her veil
+over her eyes, of which the lids nervously trembled. "I cannot hear
+those pop-guns without consternation."
+
+She hurried forth without a regret, and passed, as a hundred times
+before, the family vault in the cemetery, where her murdered infant
+reposed, without a farewell glance, although she might never see the
+place again.
+
+On coming within sight of the station, she perceived a solitary figure,
+that of a man, in a fashionable caped cloak, crossing the fields in the
+same direction as hers. It was probably the viscount going to it
+separately in order not to compromise her and give a clue to the true
+cause of her flight.
+
+Sometimes the unexpected comes to the help of the wicked. Incredible as
+it appeared, she received, on the eve of her departure, a telegram from
+Paris. At first she thought it a device of Viscount Gratian's to cover
+her elopement, but it was not possible for him to have imagined the
+appeal. It was from her uncle, who, traveling in France, and intending
+to pay her a visit since she was married honorably, was stricken with a
+malady. He awaited her at a hotel. Even Von Sendlingen could not have
+drawn up this message too simple not to be genuine and too precise in
+the genealogical allusions not to be a Russian's and a Dobronowska's.
+
+She regarded this cloak as the act of her "fate"--the evil person's
+providence. She handed the paper to Hedwig to be given to her husband as
+an explanation at a later hour.
+
+Césarine was still watching him when she saw him disappear suddenly. It
+was in crossing an unnailed plank thrown across a drain-cutting. This
+must have turned or broken under his feet unexpectedly, for his fall was
+complete. In the ditch which received him, darkness ruled but it seemed
+to Césarine that more shadows than one were engaged in deadly strife,
+standing deep in the mire. They wore the aspect of the demons dragging
+down a soul in an infernal bog.
+
+What increased the horror was the silence in which the tragedy was
+enacted; probably the unfortunate Gratian had been seized by the throat
+as soon as he dropped confused into the assassin's clutches.
+
+Halfway between this scene and the dismayed looker on, another shadow
+rose and appeared to take the direction to accost her instead of
+hurrying to the victim's succor. This made him resemble an accomplice,
+and, breaking the spell, Césarine hurried on without the power to force
+a scream for help from her choking throat.
+
+At that moment, while a strong fascination kept her head turned toward
+the field, a long beam from the locomotive's head-light shot across it.
+It fell for an instant on the solitary form and though its arm made an
+upward movement to obscure its face, she believed that she recognized
+her husband.
+
+Clemenceau on her track! Clemenceau, in concord with the bravest who had
+smothered her gallant in the mud! she had scorned him too much! He was
+capable even of cowardly acts, of being revenged for this renewed
+disgrace upon his ill-fated house!
+
+This time her feet were unchained and she flew up the hill. She thought
+of nothing but to escape the double revenge of the husband she wronged,
+and Von Sendlingen whom she had cheated.
+
+She took her ticket mechanically and entered a coach marked for "Ladies
+Only."
+
+They whisked toward Paris swiftly, before any sinister face looked in at
+the window, or she had time to reflect. In her pocket was the real case
+of the sight-drafts for which she had palmed a duplicate filled with cut
+paper, upon the unlucky viscount. She was rich enough to make a home
+wherever money reigns--a broad enough domain.
+
+The arrival of her relative and the summons to his sick-bed made her
+pause in her movements suddenly altered by the death of the viscount.
+She was almost happy in her foresight by which she had defrauded him and
+his associates. Now, the loss of him stood by itself; she was free to
+use the money as she pleased. She feared Von Sendlingen but little,
+since she would have a good start of him if he pursued.
+
+Should she keep on or see her uncle? Pity for him, a stranger, perhaps
+dying in a hotel, most inhospitable shelter to an invalid, did not enter
+her heart. She had seen her lover murdered without a spark of
+communication, and was now glad that he could never call her to account
+for the theft. But a vague expectation of benefiting by the pretense of
+affection--the desire to have some support in case of Von Sendlingen
+attacking--the excuse and cover her ministration at the sick-bed would
+afford, all these reasons united to guide her to the Hotel de l'Aigle
+aux deux Becs, in the rue Caumartin.
+
+Her uncle was no longer there. His stroke of paralysis had frightened
+the proprietor who suggested his removal to a private hospital, but M.
+Dobronowska had preferred to be attended to in the house, a little out
+of St. Denis, of an acquaintance. It was Mr. Lesperon's, the abode of a
+once noted poetess, whose husband had enjoyed Dobronowska's hospitality
+in Finland and who had tried to repay the obligation.
+
+Césarine recalled the name; this lady had been a friend of her aunt's
+and she felt she would not be intruding. After playing the nurse, by
+which means she could ascertain whether she would be remembered
+generously in the patient's will, she could continue her flight or
+retrace her steps.
+
+Under cover of Hedwig, she could learn, secretly if she preferred it,
+all that occurred at Montmorency. She found her grand-uncle broken with
+age and serious attack; he was delighted by her beauty and to hear that
+she was so happy in her married life! Evidently he was rich, and she had
+not acted foolishly in going to see him.
+
+Madame Lesperon and her husband recalled her grandmother--whose death
+she did not describe--and her aunt, over whose fate they politely
+blurred the rather lurid tints. Madame Lesperon, as became a poetess,
+saw the loveliness of Clemenceau's idea of separation in marrying his
+cousin and expressed a wish to compliment him face-to-face. Césarine was
+not so sure that he would come to town to escort her home, he was so
+engrossed in an important project.
+
+She let three days pass without writing a line, alleging that she had
+not the heart while her dear uncle was in danger and that her husband
+knew, of course, where she was piously engaged.
+
+The next morning, Madame Lesperon, a regular reader of the newspapers in
+expectation of the announcement of her poems having at last been
+commended by the Académie, came up to the sick-room with the _Debats_.
+
+"Ah, sly puss," said she, with a smile, "let me congratulate you. One
+can know now why you were so close about your husband's mysterious
+project. Rejoice, dear, for all France rejoices with you."
+
+Césarine stared all her wonder. The newspapers trumpeting her husband's
+name and not in the satirical tone in which the people hail a disaster
+to a George Dandin.
+
+"The privately appointed committee which has been for some weeks
+thoroughly investigating the marvelous invention--a revolution in
+truth--in gunnery, at the Villa Reine-Claude, Montmorency, have
+deposited a preliminary report at the Ministry of War. We are not at
+liberty to state more than the prodigious result. On a miniature scale,
+but which could be enlarged from millimètres to miles without, we are
+assured, affecting the demonstration, it has been proved that the new
+gun will throw solid shot twelve miles and its special shell nearly
+fifteen. The model target was a row of pegs representing piles strongly
+driven into clay, a little apart, with the interstices filled with racks
+of stones. Two of the new-shaped projectiles dropped on this mark, left
+not enough wood to make a match and enough stone to strike a light upon
+it, while not a splinter of the missile could be found. Judge what would
+happen if they had fallen on a regiment or into a city. Thanks to the
+unremitting devotion of this son of France, his country can regard with
+complacency the monstrous preparations for unprovoked war which a rival
+realm is ostentatiously making."
+
+The other journals repeated the paragraph in much the same language. The
+evening edition added that the happy inventor would not have to wait
+long for his reward. The Emperor, always a connoisseur in artillery, had
+sent him ten thousand francs from his private purse simply as a faint
+token of appreciation. "Those familiar with what, in these rapid times,
+is the ancient history of Paris, may remember that a stain was attached
+to the name of Clemenceau. In his son, it will shine untarnished, and go
+down to posterity glorious with lustre."
+
+"What a fool I have been," thought Césarine. "I fled with a silly fellow
+who had no more sense than to fall into a trap, for a paltry handful of
+drafts that may not be paid on presentation, and desert a husband who
+will be one of the millionaire-inventors of his country!"
+
+Reflecting in the night, she radically reversed her programme.
+
+Her uncle had recovered from the stroke but the physician warned him
+that the next would kill him. He was happy in the cares of the Lesperons
+and his grandniece, none of whom would be forgotten when the hour struck
+for him to leave his worldly goods. Césarine could quit him in
+confidence of a handsome inheritance at not a distant day.
+
+Her flight and absence were commendable in the world's most censorious
+eyes. Only one thought perplexed her: was it her husband who had
+officiated at the execution of her gallant? If so, her lie would not
+hold. But in doubt a shameless sinner chooses to brazen it out.
+
+"I should be a confirmed imbecile to let this chance go and not resume
+my authorized position. Ah, his time, without infamy, I can preside at
+the board where the high officials will gladly sit--I shall have
+generals at my feet, perhaps a marshal! Yes, I will go home and brazen
+it out!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII.
+
+WHEN THE CAT'S AWAY.
+
+
+Ten days after the sudden departure of Madame Clemenceau from her
+residence, a little before daybreak, Hedwig came down through the house
+to draw up the blinds and open the windows. She carried a small
+night-lamp and was not more than half awake.
+
+It was the noise of the great invention which had turned the tranquil
+group of villas and cherry orchards into a rendezvous for the singular
+admixture of artilleries and scientific luminaries. The peaceful villa
+entertained a selection of them nightly and it is astonishing how
+heartily the military men ate and the professors drank, for the
+enthusiasm had turned all heads.
+
+Hedwig entered the fine old drawing-room where the symposium had been
+held. It was a capacious room, not unlike an English baronial hall, the
+doorways and windows were furnished with old Gobelin tapestry and the
+heavy furniture was of mahogany, imported when France drew generously on
+her colonies. The long table had been roughly cleared after supper by
+the summary process of bundling all the plates up in the cloth. On it
+had been replaced, for the final debate, drawings and models of the guns
+considered absolute after the novel Clemenceau Cannon. On a
+pedestal-pillar stood a large clock, representing, with figures at the
+base, the forge of Vulcan; his Cyclops had hammered off six strokes a
+little preceding the servant's entrance.
+
+"A quarter past six," she said, yawning. "It will soon be light."
+
+She drew the curtains and pulled the cord which caused the shade to roll
+itself up in each of the three tall windows, before returning to the
+table where she had left her now useless lamp. With a half-terrified
+look, she began to arrange the pretty little cannon, exquisitely modeled
+in nickel and bronze, and miniature shot, shell, chain-shot, etc., which
+she handled with a curiosity rather instinctive than studied. In the
+midst of her mechanically executed work, she was startled by a gentle
+rapping on the plate-glass of a window. The sight of a face in the grey
+morning glimmer startled her still more, but, luckily, she recognized
+it. After hesitation, she crossed the room in surprise and unbolted the
+two sashes, which opened like double doors.
+
+"Hedwig!" said a woman's voice warily speaking, "open to me!"
+
+The girl held the sashes widely apart, muttering:
+
+"The mistress! why the mischief has she come back when we were getting
+on so nicely."
+
+But, letting the new-comer pass her, she tried to smoothe her face, and
+don the smile as stereotyped in servants as in ballet-dancers, while she
+continued the letting in of the daylight to gain time to recover her
+countenance.
+
+Césarine threw off a cloak, trimmed with fur, and more suitable for a
+colder season, but it was a sable with a sprinkling of isolated white
+hairs most peculiar and a present from her granduncle. She tottered and
+seemed weak, for she had concluded that an affection of illness would
+aid her re-entrance. As Hedwig extinguished the lamp, she sank into an
+arm-chair. She curiously glanced around and inhaled with a questioning
+flutter of the nostrils the lasting odor of cigars and Burgundy, which
+the air retained. In this gloomy apartment where she had often sat
+alone, sure not to be disturbed, the suggestion of uproarious jollity
+hurt her dignity. A singular way to express sorrow and shame at the loss
+of a wife by calling in boon companions! This did not seem like Felix
+Clemenceau, sober and austere, thus to drown care in champagne.
+
+"Are you alone, girl?" she inquired, looking round with a powerful
+impression that the house had unexpected inmates.
+
+"Yes. No one is up yet in the house," responded Hedwig, sharing her
+mistress' uneasiness, though from a less indefinite reason; "at all
+events, nobody has come down yet. But how did you see that it was I who
+came in here before the shades were drawn up?"
+
+"Well, I had made a little peep-hole to see what my husband and his
+fellow conspirator were about, in the time before they shut themselves
+up in their studio. But, if it is my turn to put questions," she went on
+with some offended dignity, "how is it that the back door is bolted as
+well as barred and that I have had to sneak in like a malefactor?"
+
+"If you please, madame, it is the rule to be very careful about
+fastening up, since you went away."
+
+"Oh, on the principle of locking the stable-door when the steed--"
+
+"Oh! they fear the loss of something which, without offense, I may say,
+they esteem more highly than you."
+
+Hedwig answered without even a little impertinence and the other did not
+resent what sounded discourteous.
+
+"Then they do not lock up to keep me out?" she questioned.
+
+"It might be a little bit that way, too."
+
+"It is a new habit. Did the master suggest it?"
+
+"Not the master altogether, madame, but his partner."
+
+"Eh! do you mean Antonino? Monsieur had already lifted him up to be his
+associate, his confidant, his friend, to the exclusion of his lawful
+friend and confidant, his wife--and now, does he make him his partner?"
+
+"No, madame; though he has a good fat share in the enterprise. It is M.
+Daniels who found the funds for the new company in which the master is
+engaged, and he manages the house to leave the master all his time to go
+on inventing and entertaining the grand folks we have to dinner."
+
+"Mr. Daniels! not the old Jew who played that queer straight trumpet at
+Munich--"
+
+"Yes, the turkophone! Ah, he has no need to go about the music halls
+now--he is, if not rich, the man who leads rich men by the nose, to come
+and deposit their superfluous cash in our strong-box."
+
+And she pointed fondly to a large iron-clamped coffin which occupied the
+space between two of the windows. It was a novelty, for Césarine did not
+recollect seeing it before. Continuing her survey, it seemed to her
+that she noticed a different arrangement of the ornaments than when she
+was queen here, and that the fresh flowers in the vases and two
+palmettoes in urns were placed with a taste the German maid had never
+shown.
+
+"Let me see! this Jewish Orpheus had a daughter--"
+
+"Exactly; she never leaves him. She has rooms within his just the same
+as at our house in Munich. It appears that Jew parents trust their
+pretty daughters no farther than they can see them. But I do not blame
+M. Daniels," went on Hedwig, enthusiastically, "she is so lovely!"
+
+Césarine rose partly, supporting herself with her hands on the arms of
+the chair. Her eyes flashed like blue steel and her whole frame vibrated
+with kindled rage.
+
+"Do you mean to tell me, girl, that Mademoiselle Rebecca--as her name
+went, I think--is now the mistress of my house?"
+
+"In your absence," returned Hedwig, drawlingly, "somebody had to
+preside, for neither the master, the old gentleman nor M. Antonino take
+the head of the dinner-table with the best grace. It is true that our
+guests are not very particular if the wine flows freely. I do not think
+the young lady likes the position, for I know the old, be-spectacled
+professors are as pestering with their attentions as the insolent
+officers. She would have been so delighted at the relief promised by
+your return that she would run to meet you and you would not have been
+repulsed at the door."
+
+"I daresay," replied Madame Clemenceau, frowning, and tapping the waxed
+wood floor impatiently with her foot. "I did not care to announce my
+return home with a flourish of trumpets. I was not averse to taking the
+house by surprise, and seeing what a transformation has gone on since I
+went away. Besides, it is desirable, not to say necessary, that I should
+speak with you before seeing the others."
+
+Hedwig pouted a little.
+
+"You ought to have written to me, madame, as we were agreed, I thought;
+I have been on tenderhooks because of your silence. I did not even guess
+where you were."
+
+"I did not wish it known for a while, and even then, it appears, I spoke
+too soon," said Césarine gloomily.
+
+"You did not want me to know, madame?" questioned the servant in
+surprise and with a trace of suspicion.
+
+"Not even you," and hanging her head, she sank into meditation, not
+pleasant, to judge by her hopeless expression.
+
+The servant, who had the phlegmatic brain of her people, was stupefied
+for a little time, then, recovering some vivacity, she inquired
+hesitatingly as though she was never at her ease with the subtle woman.
+
+"Is madame going away without more than a glance around?"
+
+"Why do you talk such nonsense?" queried her mistress, looking up
+abruptly.
+
+The girl intimated that the mysterious entrance portended secrecy to be
+preserved. And, again, the lady had come without baggage, even so much
+as in eloping from home. But Madame Clemenceau explained, with the most
+natural air in the world, that she had walked over from the railway
+station, where her impedimenta remained.
+
+"Walked half a mile?" ejaculated Hedwig, who knew that the speaker had
+been vigorous enough at Munich, but, since her marriage, and living at
+Montmorency, she had assumed the popular air of a semi-invalid, "So you
+are strong in health again?"
+
+"Yes; but I have been very unwell," replied the lady, sinking back in
+the chair as she remembered the course she had intended to adopt. "I was
+very nearly at death's door," she sighed. "I really believed that I
+should nevermore see any of you, my poor husband and you others. Do you
+think that anything hut a severe ailment could excuse me for my strange
+silence--my apparently wicked absence?"
+
+Hedwig went on going through the form of dusting the huge metal-bound
+chest, which had attracted the mistress' eyes as a new article of
+furniture. Had her husband turned miser since Fortune had whirled on her
+wheel at his door as soon as she quitted it? It was not Hedwig's place,
+and it was not in her power to solve enigmas, so she answered nothing.
+
+"My uncle was terribly afflicted," said the lady.
+
+"Your uncle?"
+
+Hedwig's incredulous tone implied that she had not believed in the
+authenticity of the telegram.
+
+"Yes; my granduncle. He was within an ace of dying, and the shock made
+me so bad, after nursing him toward recovery, it was I who stood in
+peril of death. My friends sent for a priest and I confessed."
+
+The girl opened her eyes in wonder and a kind of derision, for she did
+not belong to the aristocratic creed.
+
+"Confessed?" reiterated she; "ah, yes; people confess when they are very
+bad. Was it a complete confession, madame?" she saucily inquired.
+
+"Complete as all believers should make when on the brink of the grave,"
+replied Madame Clemenceau, in her gravest tone to repress the tendency
+to frivolity, for she had not resented the incredulity as regarded
+herself.
+
+"I dare say," said Hedwig, who certainly had one of her lucid intervals,
+"it is as when a body is traveling, one is in such a hurry that
+something is forgotten. You went away so sharply that you forgot to say
+good-bye to the master! if you spoke at all! Whatever did the
+father-confessor say?"
+
+"He gave me very good advice."
+
+"Which you are following, madame?"
+
+"When one not only has seen death smite another beside one but flit
+close by oneself, I assure you, girl, it forces one to reflect. Oh, how
+dreadful the nights are in the sick chamber, with a night-light dimly
+burning and the sufferer moaning and tossing! Then my turn came to
+occupy the patient's position, and it was frightful. Can you not see I
+am much altered--horrid, in fact?"
+
+Hedwig shook her head; without flattery, well as her mistress assumed
+the air of languor, her figure had not been affected by any event since
+the slaying of the Viscount Gratian, and her countenance was unmarred by
+any change except a trifling pallor.
+
+"Yes; after my uncle grew better, I was indisposed and should have died
+but for the cares of an old friend, Madame Lesperon the Female Bard. But
+you would not know this favorite of the Muses. You are not poetically
+inclined, Hedwig!" she added, laughingly. Rising with animation, "but
+that makes no matter! I am glad to see you home again. I thought of you,
+Hedwig, and I have bought you something pretty to wear on your days
+out--bought it in Paris, too."
+
+"Is that so?" exclaimed the girl, much less absent and saucy in the curl
+of her lip; "you are always kind."
+
+"Yes; they are in my new trunk, for which you had better send the
+gardener at once. He is not forgotten either. There is a set of jewelry,
+too, in the old Teutonic style. They say now in Paris that any idea of
+war between France and Prussia is absurd, and there is a revulsion in
+feeling--the vogue is all for German things. I am not sorry that I know
+how to dress in their style, and I have some genuine Rhenish jewelry,
+which become me very well."
+
+"I see that madame has indeed not altered," remarked Hedwig, plentifully
+adorned with smiles, as the sunshine streamed into the grave apartment.
+"You have fresh projects of captivating the men!" Césarine smiled also,
+and nodded several times.
+
+"Here?" cried the girl, in surprise.
+
+"Certainly here, since I understand you are receiving company in
+shoals."
+
+"That is all over now, madame, and I am sorry, for the callers were very
+generous to me. It appears that the War Ministry do not approve of
+strangers running about Montmorency and into the abode of the great
+inventor of ordinances--"
+
+"Ordnance, child," corrected Madame Clemenceau.
+
+"And the house is sealed up, as you found it, against all comers. We
+have nobody here for you to try graces upon except Mademoiselle
+Rebecca's papa--and he being a Jew, you must not go near him, fresh from
+the confessional."
+
+Madame Clemenceau seemed to be musing.
+
+"I forgot--there's young M. Antonino," continued the servant.
+
+Césarine made a contemptuous gesture, expressive of the conquest being
+too easy.
+
+"Such sallow youth are best left to platonic love, it's more proper,
+and to them, quite as entertaining."
+
+"Well, madame," said Hedwig, like a cheap Jack, holding up the last of
+his stock, "they are the only men I can offer you; for, since we have
+been firing off guns and cannon, our neighbors have moved away right and
+left--we are so lonely. No servant would stay a week!"
+
+"Those the only men?" said the returned fugitive; "Hedwig, this is not
+polite for your master."
+
+"Oh, madame, a husband never counts."
+
+"You are very much mistaken. He does _count_--his money, I suppose, if
+that is his cash-box." And, yielding to her girlish curiosity, she went
+over to the steel-plated chest and avariciously contemplated it,
+
+"Not at all, madame. That is where they lock up the writings and
+drawings about the new gun!"
+
+"Oh, what do they say?"
+
+"Nothing a Christian can make head or tail of," returned the servant
+reservedly. "They write now in a hand no honest folk ever used. An old
+man who ought to have known better--the Jew--he taught the master, and
+they call it siphon--"
+
+"Cipher, I suppose? It appears the newspapers are right!" resumed the
+lady. "He is a great man!" and she clapped her hands.
+
+Hedwig regarded her puzzled, till her brow unwrinkling at last, she
+exclaimed:
+
+"Upon my word, I believe you have fallen in love with master."
+
+"You might have said: I am still in love. That is why I return to his
+side."
+
+"If you tell him that is the reason," said this speaker, who used much
+Teutonic frankness to her superiors, "you will astonish him more than
+you did me by popping in this morning. He will not believe you."
+
+Madame Clemenceau smiled as those women do who can warp men round to
+their way of thinking.
+
+"But he will! Besides, if it is a difficult task, so much the
+better--when a deed is impossible, it tempts one."
+
+"Well, as far as I can see, madame, that is an odd idea for you to have
+had when far away from master."
+
+"Pish! did you never hear the saying that 'Absence makes the heart grow
+fonder?' Oh, girl, I had so much deep meditation as I stared at the dim
+night-light," and she shuddered and looked a little pale.
+
+"Well, madame, I should have rolled over and shut my eyes," said the
+matter-of-fact maid.
+
+There was more truth in the lady's speech than her hearer gave her
+credit for. She was no exception to the rule that the wives of great
+inventors almost never properly appreciate them. By the light of his
+success, breaking forth like the sun, she feared that the greatest error
+of her life had been made when she miscomprehended him. In her dreams as
+well as her insomnia, it was Clemenceau that she beheld, and not the
+gallants who had flashed across her uneven path, not even the viscount,
+whose spoil was her nest-egg. Alas! it was a mere atom to the solid
+ingot which her misunderstood husband's genius had ensured. She had
+perhaps lost the substance in snapping at the shadow.
+
+"Any way, I love my husband," she proceeded, moaning aloud, and resting
+her chin in the hollow of her hand--the elbow on the table, to which she
+had returned and where she was seated. "I am sure now."
+
+"No doubt," said the servant, unconsciously holding the feather duster
+as a soldier holds his rifle; "madame has heard about our great
+discoveries in artillery? They are revo--revolutionizing--oof! What a
+mouthful--the military world!"
+
+"Yes; I read the newspaper accounts during my convalescence," replied
+Madame Clemenceau.
+
+"Then you fell in love with your husband because of his cannon," said
+Hedwig, laughing. "I do not see what connection there is between them,
+and, in fact," reflecting a little and suddenly laughing more loudly, "I
+hear that cannons produce breaches rather than re-union. Well, after
+all, if cannons do not further love, its a friend to glory and riches!
+The Emperor, some of our visitors said, is very fond of artillery, and
+he will give master immense contracts from the report of the examining
+committee being so favorable."
+
+"Really, Hedwig, you are becoming quite learned from the association
+with scientists. What long words you use!
+
+"That's nothing," said the servant, complacently.
+
+"There is no word difficult in French to a German. but I can tell you
+that, as we cannot live on air, and these promises do not bear present
+fruit, master has been forced to sell this house."
+
+"Eh! why is that? I like the place well enough."
+
+"You were not here to be consulted, madame, and, we wanted the money.
+Master does not wish to be obliged to M. Daniels and, besides, he, too,
+does not get in the cash for his company any too rapidly. Master ran
+into debt while making his guns and cannon, and we have been pinched for
+ready money."
+
+"I am glad to hear it!" ejaculated Césarine, without spitefulness, and
+with more sincerity than she had spoken previously.
+
+The girl stared without understanding.
+
+"I have money--cash--to help him, and it will be far more proper for
+him to be obliged to his wife than to strangers. Besides, I should not
+tax him with usurious interest," she said maliciously.
+
+"Money, madame," said the servant with her widely opened eyes still more
+distending.
+
+"I have two hundred thousand francs, that is, nearly as many marks,
+coming from my good uncle who is a little late in doing me a
+kindness--but my attention touched him. But do I not hear
+steps--somebody at last moving in the house?"
+
+"Very likely," replied the servant tranquilly, "but nobody will come in
+here, before master has breakfast. Since he stores his secrets in that
+chest, and no company drops in, this is a hermitage. Mademoiselle
+Rebecca is not one of the prying sort."
+
+Madame Clemenceau, who had risen with more nervous anxiety than she
+cared to display to the servants, stood by her chair, looking toward the
+door.
+
+"Has he talked about me, sometimes?"
+
+"Master? never--not before me, anyway, madame."
+
+"Yet you gave him the telegram that explained all?"
+
+"Yes, madame; but not until some time after your departure and when
+master had returned from a promenade alone. I know he was alone, because
+M. Antonino was racing about to show him some of his wonderful
+experiments."
+
+Beyond a doubt, it was Clemenceau who had stood witness to the tragedy
+in the meadow. Hence his inattention to the Russian's despatch, which he
+naturally would disbelieve, and probably to her prolonged absence.
+
+It was humiliating that he had not searched for her.
+
+"What! no allusion to my stay--no hint of my possible return?"
+
+"His silence has been perfect as the grave. Next morning after you left
+and did not return, master looked at the cover which I had from habit
+placed for you, and remarked: 'Oh, by the way, you will have another to
+lay to-morrow, as we shall have two guests for, I hope, a long time.' He
+meant the Danielses, madame. Their coming made it a little livelier for
+him and M. Antonino."
+
+"It looks like a plot," murmured Césarine, indignantly, as she pictured
+the happy reunions out of which she had been displaced in memory--not
+even her untouched plate left as memento! her chair taken by Rebecca
+Daniels!
+
+"Mr. Daniels is like M. Antonino, too!" continued Hedwig. "Not only is
+he getting up the company for the master's inventions, but for the young
+gentleman's--he has made such a marvel of a rifle--they put a tin box
+into it, and lo! you can fire three hundred shots as quick as a wink! I
+walk in terror since I heard of it! and I touch things as if they would
+go off and make mince-meat of me in the desert to it."
+
+"Never mind that!" cried Madame Clemenceau, testily.
+
+"Although the connection between piping at music halls and enchanting
+the bulls and bears of the Bourse is not clear to me, I can understand
+how M. Daniels, as a financial agent, should be lodging under our roof,
+but his daughter--"
+
+"She is our housekeeper, and, to tell the plain truth, madame, we have
+lived nicely, although money was scarce, since she ruled the roost. Ah,
+these Jews are clever managers!"
+
+Césarine did not like the earnest tone of praise and hastened to say
+bluntly:
+
+"I suppose, then, she threw the spell over him again which once before,
+at Munich, caused him, a tame bookworm, to fight for her like a
+king-maker?"
+
+"Mademoiselle Rebecca! she act the fascinatress!" exclaimed Hedwig, with
+a burst of indignation.
+
+"What is there extraordinary, pray, in a husband, apparently deserted by
+his wife, paying attention to another handsome young woman?"
+
+"Why, madame, you must forget that master is the most honorable
+gentleman as ever was, and that Mademoiselle Rebecca is a perfect lady!"
+Then, perceiving that her enthusiasm on the latter head was not welcome
+to the hearer, Hedwig, added: "but it does not matter. We are receiving
+no more company, lest the great secret leak out, and so we don't need a
+lady at the table. She is going away with her father, who is to open the
+Rifle Company's offices in Paris, and that's all!"
+
+"It is quite enough!" remarked the other, frowning.
+
+"What is the last word about him?" inquired the servant, "the
+viscount-baron, I mean."
+
+"M. de Terremonde?"
+
+"Yes; you haven't said a word about him."
+
+"Do you not know?" began Césarine, shuddering as the scene in the
+twilight arose before her on the background of the sombre side of the
+room.
+
+"He was not likely to return hereabouts. Master might have tried the new
+rifle upon him," with a suppressed laugh.
+
+"Well, if you do not know, I need only say that I am perfectly ignorant
+of his whereabouts. I went to town without his escort, and I suppose--if
+he has disappeared," she concluded with emphasis, "that he has gone on a
+journey of pleasure, or is dead."
+
+"Dead," uttered Hedwig, shuddering in her turn, "in what a singular
+tone you say that word."
+
+"What concern is it of mine?" questioned Madame Clemenceau, pursing up
+her lips to conceal a little fluttering from the dread she felt at the
+effectual way in which her lover had been removed from mortal knowledge.
+"I do not mind declaring that, if I am given any choice in the matter, I
+should prefer his taking the latter course."
+
+Hedwig's teeth chattered so that the other looked hard at her till she
+faltered the explanation:
+
+"Your way of saying things, madame, gives me cold shivers up and down
+the back--ugh! Why, that gentleman was over head and ears in love with
+you!"
+
+"That is why he probably went under so quickly, and could not keep his
+head above water!"
+
+"I thought you liked him a goodish bit--"
+
+"I--oh!"
+
+An explosion, very sharp and peculiarly splitting the air, resounded
+under the windows and caused Césarine to clap her hands to her ears in
+terror.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII.
+
+THE REVOLUTION IN ARTILLERY.
+
+
+"Oh, what is that?" muttered Césarine, with white lips.
+
+Hedwig laughed, but going to the window, calmly replied:
+
+"It is only the master--no, it is M. Antonino, who is trying the rifle
+they invented. Isn't it funny, though--it does not use powder or
+anything of that sort--it does not shoot out fire, but only the bullet,
+and there's no smoke! I never heard of such a thing, and I call it
+magic!"
+
+"A gun without powder, and no fire or smoke," repeated Madame
+Clemenceau. "It is, indeed, a marvel!" and she approached the window in
+uncontrollable curiosity. "Is he going to shoot again?"
+
+"Well, he gets an appetite by popping at the sparrows before breakfast.
+He is not much of a marksman like master, who is dead on the center,
+every military officer says--but, in the morning, the birds' wings are
+heavy with dew, and he makes a very pretty bag now and then. What must
+the sparrows think to be killed and not smell any powder!"
+
+"I wish you would tell him to go farther, or leave off!" said Césarine,
+looking out at the young man with the light rifle, fascinated but
+fearing.
+
+"The obedience will be more prompt if you would tell him, madame,"
+returned the maid, "for M. Antonino would do anything for you. To think
+that there should really be something that frightens you!"
+
+"After my illness, I am afraid of everything."
+
+"Very well, I will stop him."
+
+Opening the window, Hedwig called to the Italian by name, and said, on
+receiving his answer:
+
+"Please not to shoot any more!"
+
+"Why not?" came the reply in the mellow voice of the Italian.
+
+"Come in and you'll learn." But she shut the window to intimate that he
+was to enter the house by the door as he had issued, and hastily
+returned to her mistress.
+
+The latter had tottered to the side-board, and seized a decanter, but,
+in the act of pouring out a glass of water, she paused suspiciously.
+
+"Is this good to drink?" she warily inquired.
+
+"Of course, though you are quite right--they do juggle with a lot of
+queer acids and the like dangerous stuff here! They give me the warning
+sometimes after their _swim-posiums_, as they call the sociables, not to
+touch anything till they come down, for poisons are about. Ugh! But do
+not drink so much cold water so early in the morning--it is unhealthy.
+If it were only good beer, now, it would not matter! _Ach_, Müchen!" and
+Hedwig vulgarly smacked her lips.
+
+"After my illness I have been always thirsty, and, sometimes, I seem to
+have infernal fires in my bosom!" sighed Madame Clemenceau, putting down
+the glass with a hand so hot that the crystal was clouded with steam.
+
+Her teeth chattered, as a sudden chill followed the flush, and Hedwig
+shrank back in alarm--the beautiful face became transformed into such a
+close likeness to a wolf's. "You need not be scared any more, for he has
+come into the house. Here he is, too!" and she sprang to the door, as
+well to open it to M. Antonino, as to screen her mistress until she
+cared to reveal her presence.
+
+Perhaps it was application to the work and not pining over the absence
+of Césarine, but the Italian showed evidence of sleeplessness and his
+pallor had the unpleasant cast of the Southerners when out of spirits.
+
+His eyes were enfevered and his lips dry and cracked. He carried a
+handsome fowling-piece, which presented, at first glance, no feature of
+dissimilarity to the usual pattern except that trigger and hammer were
+absent, and the rim of the barrel was not blackened from the recent
+discharge.
+
+"What did you stop me for when I had hardly more than begun my sport and
+practice?" he inquired.
+
+"Put down that devil's own gun, sir monsieur," said Hedwig, "if you
+please."
+
+"Why, what's the matter?" said he, while obeying by standing the rifle
+in a corner. "I thought you Germans were all daughters or sweethearts of
+soldiers."
+
+"Ay, and most of us women would make as good soldiers as they have here;
+but I was speaking because you gave a shock to madame."
+
+Stepping aside, Antonino discovered Madame Clemenceau, who smiled
+softly.
+
+"Oh, madame!" ejaculated Antonino, at the height of astonishment, not
+unmixed with gladness. "I beg your pardon; I am very sorry--I mean
+glad--that is, I was not aware--if I had had any idea you were home--"
+
+"You could not have known," she answered in a gentle voice. "I was too
+eager to get back, to delay to send a line. As for the noise, another
+time it might not matter, but I came here by an early morning train and
+I had no rest before I started. I am very fatigued and nervous, and the
+shot so sudden, surprised me. For a little while to come, I should like
+you to repeat your experiments with firearms at a distance from the
+house. Is--is that the new kind of rifle?" she inquired, with the
+timidity of a child introduced to the new watchdog.
+
+"Yes, madame!" and his eyes blazing with pride, he proceeded, as he
+crossed the room and returned with the firearm, "it is altogether a new
+invention. Master is an innovator, indeed!"
+
+"Do you object to showing it to me?" continued Césarine, pleased that
+the enthusiasm gave an excuse for her not entering into an explanation
+of her absence which, even if more plausible than that Hedwig had
+doubtingly received, would require all of Antonino's affectionate faith
+in her to win credence. "I do not object. Even those experienced in the
+old weapons can inspect it and not learn much," he went on, with the
+same pride; "but I thought it frightened you!"
+
+"It did--it does, but I ought to overcome such a ridiculous feeling! I,
+above all women, being a gun-inventor's wife! Is it loaded?" she asked,
+while hesitatingly holding out her hand to take it.
+
+Hedwig had prudently backed over to the window which she held a little
+open to make a leap out for escape in case of accident. Her mistress
+took the rifle and turned it over and over; certainly, it resembled no
+gun she had ever handled before. Its simplicity daunted her and
+irritated her.
+
+"It seems to have two barrels," she remarked, "although one is closed as
+if not to be used. Is it double-barrelled?"
+
+"There are two barrels, or, more accurately speaking, a barrel for
+discharge of the projectile and a chamber for the explosive substance,
+which is the secret."
+
+"Then you load by the muzzle, like the old-fashioned guns?"
+
+"Oh, no; there is no load, no cartridge, as you understand it; only the
+missiles, and they are inserted by the quantity in the breach."
+
+"And there is no trigger or hammer!" exclaimed Césarine, not yet at the
+end of her wonder.
+
+"Obsolete contrivances, always catching in the clothes or in the
+brambles, and causing the death or maiming of many an excellent man. We
+have changed all that by doing away with appendages altogether. This
+disc, when pressed, allows so much of the explosive matter to enter the
+barrel and it expels the missile by repeated expansions."
+
+"How very, very curious!" exclaimed Madame Clemenceau, returning the
+piece to Antonino with the vexed air of one reluctantly giving up a
+puzzle to the solution of which a prize was attached. "I should like you
+to make it clear to me--"
+
+"The government forbids!" said the Italian, smiling, and assuming a look
+of preternatural solemnity to make the lady smile and Hedwig laugh
+respectfully. "And, then, the company we are getting up, lays a farther
+prohibition on us. However, you are in the arcana--you are one of the
+privileged, I suppose, and if M. Clemenceau does not expressly bar my
+lessons, you shall learn how to knock over sparrows for your cat."
+
+"You will instruct me?"
+
+"Most gladly!"
+
+"That is nice of you, and I am so sorry at having interrupted your
+experiments."
+
+"Thanks; but we have long since gone beyond the experimental stage. I
+was only trying a new bullet that I fancy the shape of. I ask your
+pardon for having given you a fright." He took her hand and kissed it.
+She beckoned to Hedwig as soon as it was released, and smiled kindly on
+him as she left the room with her servant to dress befittingly to show
+herself to Mademoiselle Rebecca. Had it been only her husband to face,
+she might have been content to look dusty with travel as she had to
+Antonino.
+
+"How you delight that poor gentleman," observed Hedwig, between pity
+and admiration. "You would witch an angel."
+
+"I am only practicing to enchant my husband, you dull creature!" said
+Césarine merrily. "He is a great man, and I have been proud of him from
+the first."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV.
+
+TRULY A MAN.
+
+
+Long after Madame Clemenceau had left the room, the Italian stood in the
+same position as he had taken after kissing her hand. The mild voice
+from the pallid but little changed beauty thrilled him as formerly, and
+went far towards making him as mad as he had been ten days before when
+she had dropped, like an extinguished star, out of that small system. In
+her absence, he had regained quiet and some coolness, and believed he
+had conquered the treasonable passion which threatened his benefactor
+with disgrace. Had she not disgraced him as it was; had she not run away
+with another lover?
+
+Clemenceau had not said one word to his associate about the telegram
+from Paris, which he seemed not to believe, or of the note beginning:
+"The faithless one," by which Von Sendlingen had been warned of
+Gratian's absconding and which he instructed Hedwig to place where her
+master must see it. Hence, the view by Clemenceau of the stamping out of
+the Viscount-baron, for his accomplices had not let the chance pass when
+he stumbled into their ambush, in order to see if the Frenchman in
+jealous spite would assail him.
+
+Clemenceau had recognized his wife and he divined that the lonely man
+making for the same point was the villain, without understanding into
+what deathpit he had fallen.
+
+At the juncture of his being about hurrying after his wife, he heard the
+half-strangled wretch's outcry and the low appeal of humanity
+overpowering the hoarse summons of revenge in his bosom. But when he
+arrived at the broken footway bridge, all was over. A little farther, he
+fancied he saw a shadow in an osier bed, but when he waded to it, all
+was hushed. He called, but no sound responded. All seemed a
+vision--victim and assassins.
+
+And his wife was flying, by the train which had merely stopped to take
+her up. As every resident is known at these suburban stations, he
+refrained from an inquiry which would have made him a laughing-stock.
+
+Since Césarine had returned, the conflict of duty and passion would be
+resumed and he felt sure that he had been defeated before. Reflecting
+profoundly, he could come to no other conclusion than that he ought to
+shun the dangerous traitress.
+
+As he lifted his head, less troubled after arriving at this resolution,
+he was not sorry to see that Clemenceau had silently entered the room.
+
+"Oh, is it you, my dear master?" he exclaimed.
+
+It was not easy on that placid brow to read whether he knew of
+Césarine's return or not.
+
+"Well, are you satisfied with your test this morning?" inquired he.
+"Have you succeeded with the bullets of the new shape?"
+
+"I believe so," answered Antonino, "for the modifications which you
+suggested, improved it in every point they dealt with. They go forth
+clean and the windage is much reduced."
+
+"Is the range improved?"
+
+"At fourteen hundred metres I put two elongated balls into an oak so
+deeply that I could not dig them out with my knife. They struck very
+closely to one another. It is a hundred metres greater distance.
+Inserting the bullets by the mass of twenty-five and firing the two took
+four seconds. I was less careful about marking where the others struck,
+and one that I discharged on my return near the house broke and went
+badly askew. With bullets made by regular moulders, such an accident
+should not happen."
+
+"Have you any left? Let me see."
+
+Antonino took two bullets from his waistcoat pocket; they were unlike
+the ordinary globules, and resembled the long, pointed cylinders of
+modern guns. With a pair of pocket plyers, he broke one to exhibit the
+interior to Clemenceau; it was composed of two metals in curiously
+shaped segments and a chamber in one end contained a loose ball of
+another and heavier metal, on the principle of the quick-silver
+enhancing the force of the blow of the "loaded" executioner's sword. All
+had a novel aspect, but the chief inventor was familiar with the
+arrangement.
+
+"By the cavity in it I have reduced the weight of three to two," went on
+Antonino. "I am in hopes to put in fifty or sixty bullets at a time
+without making the arm too heavy, and that would suffice, considering
+that the replacement of the mass of projectiles requires no appreciable
+time, while the supply of explosive, liquefied air suffices for three
+hundred discharges. The repetition of the emissive force does not jar
+the gun, and the metal of our alloy does not show a strain although the
+gauge induces a pressure of fifty thousand pounds per square inch if it
+were accumulated."
+
+"And the injection valve?"
+
+"It works as easily by pressure on the disc, which replaces the trigger,
+perfectly."
+
+"That was your idea."
+
+"After you put me on the track," returned the Italian, gratefully. "Oh,
+I am still very ignorant in these matters."
+
+"Not more than I, a few months ago. I had not handled a firearm until--"
+he checked himself and frowned; then, tranquilly resuming, he said:
+"Labor, and you will reach the goal!"
+
+Antonino looked on silently as his instructor took the gun and inserted
+the bullet, but when he was going over to the open window, with the
+evident intention to fire off into the garden, he followed and laid his
+hand on his arm, saying animatedly:
+
+"Do not fire!"
+
+"Why not?" returned Clemenceau, but without astonishment. "We live in a
+desert since we have frightened our neighbors away. For two leagues
+around, nobody is about at this hour and everybody within our walls is
+accustomed to the noise of the gas exploding."
+
+"Not everybody," remonstrated Antonino. "Madame Clemenceau has returned
+home and the sound frightens her because so strange."
+
+"It is so. That's another matter," replied the inventor, putting the
+rifle down in the corner without haste.
+
+"Did you know it? Have you seen her?" cried Antonino, struck by the
+remarkable unconcern of his master.
+
+"I knew of it by seeing her, yes, as I was coming down stairs a while
+since--she was going to her rooms from this one, with her maid."
+
+"It's a lucky thing that Mademoiselle Daniels refused to occupy them!"
+exclaimed Antonino. "Why did you not speak to your wife?"
+
+"Because I can have nothing to say to her and she would speak to me
+nothing but lies," said Clemenceau in so severe and convinced a tone
+that the young man remained silent, hurt at the judgment pronounced upon
+his idol by its own high-priest. "What are you brooding over?" he
+inquired, after an embarrassing pause.
+
+"My dear master, I think that I ought to ask leave of absence since I
+have finished the work of designing the bullet most fit for the
+gas-rifle."
+
+"Do you ask leave of me, at your age, as of a schoolmaster?"
+
+The relations between the adopted son and the architect, who had
+mistaken his bent and become an innovator in artillery, had been
+affectionate, and on the younger man's side respectful. He had never
+taken any serious steps without asking his consent.
+
+"Well, where did you think of going?" asked Clemenceau.
+
+"To Paris."
+
+"To show the rifle and projectile complete? No, we can test the latter
+at the new series of firing experiments before the Ordnance Committee.
+The Minister of War and the Emperor will not thank you for disturbing
+them for so little. It was the great gun they wanted. They are wedded to
+the Chassepot for the soldier's gun and, besides, the government musket
+factories are opposed to so great a novelty."
+
+"I need exercise--action--the open air," persisted the Italian.
+
+Clemenceau shook his head. Only the day before, the young man had called
+himself the happiest soul in the world and did not wish to quit
+tranquil Montmorency.
+
+"Well, after you have had your fling, would you hasten back?"
+
+"I--I fear not, master," said he. "I daresay if you and M. Daniels
+should approve, I might have a situation to travel for the Clemenceau
+Rifle Company, for some months, in England or America--and explain the
+value of your invention."
+
+"You wish to be my trumpeter, eh?" said the Frenchman, sadly smiling.
+"But what is to become of me during your absence and of M. Daniels?
+Remember that I have nobody to understand me, sympathize with me, become
+endeared to me, and aid me!"
+
+"I, alone?" repeated the Italian, affected by the melancholy tone common
+to the man of one idea who must, to concentrate his thoughts, set aside
+other ties of union with his race.
+
+"Do you doubt it?"
+
+Antonino felt no doubt. He would be the most to be deplored among men if
+he were not fond of Clemenceau after all that he had done for him. He
+was an orphan vagrant, next to a beggar, when he had been housed by him,
+kept, and highly educated. Then, too, with a frankness not common among
+born brothers, the Frenchman had associated him in all his labors for
+the revolution in the science of artillery--the greatest since Bacon
+discovered gunpowder. All that he was, he owed to the man before him.
+
+"Believe me, father," he said, earnestly, "I esteem and venerate you!"
+
+"And yet you keep secrets from me!" reproached Clemenceau.
+
+"I--I have no secrets."
+
+"I see you are too serious."
+
+"I am only sorrowful--sorrowful at quitting you."
+
+"Why should you do it, I repeat?"
+
+"I am never merry--happiness is not my portion," faltered Antonino, not
+knowing what answer to make.
+
+"That's nothing. Better now than later! At your age, unhappiness is
+easily borne--it is only what the sporting gentlemen call a preliminary
+canter. Wait till you come to the actual race!"
+
+"I am not fit to dwell with others--with grave, earnest men; I am too
+nervous and impressionable."
+
+"Because you come of an excitable race, and your childhood was passed in
+too deep poverty. You will grow out of all that, gradually. Stay here;
+oh, keep with me, for I have need of you and you require a
+companion-soul, soothing like mine. The kind of disappointment you
+experience is not to be cured by change of place. You carry it with you,
+and distance increases and strengthens it, and whenever you meet the
+object again to whom was due the vexation you will perceive that you
+went on the journey for no good."
+
+Antonino looked at the speaker as one regards the mind-reader who has
+answered to the point. Clemenceau fixed him with his serene, unvarying
+eyes, and continued, in an emotionless voice, like a statue, speaking:
+
+"You are in love--and you love my wife."
+
+Antonino started away and involuntarily lifted his hands in a position
+of defense. Averting his eyes and unclenching his fists, he muttered
+sullenly:
+
+"What makes you suppose that?"
+
+"I saw it was so."
+
+At the end of a silence more burdensome than any before the younger man
+found his voice and, as though tears interfered with his utterance,
+said pathetically, and indistinctly:
+
+"Do you not acknowledge, master, now, that I must go; for when I am far
+away, perhaps you will forgive the ingrate!"
+
+Looking at the young man of two-and-twenty, Clemenceau knew by his own
+infatuation at the same tender age with the same woman, that he had
+nothing to forgive him for--little to reproach him. It was youth that
+was to blame, and it had loved. No matter who that Cytherean priestess
+was, he must have adored her whether sister, wife or daughter of dearest
+friend, teacher and paternal patron. But it was clear from the grief
+that had made the youth a melancholy man that he was honorable.
+
+Grief is never, when the outcome of remorse, a useless or evil feeling.
+It is a fair-fighting adversary which has only to be overcome to be a
+sure ally, always ready to defend and protect its victor. In his own
+terse language, that of a mathematician and mechanician who knew no
+words of double meaning.
+
+Clemenceau told the Italian this.
+
+"With your youth and your grief, such a spirit as yours and such a
+friend as you have in me, Anto," he said, "you possess the weapons of
+Achilles."
+
+Antonino thought he was mocking at him and frowned.
+
+"You think I am sneering? Or merely laughing at you? Alas, it is a long
+while since I indulged in laughter. It was this woman, with whom you
+have fallen in love, who froze the laugh forever on my lips! she would
+have been the death of me if I had not overruled her and exterminated
+her within my breast. How I loved her! how I have suffered through
+her--enough to be our united portions of future pain--suffer you no
+more, therefore. You are too young, tender and credulous to try a fall
+with that creature. She must have divined long ago that you were
+enamored of her. She is not too clear-sighted in all things, but she
+sees such effects by intuition. It is very probable that she has
+returned to this house on your account, so suddenly. I could guess that
+she was on the eve of flight, but not that she would return. She always
+needs fresh sensations to make herself believe that she is alive, for
+she is more lifeless than those whom she robbed of life."
+
+Antonino did not understand the allusion, for he had never felt less
+like dying than since Césarine had been seen again.
+
+"I mean that she sends the chill of death into the soul, heart and brain
+of man, and it congeals the marrow in his bones!" said Clemenceau,
+energetically. "You may say that if she is a wicked woman and if,
+whatever her defense, her absence covers some evil step, I ought to
+separate from her. It is all the present state of the law allows. But
+while her absence would have prevented you, or another friend, from
+meeting her, still she would have borne my name. That name I am doubly
+bound to make honorable, for it was stained with blood--that of one of
+her ever-accursed race. My father won an illustrious name and, her
+ancestress, whom he married, was dragging it publically in the mud amid
+all the scandals of society, when he slew her on her couch of gilded
+infamy. Ashamed of this name--not because he was indicated under it, but
+because she had so vilified it--his greatest desire to the friends who
+visited him in the condemned cell, was to have me, his son, change it.
+They had me brought up at a distance under the name of Claudius
+Ruprecht. It might even have happened that another country than that of
+my birth would receive the glory which a heaven-sent idea is to bestow
+upon France. Now, I am more than ever determined that her venom shall
+not sully me. She may cause a little ridicule to arise, but that I can
+scorn. The laugh at Montmorency will not reach Paris, far less echo
+around the globe! For a long time I hoped to enlighten her and redeem
+her, but I have failed. But I am bound to enlighten you and save you, am
+I not? From the feeling you harbor can spring only an additional shame
+for Césarine, and certain, perhaps irreparable woe for you. Stop, turn
+about and look the other way. A man of twenty, who may naturally live
+another three-score years and work during two of them, who would talk to
+you of that nonsense, love's sorrow? That was all very well once, when
+the world revolved slowly and there was little to be done by the people
+who blocked nobody's way. But these are busy times and things to be done
+cannot wait till you finish loving and wailing, or till you die of a
+broken heart without having done anything for your fellow men."
+
+"Bravo!" exclaimed the sympathetical and easily aroused Italian,
+grasping the speaker by the hand and pressing it with revived energy.
+"My excellent leader, you are right!"
+
+"And by and by," said the other, with an effort, as though he had to
+master inward commotion, "when you win a prize from your own country and
+you look for household joys more agreeably to reward you, you may find
+one not far from here at this moment to be your wife. For, generally,
+the bane is near the antidote--the serpent is crushed under the heel
+next the beneficent plant which heals the bite."
+
+"Rebecca?" questioned the young man in amazement. "But if I can read her
+heart as you do mine, master, Rebecca Daniels loves you."
+
+"She admires me and pities me, Antonino," replied Clemenceau, hastily,
+as if wishful to elude the question. "She does not love me. Besides,
+that is of no consequence. I have no room for love again--always
+provided that I have once loved. Passion often has the honor of being
+confounded with the purer feeling, especially in the young. Did I love
+that monster--for she is a monster, Antonino--I might forgive, for love
+excuses everything--that is true love, but it is rare as virtue--common
+sense and all that is truth. To the altar of love, many are called, but
+few elected, and all are not fit.
+
+"I see you are not convinced, because the dog that bit me is so shapely,
+and graceful and wears so silky a coat! Such dogs are mad and their bite
+in the heart is fatal and agonizing unless one at once applies the white
+hot cautery. The seam remains--from time to time it aches--but the
+victim's life is saved that he may save, serve, gladden his fellow men.
+Would you rather I should weep, or force a smile, and appear happy for a
+period? In any case, since I have cured the injury and she is in my
+house again, I shall not retaliate on her. But if she threatens to
+become a public danger--if she bares her poisonous fangs to harm my
+friend--my son--another--let her beware!"
+
+"Master," stammered Antonino, beginning to see the temptress in the new
+light, as Felix had often shown him other objects to which he had been
+blind, "you may or may not judge her too harshly, but you certainly
+judge me too leniently. Better to let me go away, and far, or at least,
+since you began the revelation, make the evidence complete of your trust
+and esteem."
+
+Clemenceau saw that the young man still believed in Césarine, but he did
+not care to tell him all he knew of her. Had he been told that she had
+encouraged Gratian to flee with her and had abandoned him at the first
+danger, without lifting a finger to save him, or her voice to procure
+him succor, he might loathe and hate her; but Clemenceau meant to say
+nothing. Such revelations, and denunciations are permissible alone to
+wrath, revenge, or despair, in the man whose heart is still bleeding
+from the wound made in it so that his outburst is sealed by his blood.
+
+"No, Antonino, by my mouth no one shall ever know all that woman has
+done--or what victories I have won over myself--in severe wrestlings."
+
+"I see you have forgiven her," said the Italian, advancing the virtue in
+which he was deficient.
+
+"I have expunged her from my heart," answered Clemenceau firmly. "She is
+a picture on only one page of my life-book, and I do not open it there.
+Knowing my secret, you are the last person to whom I shall speak of
+Césarine's misdeeds. I wish your deliverance, like mine, to be owed to
+your will, but you are free and have been forewarned, so that you will
+have less effort to make than I. Let the scarlet woman go by and do not
+step across her path. Between two smiles, she will dishonor you or deal
+death to you! She slays like a dart of Satan. That is all you need know.
+But, as, indeed, you deserve a token of esteem and confidence from your
+frankness, affection and labors, I will give you one."
+
+Having seated himself, he drew from an inner pocket a paper written in
+odd characters.
+
+"The time of my giving you the proof of trust should make it more sacred
+and precious still. I have found the solution of the last problem over
+which we pored. You know that while we discovered the means of
+imprisoning the gas in a concentrated form of scarcely appreciable bulk,
+it was not always our obedient slave, we had the fear that sometimes it
+would not submit to being liberated by piecemeal but would now and then
+disrupt its containing chamber in impatience, and then the holder would
+certainly die, choked if the fragments of the gun had not fatally
+lacerated him. After many days and nights, I have found the simple means
+to render the gas innocuous except in the direction to which we direct
+its flow. I have written out the formula, in the minutest particulars
+and in the cipher which you and I alone understand. In the same way we
+two share the secret of this safe."
+
+He handed Antonino a peculiar key and he went to unlock the coffer which
+had aroused Madame Clemenceau's curiosity.
+
+"Lock it up with the other papers," concluded the inventor. "I appoint
+you its keeper while I live--my heir and the carrier out of the work
+after my decease, should I die before having proved what I consign
+there. What matters it now if my material form disappears when my spirit
+lives on in thee! Well," he said, as Antonino returned, after closing
+and fastening the chest, "do you need any farther proof of the
+confidence I have in you?"
+
+Antonino grasped his hand and wrung it fondly When both had recovered
+calmness, they went on speaking of their work, which might be considered
+past the stage when the projector is racked by misgivings. They went
+into the breakfast-room together, prepared to bear the singular meeting
+with the errant wife whose return was so unexpected. But she preferred
+not to take the step so soon, and, as Rebecca also kept away, warned by
+Hedwig, who might appear at the board, the three men took their meal
+together.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV.
+
+THE MAN OF MANY MASKS.
+
+
+From dawn a stranger had been wandering about Montmorency. Armed with a
+large sun-umbrella and a Guid-Joanne, his copiously oiled black
+side-whiskers glistening in the sun, showing large teeth in a friendly
+grin to wayfarers of all degrees, one did not need to hear his strong
+accent of the people of Marseilles to know that he was a son of the
+South. Probably having made a fortune in shipping, in oils or wines, he
+was utilizing his holiday by touring in the north of his country, forced
+to admire, but still pugnaciously asseverating that no garden equalled
+his city park and no main street his Cannebiere. He seemed to have no
+destination in particular; he stopped here and there at random, and used
+a large and powerful field-glass, slung by a patent leather strap over
+his brawny shoulders, to study the points in the wide landscape. Now and
+then he made notes in his guide-book, but with a good-humored
+listlessness which would have disarmed the most suspicious of military
+detectives. On descending the hillside, he did not scruple to stop to
+chat with a nurse maid or two out with the children, and to open his
+hand as freely to give the latter some silver as he had opened his heart
+to the girl--all with an easy, hearty laugh, and the oily accent of his
+fellow-countrymen.
+
+He exchanged the time of day with the clerks hurrying to the railroad
+station; he did not disdain to ask the roadmender, seated on a pile of
+stones, how his labor was getting on, and where he would work next week;
+he leaned on the gate to listen as if enrapt to the groom and gardener
+of a neighbor of Clemenceau's, regretting that the hubbub of cracking
+guns and other ominous explosions was driving their master from home.
+Then, rattling his loose silver, and whistling a fisher's song, which he
+must have picked up off the Hyéres, he paused before the gateway of the
+house which had become the Ogre's Cave of Montmorency, and read half
+aloud the placard nailed on a board to a tree and announcing that the
+property was in the open market.
+
+"The Reine-Claude Villa, eh!" muttered he to himself. "The name pleases
+me! I must go in and see if it is worth the money. To say nothing," he
+added still more secretly, "of the mistress having returned this
+morning. I wonder how she had the courage to walk along the road in the
+dawn, when she might have met the ghost of our poor Gratian von
+Linden-hohen-Linden!"
+
+This acquaintance with the unpublished story of Madame Clemenceau rather
+contradicted the aspect and accent of a Marseillais, and, although the
+black whiskers did not remind one of Von Sendlingen when we saw him at
+Munich, than of his clear shaven, wrinkled face as the Marchioness de
+Letourlagneau pianist, it was not so with the burly figure, more robust
+than corpulent.
+
+He opened the gate without ringing and stepped inside on the gravel path
+winding up to the pretty but not lively house.
+
+"Attention," he muttered suddenly, in a military tone. "Here is our own
+little spy in the camp--Hedwig. It will be as well she does not
+recognize me without my cue."
+
+Running his large red hand over his whiskers, he jovially accosted the
+girl, after adjusting his formidable accoutrement field-glass,
+guide-book, case and heavy watch chain, adorned with a compass and a
+pedometer. She stood on the porch before the windows of the room into
+which her mistress had entered so early in the morning.
+
+"What do you seek, monsieur?" she challenged, after an unfavorable
+glance upon the stranger who had greatly offended her idea of dignity by
+not ringing and waiting at the portals to be officially admitted.
+
+"Pardon me, young lady," the man said, with the southern accent so
+strong that a flavor of garlic at once pervaded the air, "but I did not
+think that your papa and mamma and the family were in the house, seeing
+that it is for sale."
+
+"Young lady? My papa? Let me tell you that I am the housemaid here and
+if you have intended to jest--"
+
+"Jest! purchasing a house, and rather large gardens, is no jest, not in
+the environs of Paris!" returned the visitor. "Is it you who are to show
+the property?"
+
+"No. If you will wait, I will tell master," said Hedwig, not at all
+flattered by being pretendedly taken for "the daughter of the house."
+
+She turned round, made the half-circuit of the house, and entered the
+breakfast-room where the three gentlemen were still in debate.
+
+"A gentleman, to see the house, with a view to purchase, eh?" said
+Clemenceau. "Very well, I will go into the drawing-room and speak with
+him. Is your mistress having a nap?"
+
+"No, monsieur."
+
+"Then, be so good as to tell her that somebody has come about the house,
+and as such inquirers are sure to be supplied by their wives with
+formidable lists of questions about domestic details, I should be
+obliged by her coming down to send the person away satisfied."
+
+He followed Hedwig on the way up through the house as far as the
+drawing-room door, where his path branched off. Entering, he threw open
+the double window-sashes and politely asked the gentleman to make use of
+this direct road, with an apology for suggesting it. But he had seen at
+a glance that this kind of happy-go-lucky tourist was not of the
+ceremonious strain.
+
+"It is you, monsieur," began the latter, taking the seat pointed out to
+him and immediately swinging one leg, mounted on the other knee, with
+the utmost nonchalance, "it is you who are the proprietor of this pretty
+place?"
+
+"Yes; my name is Clemenceau, at your service."
+
+"Then, monsieur, I am--where the plague have I put my card-case--I am
+Guillaume Cantagnac, lately in business as a notary, but for the
+present, at the head of an enterprise for the purchase of landed
+estates, and their development by high culture for the ground and
+superior structures instead of their antiquated houses. I read in the
+_Moniteur des Ventes_, and on the placard at your gates, that you are
+willing to dispose of this residence and the land appertaining
+thereunto. I am not on business this morning, but taking a little
+pleasure-trip--no, not pleasure-trip--God forbid I should find any
+pleasure now! I mean a little tour for distraction after a great sorrow
+that has befallen me."
+
+The stout man, though he could have felled a bull with a blow of his
+leg-of-mutton fist, seemed about to break down in tears. But, burying
+his empurpled nose in a large red handkerchief, he passed off his
+emotion in a potent blast which made the ornaments on the mantel-shelf
+quake, and resumed in an unsteady voice:
+
+"I would have made a note and deferred to another day seeing the
+property you offer and learning its area, value, situation, advantages
+and defects--for there is always some flaw in a terrestrial paradise,
+ha, ha! But your hospitable gate was on the latch--such an inviting
+expression was on the face of a rather pretty servant girl on your
+porch--faith! I could not resist the temptation to make the acquaintance
+of the happy owner of this Eden! and lo! I am rewarded by the power to
+go home to Marseilles and tell my companion domino-players in the Café
+Dame de la Garde that I saw the renowned constructor of the new
+cannon--M. Felix Clemenceau, with whom the Emperor has spoken about the
+defense of our beloved country!"
+
+Clemenceau could only bow under this deluge of words.
+
+"M. Clemenceau, will you honor me with the clasp of the hand?"
+
+The host allowed his hand to disappear from view in the enormous one
+presented, timidly.
+
+"Ah! in case of the universal European War, they are talking about,
+France will have need of such men as you!"
+
+The embarrassing situation for the modest inventor was altered for the
+better by the entrance of Antonino, who darted a keen glance upon the
+genial stranger.
+
+"How do you do?" cried the latter, nodding kindly. "Your son, I suppose,
+M. Clemenceau?"
+
+"By adoption. I am hardly of the age to have a son as old as that!"
+
+"I beg your pardon! I see now, that it is brain-work that has worn you
+out a little. But, bless you, that will all get smoothed out when you
+begin to enjoy the windfall of fortune! I dare say now you are selling
+out because the Emperor offers you a piece of one of his parks, wanting
+you to live near him. And I presume this bright young gentleman is of
+the same profession? Has he, too, invented a great gun?"
+
+"He is the author of several not inconsiderable inventions," replied
+Clemenceau for Antonino, who was not delighted with the stranger's ways,
+had gone to look out of the nearest window, although it necessitated his
+rudely turning his back on him.
+
+"Any cannon among them?"
+
+"No, M. Cant--Cant--"
+
+"Cantagnac--"
+
+"Cantagnac; only a very notable bullet of novel shape."
+
+"A bullet, dear me! a bullet! a novel bullet! what an age we are living
+in, to be sure! I applaud you, young man, and you must allow me to say
+to my companions in the Café de la Garde at Marseilles, that I shook the
+hand of the inventor of the new bullet!" But as Antonino did not make a
+responsive movement, he had to add, unabashed: "before I go, I mean!
+But allow me to say, gentlemen, that though I am only a commonplace
+notary, and a retired one, at that, ha, ha! a buyer of houses to
+modernize, and land to improve in cultivation; though lowly, and very
+ill-informed on the great questions which occupy you, yet I venture to
+assert that I take the greatest interest in your labors. I would give
+half--aye, three-quarters of my possessions toward your success. My life
+should be yours if it were useful in any way, although that would be a
+small gift, as it has no value in my own eyes. I had a son, M.
+Clemenceau--an only son, tall, dark, handsome and, though he took after
+me, bright--like this young gentleman of talent here!" He flourished the
+voluminous red handkerchief again. "In an evil hour, I let him go on a
+holiday excursion and he chose the Rhine. His boyish gallantry caused
+him to champion a waitress on a steamboat, whom a bullying German
+officer of the Landsturm had chucked under the chin. High words were
+exchanged--my boy challenged the giant, who did not understand our way
+among gentlemen of settling such matters--he knocked my hopeful one
+overboard--no, gentlemen, he was not drowned, but he never recovered
+from the mortification of being laughed at. He came home but to die--in
+the following year, poor, sensitive soul! His mother never held her head
+up again, and I--" he blew his nose with a tremendous peal, "I--I beg
+your pardon for forgetting my business, again."
+
+"Not at all!" exclaimed Clemenceau, while Antonino, angry at having
+misjudged the bereaved parent, offered him the hand he had previously
+refused.
+
+"I thank you both," said M. Cantagnac, hastening to dry his tears which
+might have seemed of the crocodile sort when they had time to remember
+he had been a notary. "This is not my usual bearing! Three years ago I
+was called the Merry One, for I was always laughing, but now"--he gave a
+great gulp at a sob like a rosy-gilled salmon taking in a fly and
+abruptly said:
+
+"So you want to sell your house, with all belongings? Which are--"
+
+"About twelve acres, mostly young wood, but some rocky ground ornamental
+enough, which will never be productive. Do you mind getting the plan,
+Antonino? It is hanging up in my study."
+
+Antonino went out, not sorry to be beyond earshot of the boisterous
+negotiator.
+
+"Young wood, eh?" repeated the latter, "humph! lots of stony ground!
+ahem! yet it is pretty and so near town. I wonder you sell it."
+
+"I want ready money," returned Clemenceau, bluntly.
+
+"So we all do, ha, ha! But you surely could raise on it by mortgage."
+
+"I have tried that."
+
+"The deuce you have! That's strange, when the Emperor said your
+discovery--"
+
+"It is a gold mine, but like gold mines, it has plunged the discoverer
+into debt."
+
+"I dare say it would! and I suppose it is not so certain-sure as the
+newspapers assert--"
+
+"I beg your pardon, it is beyond all doubt," replied Clemenceau,
+sharply.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI.
+
+STRIKE NOT WOMAN, EVEN WITH ROSES.
+
+
+"Stop a bit," said M. Cantagnac, pulling a newspaper out of his pocket.
+"This is a journal I picked up in the cars. I always do that. There is
+sure to be some passenger to throw them down and so I never buy any
+myself when I am traveling, ha, ha! Well, in this very sheet, there is a
+long article about you. It is called 'The Ideal Cannon' and the writer
+declares that the experiment was a great hit, ha, ha! and he undertakes
+to explain the new system."
+
+Clemenceau smiled contemptuously. He was not one of those to make a
+secret public property on which a nation's salvation might depend. In
+such momentous matters, he would have had arsenals, armories, navy yards
+and military museums labeled over the door:
+
+
+    "Speech is silver, silence is of gold;
+    Death unto him who dares the tale unfold!"
+
+
+"Ah, he wouldn't know everything, of course. However, he makes out that
+you obtain the wonderful result by fixing essential oils in a special
+magazine and that you managed to project a solid shot to the prodigious
+distance of--of--" he referred to the newspaper--"fifteen miles by means
+of--of--I do not understand these jaw-breaking scientific terms. Is it
+not nitroglycerine?"
+
+"I do not use them myself," remarked Clemenceau, dryly.
+
+"But he adds--look here!" continued the worthy Man from Marseilles,
+regretfully, "that what you managed to perform with your model and
+material, specially prepared by yourself, could not be attained on the
+proper scale in a war campaign. He goes on to say that the scientific
+world await the explanation of the means to obtain such power as,
+heretofore, the pressure of liquefied gases has been but some five
+hundred pounds to the square inch, about a tenth of that of explosives
+now used. It is admitted, however, that there may be something in your
+increase of effectiveness by reiterated emissions--" He began to
+stammer, as if he were speaking too glibly, but his auditor took no
+alarm. "He continues that, up to this day, gases have failed as
+propelling powers from their instantaneous explosions."
+
+"The writer is correct," said Clemenceau, a little warmed, "or, rather,
+he had foundation for his criticism when he wrote. The powerful agent
+was not perfectly controllable at the period of my last official
+experiments, but that is not the case at present. This enormous, almost
+incalculable power is so perfectly under my thumb, monsieur, that not
+only is it manageable in the largest cannon, but it is suitable for a
+parlor pistol, which a child might play with."
+
+"Wonderful!" ejaculated Cantagnac, with undoubted sincerity, for his
+eyes gleamed.
+
+"In solving that last enigma, I found the power became more strong when
+curbed. Consequently, the gun that would before have carried fifteen
+miles, may send twenty, and the ball, if not explosible, might ricochet
+three."
+
+"Wonderful!" cried the Marseillais again, who displayed very deep
+interest in the abstruse subject for a retired notary.
+
+"The bullet, or shell, or ball--all the projectiles are perfected now!"
+went on Clemenceau, triumphantly, "and were I surrounded by a million of
+men, or had I an impregnable fortress before me, a battery of my cannon
+would finish the struggle in not more than four hours."
+
+"Why, this is a force of nature, not man's work," said Cantagnac,
+through his grating teeth, as though the admiration were extracted from
+him. "I do not see how any army or any fort could resist such
+instruments."
+
+"No, monsieur, not one."
+
+"Would not all the other nations unite against your country?"
+
+"What would that matter, when, I repeat, the number of adversaries would
+not affect the question?"
+
+"What a dreadful thing! I beg your pardon, but I go to church and I have
+had 'Love one another!' dinned into my ears. What is to become of that
+precept, eh?"
+
+"It is what I should diffuse by my cannon," returned Clemenceau.
+
+"By scattering the limbs of thousands of men, ha, ha!" but his laugh
+sounded very hollow, indeed.
+
+"Not so; by destroying warfare," was the inventor's reply. "War is
+impious, immoral and monstrous, and not the means employed in it. The
+more terrible they are, the sooner will come the millennium. On the day
+when men find that no human protection, no rank, no wealth, no
+influential connections, nothing can shield them from destruction by
+hundreds of thousands, not only on the battlefield, but in their houses,
+within the highest fortified ramparts, they will no longer risk their
+country, homes, families and bodies, for causes often insignificant or
+dishonest. At present, all reflecting men who believe that the divine
+law ought to rule the earth, should have but one thought and a single
+aim: to learn the truth, speak it and impress it by all possible means
+wherever it is not recognized. I am a man who has frittered away too
+much of his time on personal tastes and emotions, and I vow that I shall
+never let a day pass without meditating upon the destination whither all
+the world should move, and I mean to trample over any obstacle that
+rises before me. The time is one when men could carouse, amuse
+themselves, doze and trifle--or keep in a petty clique. The real society
+will be formed of those who toil and watch, believe and govern."
+
+"I see, monsieur, that you cherish a hearty hatred for the enemies of
+the student and the worker," said the ex-notary, not without an
+inexplicable bitterness, "and that you seek the suppression of the
+swordsman."
+
+"You mistake--I hate nobody," loftily answered Clemenceau. "If I thought
+that my country would use my discovery to wage an unjust war, I declare
+that I should annihilate the invention. But whatever rulers may intend,
+my country will never long carry on an unfair war and it is only to make
+right prevail that France should be furnished with irresistible power."
+
+While listening, Cantagnac had probably considered that raillery was not
+proper to treat such exaltation, for he changed his tone and noisily
+applauded the sentiments.
+
+"Capital, capital! that's what I call sensible talk! And do you believe
+that I would leave a man, a patriot, in temporary embarrassment when he
+has discovered the salvation of our country? Why, this house will become
+a sight for the world and his wife to flock unto! I am proud that I have
+stood within the walls and I shall tell the domino-players of the
+Café--but never mind that now! To business! Between ourselves, are you
+particularly fond of this house?"
+
+"It is my only French home, where I brought my bride, where my child was
+born--where the great child of my brain came forth--"
+
+"Enough! we can arrange this neatly. It is my element to smooth matters
+over. Something is in the air about a company to 'work' your minor
+inventions in firearms, eh? good! I engage, from my financial
+connections, to find you all funds required; I shall charge twenty-five
+per cent. on the profits, and never interfere with your scientific
+department, which I do not understand, anyway. There is no necessity of
+our seeing one another in the business, but I do want to put my shoulder
+to the wheel--_wheel_ of Fortune, eh? ha, ha!" and he rubbed his large
+hands gleefully till they fairly glowed.
+
+There was no resisting openness like this, and Clemenceau heartily
+thanked the volunteer "backer," as is said in monetary circles.
+
+"That's very kind; but the proposal has previously been made to me by an
+old friend, an Israelite who also has connections with the principal
+bankers. But these transactions take time, on a large scale and to
+embrace the world. Meanwhile, although he would readily and easily find
+me temporary accommodation, the pressure on me is not acute enough for
+me to accept a helping hand."
+
+"I understand: you would not be in difficulties if you were another kind
+of man. Let us say no more about it. As the company will be a public
+one, I suppose, I can take shares. About this mortgage over our heads,
+is some bank holding it?"
+
+"Well, no; my wife has it, as part of the marriage portion, or rather
+my gift. I have sent for her to step down to discuss the matter with
+you."
+
+"Happy to see the lady," said Cantagnac, pulling out his whiskers and
+adjusting the points of his collar. "We will discuss it, with an eye to
+your interests, monsieur."
+
+It was clear that M. Cantagnac had not enchanted Antonino, for he had
+taken care not to bring the plan of the house; it was brought, but by
+another hand. On seeing the lady, the Marseillais bowed with exaggerated
+politeness of the old school and stammered his compliments.
+
+"No, no;" Clemenceau hastened to say, "this is not the lady of the
+house, but a guest who, however, will show you the place."
+
+It was Rebecca Daniels. As always happens with the Jews, whose long,
+oval faces are not improved by mental trouble, she looked less
+captivating than when she had shone as the star of the Harmonista
+Music-hall; but, nevertheless, she was, for the refined eye, very
+alluring. She accepted the task imposed on her with a gentle smile,
+although it was evident that in her quick glance she had summed up the
+visitor's qualities without much favor for him.
+
+While Cantagnac was bowing again and fumbling confusedly with his hat,
+Rebecca laid the plan on the table and whispered to Clemenceau:
+
+"Do you know that she is here again?"
+
+He nodded, whereupon her features, which had been animated, fell back
+into habitual calm.
+
+"She sends word by Hedwig, whom I intercepted, that she wants to see you
+before seeing this purchaser of the house. I need not urge you to keep
+calm?"
+
+"No!"
+
+"Come this way, please, monsieur," said Rebecca, lightly, as if fully at
+ease, and she led Cantagnac out of the room.
+
+Left to himself, with the notification of the important interview
+overhanging him, the host pondered. He had at the first loved Rebecca,
+and it was strange to him now that he had let Césarine outshine her. He
+had acted like an observer, who takes a comet for a planet shaken out of
+its course. Since he loved the Jewess with a holier flame than ever the
+Russian kindled, he perceived which was the true love. This is not an
+earthly fire, but a divine spirit; not a chance shock, but the union of
+two souls in unbroken harmony.
+
+It is possible that Von Sendlingen in transmitting to Clemenceau the
+notice by the butler's wife, that the Viscount Gratian was to aid her in
+flight, but which as plainly revealed the wife's flight, had expected
+the angered husband to execute justice on the betrayer. Human laws could
+have absolved him if he had slain the couple at sight, but Clemenceau,
+after the example of his father, had resolved not to transgress the
+divine mandate again, even in this cause. He would have separated the
+congenial spirits of cunning and deceit, but not by striking a blow, and
+the rebuke to Césarine would have been so scathing she would never have
+had the impudence to see him again. Not by murder did he mean to
+liberate himself.
+
+On seeing that heaven had taken the parting of the gallant and the
+wanton into its hand, he had simply forbore to intervene. On the one
+hand, he let Gratian's mysterious and stealthy assassins stifle him and
+the other, Césarine, run to the railroad station unhailed. The one
+deserved death as the other deserved oblivion.
+
+This woman was of the world and would be a clod when no longer
+living--her essence would remain to inspirit some other evil woman--the
+same malignity in a beautiful shape which appeared in Lais, Messalina,
+Lucrezia Borgia, the Medici, Ninon, Lecouvreur, Iza, not links of a
+chain, but the same gem, a little differently set.
+
+But Rebecca's was an ethereal spirit eternal. Thinking of her he could
+believe himself young and comely again and loving forever in another
+sphere. This was the being whom he would eternally adore, whether he or
+she were the first to quit the earth.
+
+Here lay the consolation. Césarine, like all evil, was transient;
+Rebecca, like all good, everlasting.
+
+"Let her come," said he at last, lifting his head slowly and no longer
+troubled. "She need not fear. I shall bear in mind the Oriental proverb
+Daniels quoted: 'Do not beat a woman, even with roses!'"
+
+Hardly were the words formed in his mind than his wife appeared as
+though by that mind reading, frequent in married couples--she had waited
+for this assurance of her personal safety to be mentally formed.
+
+In the short time given her toilet, she had performed wonders. Perhaps,
+with a surprising effort of her will, she had snatched some rest, for
+her eyes wore the fresh, pellucid gleam after prolonged slumber. Her
+cheeks were smooth and by artifice, seemed to wear the virginal down.
+Easy and graceful as ever, she affected a slight constraint, which
+agreed with a pretence of avoiding his glances.
+
+"You must be astonished to see me!" she exclaimed, for he did not say a
+word of greeting.
+
+No man could have looked less astonished, and, with the greatest
+evenness of tone, he answered:
+
+"You ought to know that nothing you do astonishes me."
+
+"But I remember--I wrote you a long letter explaining my absence and the
+necessity of my sudden departure--the despatch from my poor uncle's
+secretary--I ordered it to be given you--it explained my sudden
+departure--"
+
+"Hedwig gave me the paper," he said shortly.
+
+"But my letter, saying I had nursed him to convalescence and had fallen
+ill myself? You had time to reply but you did not do so."
+
+"I received no letter," he said, like a speaking machine.
+
+"Dear, dear, how could that be!" she muttered, tapping her foot on the
+head of the tiger-skin rug.
+
+"Perhaps it arises from your never writing me any," he said, but without
+bitterness.
+
+"Oh, I could swear--"
+
+"It is of no consequence either way."
+
+"Since you did not reply, I came to you although it was at a great risk.
+I would not tell you that I was leaving a sickroom for fear it would
+fill you with too great pain or too great hope."
+
+"How witty you are!"
+
+"Would you not be happy if I died?"
+
+"If you were in a dying state, somebody might have written for
+you--Madame Lesperon or your uncle," speaking as if the persons were
+fabulous creatures.
+
+"Oh, my granduncle is well known at the Russian Embassy, and Madame and
+M. Lesperon remember your lamented father distinctly."
+
+He bit his lip as if he detested hearing his father spoken of by her.
+
+"Madame wanted to write to you--she expected you to come for me, like
+any other husband, but I knew you were not like other husbands, and
+would not come."
+
+She was sincere; women always speak out when boldness is an excuse.
+
+"You mistake," he interrupted, "I would have come, under the belief that
+on your death bed, you would have confession to make or desires to
+express which a husband alone should hear."
+
+"What do you suppose?" cried Césarine, trying to forget that the speaker
+must have seen the death of her lover--whether he connived at it or
+not--and her flight, whether he facilitated it or not.
+
+"I do not suppose anything, but I remember and I forsee."
+
+"Do you mean to say that you do not feel ill-will because I have come
+back?"
+
+"Madame Clemenceau, this house is ours--as much yours as mine. That is
+why I asked you to come down here, for it is necessary to sell it."
+
+"Why am I charged with the business?"
+
+"Because you have an interest in it. Half of all I own is yours."
+
+"But you long ago repaid my share, and generously!"
+
+"Not in the eyes of the law, and it pleases me that you should do this."
+
+"But I do not need anything. My uncle was pleased at my nursing him back
+to health; his children have been unkind to him, and he has transferred
+to me some property in France, a handsome income! Grant to me a great
+pleasure--of which I am not worthy," she went on tearfully, "but you
+will have the more merit, then! Let me lend you any sum of which you
+have need."
+
+"I thank you, but I have already refused a thousand times the amount
+from an unsullied hand!" returned Clemenceau, emphatically.
+
+"That Jewess'!" she exclaimed, with a great change in her bearing.
+
+"Hush! strangers present!" and in uttering this talismanic cue between
+married people, he pointed to the shadow on the curtains.
+
+Rebecca had concluded her pilotage of M. Cantagnac and it was he whom
+Clemenceau soon after presented to his wife.
+
+"Let me add, M. Cantagnac, that you must be my guest as long as you stay
+at Montmorency, for the hotels are conducted solely for the
+excursionists who come out of Paris and their accommodations would not
+please you. You are expected to sit down to dinner with us at one
+o'clock, country fashion and I will order a bedroom ready also."
+
+"Gracious heavens! you are really too good!" exclaimed Cantagnac,
+lifting his hands almost devoutly.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII.
+
+DEMON AND ARCH-DEMON.
+
+
+After one sharp slighting look at the visitor, Madame Clemenceau had
+withdrawn her senses within herself, so to say, to come to a conclusion
+on the singular conduct of her husband. His cold scorn daunted her, and
+filled her with dread. Had not the Jewess been on the spot, whom she
+believed to be a rival once more, however high was her character and
+Hedwig's eulogy, she would have prudently fled again without fighting.
+She had the less reason to stay, as the house was to be sold, in a
+manner of speaking, from under her feet.
+
+Yet the Marseillais was worth more than a passing glance. When alone
+with the lady, whom he regarded steadfastly, a radical change took place
+in his carriage, and he who had been so easy and oily became stiff,
+stern and rigid. It was the attitude no longer of a secret agent,
+wearing the mien and mask of his profession, but of a military spy, who
+stands before a subordinate when disguise is superfluous.
+
+"Truly, she is more bewitching than when I first knew her," he muttered
+between his close teeth, as if he admired with awe and suppressed
+breath. "What a pretty monster she is!"
+
+Feeling that his view was weighing upon her, Madame Clemenceau suddenly
+looked up. It seemed to her that something in the altered and insolent
+bearing was not unknown to her but the recollection was hazy, and the
+black whiskers perplexed.
+
+"Did you speak, monsieur?" she said, to give herself countenance.
+
+"I spoke nothing," he replied still in the smooth accent which was not
+familiar to her. "A man of business like myself, feels bound, if he has
+any natural turning that way, to become a physiognomist and
+thought-reader in order not to pay too dearly for bargains; I am happy
+to say that I rarely blunder."
+
+"Then you can read my disposition?" exclaimed Césarine mockingly.
+
+"I knew it before."
+
+"Indeed! then you would do me a great service, monsieur, if you would
+tell me how it strikes you, as an average man. For I assure you," she
+went on, taking a seat without pointing out one to him, "that some days
+I do not understand myself, a most humiliating thing, though ancient
+wisdom acknowledged that the hardest thing is self-knowledge."
+
+"If you authorize me to be outspoken, madame, I will enlighten you,"
+returned Cantagnac.
+
+"Do not let me be in your way!" impertinently.
+
+"It is the most simple thing, for your entire character is described in
+these four words: venal, ferocious, frivolous and insubmissive!"
+
+She sprang to her feet with quivering lips and flashing eyes, while he,
+like a statue, lowered upon its pedestal, calmly sank upon an arm-chair.
+Then, looking round and listening to make certain that they had no
+observers, he leaned both elbows on the table and fixed his sea-blue
+eyes on the startled lady.
+
+"Kaiserina!" he said in a commanding voice, without the least softening
+with that southern suavity, "for how much do you want to sell me
+secretly, your husband's invention?"
+
+The altered voice appeared not at all strange, but the words were so
+unexpected that she merely stared in bewilderment while he had even more
+deliberately to repeat them. Deeply frightened by this mystery which in
+vain she tried to solve, she forced a laugh.
+
+"Oh, it is no jest--I am one of the most serious of men," proceeded
+Cantagnac, "as becomes one of the busiest."
+
+She looked at him like a fawn, which, having never seen a human being,
+is suddenly peered upon in the lair by the hunter.
+
+"You want to know who I am, speaking to you in this style? See my card
+on the table there--it says I am Cantagnac, the agent, modest but
+passing for rather subtle, of a private and limited company recently
+established with a cash capital fully paid up of several millions of
+_fredericks_--for, to tell the plain facts to you--the obtaining for its
+profit the ideas, inventions and discoveries of others. In short, we,
+who used to despise mental fruits, see that it is the most profitable of
+trades to work genius. As soon as we see, learn, or even scent that an
+important thing is being produced anywhere in the world, we hurry to the
+spot and by one means or another--money, cunning, persuasion, main
+force, if needs must, we make ourselves master of what we must have if
+we mean to be the world's rulers. With a European war impending, even a
+lady will see at once of what value an invention is, like M.
+Clemenceau's."
+
+"In plain language, you are proposing to me an infamous deed!" she
+exclaimed with scathing irony which failed to scare the other.
+
+"I am proposing a matter of business. Where are you going?"
+
+"Straight to my husband--whose confidence you have imposed on by some
+deception"
+
+"Dear madame, do not do what you would eternally deplore," said
+Cantagnac quietly, and motioning with his broad hand for her to be
+seated again. "I deceived your husband with a bit of character acting
+which you would, I think, have applauded, as you were once on the
+stage--the music hall stage, at least."
+
+She sat down, as if this allusion had stunned her.
+
+"His secret is indispensable to my company and I was given instructions
+to try to obtain it, by surprise and for nothing, if possible. Without
+it, many another purchase of ours made at great expense, would become
+utterly useless. From an incomplete acquaintance with your husband, I
+feared I could do nothing with him; from a study of him here, at a later
+period, I doubted still more; and, having spoken with him, I am sure."
+
+A previous acquaintance with Clemenceau? It was a ray of light, but
+still Césarine, who did not cease to stare at him, failed to identify
+him with a figure in her past. Was this only a new phase of a Proteus?
+
+"Clemenceau is no longer the frank and enthusiastic student but a man of
+talent and feeling who has found his true course. In what concerns the
+revelation he has had from science, he is reserved and circumspect.
+Happily, man that is borne of woman, however great, if a simpleton and
+an idealist, almost always is the prey of the sex in one form or
+another. When they escape feminine influence, they are impregnable, and
+strong measures must be employed."
+
+"Strong measures," repeated Césarine, shuddering at the icy, passionless
+tone like a lecturer's.
+
+"They must be blotted off the book of life--and it is always painful to
+have to proceed to such extremities. It is frequent, very--and
+ninety-nine times in the hundred, we run up against the woman for whom a
+great magistrate advised the search whenever a crime is perpetrated."
+
+"It would appear that you expect to induce me to commit that crime!"
+sneered the woman, pale but rebellious.
+
+"We have no need to induce you, dear madame, for we can constrain you."
+
+"Constrain me!" repeated the woman savagely and tossing her head with
+pride. "If you really knew my nature, you would not say that. You might
+tell me how?"
+
+"Really know you? you shall judge for yourself. In your marriage
+certificate, you are described as of the Vieradlers, but your eagle is
+not the German one--it is the Polish. The women of your race are
+distinguished for beauty, when young, and freedom in love at all times.
+Your grandma has a volumnious chronicle of scandal all to herself, but
+her glory is thrown into the shade by the peculiar celebrity enjoyed
+rather briefly by her favorite daughter, La Belle Iza, that one of the
+Sirens of Paris who has, under the present Empire, lured the most men to
+wreck. This was your aunt. Her sister, your mother, quite as beautiful,
+was rescued at an early hour from her mother's manoevres to 'place' her,
+as she called it, and for this loss, the indignant old lady vowed a kind
+of unnatural vengeance, to be visited on the child of her who had
+offended her by remaining in the path of virtue. This child is the woman
+before me. Oh, it is useless to look at me like that!" he grimly said,
+with the perplexed air of a man with no ear for music who listens to a
+music-box delighting others. "Pure wasted labor! The old lady, who had
+fallen from her high estate where Iza had lifted her, and was ordered
+out of the capital for extorting hush-money upon her daughter's stock of
+love-letters, the old lady became a queen--a queen of the disreputable
+classes. In Munich, sleepy old town where superstitions linger and the
+women are as besotted with ignorance as the men with beer, she ruled the
+beggars and vagabonds. It was there that fate led you and you fell under
+her hand. She pretended to befriend you, for even so young, you promised
+to have power by your charms, renewing those she had never forgotten in
+her lost Iza. No one consulted the Almanack de Gotha when you were
+launched on an admiring society as one of the Vieradlers. You soon won
+a great reputation for freshness of wit and coquetry in all South
+Germany. In plain words, you could not see a man come into the
+drawing-room without wishing to make him fall in love with you. We want
+to monopolize genius--you to monopolize the love of man. You have the
+mania of loving, more common than it is suspected, especially by those
+who would have us believe that good society is a fold where snowy lambs
+are led about from the cradle to the butcher's shambles, by pastors
+carrying crooks decked with sky blue ribbons. The feeling is a craving
+in you--an involuntary and invincible instinct which was to have its
+inevitable end. You turned from a man who sincerely loved you to make a
+conquest of another whose heart was engaged."
+
+"Stop!" interrupted Césarine, triumphantly for she had detected genuine
+feeling the last tone used by the living enigma. "I know you now! you
+are the man whom you say really loved me. Down with the masks! You
+are--"
+
+"Not so loud!"
+
+"You are Major von Sendlingen!"
+
+"Say 'Colonel' and you will be exact. Yes; I am the lover whom you cast
+off in favor of the student Ruprecht, as this Clemenceau was called when
+he pottered about Europe, sketching ruined doorways and broken windows
+and dreamed of architectural structures. A man whom destiny had chosen
+to be the greatest demolisher of the age! what sarcasm!"
+
+"Well, you should be the last to complain! Was it like devotion to me
+that you should try to abduct La Belle Stamboulane in the public street?
+
+"To remove her from your path! She was your rival in the music hall!
+Love her, love a Jewess? You do not understand men--you fancy they are
+put here for your pleasure, safeguard and redemption. An error! We are
+neither your joy or your punishment. Let that pass. You married the
+student Ruprecht who turned out to be your cousin Felix Clemenceau. For
+a time you played the part of the idolizing young wife admirably. You
+never reproached his father's head for the murder of your aunt and he
+said never a word about the old beggar-sovereign Baboushka. In your
+gladness at having stolen the man away from Fraulein Daniels, I believe
+you imagined that it was love you felt. Not a bit of it! Love is the sun
+of the soul--all light, heat, motion and creativeness! there are no more
+two loves than two suns. There may be two or many passions, but not two
+loves. If a man loved twice, it would not be love!"
+
+The hard man spoke so tenderly that his hearer dared not scoff.
+
+"He ran through your witchery after a while, but he built his hopes upon
+maternity. You had a child but you connived at its death, if you did not
+deal the stroke."
+
+How accurately Sendlingen had measured this woman! Another would have
+cried out against him at this accusation--or burst into tears and so
+disarmed a less adamantine man. She did not blanch; she did not lift her
+hand to cover her unaltered features, but listened as idly as she would
+to the last plaint of the fool who might blown out his brains at her
+feet. The false Cantagnac pursued in his natural voice, rancid and
+imperious, rolling out the gutturals like a heavy wagon thundering over
+an old road.
+
+"It follows, madame, that if you run to your husband at a faster gait
+than you took to run away with the Baron of Linden, to inform him of my
+proposition, I will tell him what you hear--I will accuse you of
+infanticide, of unfaithfulness--"
+
+"He knows that!" ejaculated the woman with irony and in defiance. "Ask
+him, if you do not believe."
+
+"Impossible."
+
+"He would not say a word to anybody, and I would not have confessed only
+I was driven to it."
+
+"And he forgave you?"
+
+"All!"
+
+"He is very grand; and few men of my acquaintance would not at least
+have caned you smartly. However, it was not long after the 'removal' of
+your child, to put it mildly, that you threw yourself into the swim of
+distractions, such as were to be had hereabouts. The old marchioness'
+circle soon surrounded you; she was one of my company's instruments, and
+from that time we counted on you as a coadjutrix some day."
+
+"On me!"
+
+"Precisely! to whom should we look for aid and complicity in our
+concealed and wary work but to the embodiment of permanent and domestic
+corruption? You are merely an impulse--we are a policy, and you will be
+our bondwoman. Ah, we are merely men--not fools, scoundrels or gods like
+your husband, for only such would tolerate depravity like yours."
+
+"He is like a god," said Césarine, trembling, in a low, hushed voice.
+"When he speaks, it seems to me that it is what people call conscience."
+
+"How long is it since you acknowledged this superiority?" sneered the
+sham Marseillais.
+
+"Too short a while, alas! some few minutes," sighed she.
+
+"Well, granting he is at least a demi-god, he is a power which we have
+an interest in destroying. Hercules became a nuisance to neglectful
+stable-keepers, and like conservative institutions. Let us have done
+with him. But, first, the final training of yourself. I repeat that the
+marchioness' house was the rendezvous at the gates of Paris, where we
+assembled our bearers of intelligence. Under cover of chit-chat and
+vocal-waltzes, we heard reports and issued orders. It was necessary to
+link you to us and we employed our foremost captivator, the dandy of two
+countries, the international Lothario, the Viscount-baron Gratian von
+Linden-hohen-Linden-_cum_ de Terremonde. Luckily, too, he had been at
+the same period as myself, smitten with your vernal charms, and he
+entered upon his amorous mission with gusto. You believed him very
+wealthy, but let me tell you that the cash he really had under hand was
+our petty expense fund. Judge by that what a capital we control!"
+exclaimed Von Sendlingen proudly. "Our poor Gratian the double dealer,
+seemed not to be loved by the gods any more truly than by his goddess
+here present, for she let him, unassisted, be thrust down, on falling
+through a broken bridge, into the mire of a rivulet visible from your
+window. There he breathed his last. Fit death for a traitor! For our
+corporation, the untimely, unmanageable passion of this athletic fop
+might have had grave consequences, and for you. We did not find the
+money on his person only a pocketbook stuffed with rubbish, as if he
+were the victim of some gross deception. But, have no fear, Madame, we
+are not going to claim the sum from you, we prefer to let you regard it
+as a payment on account. We intend you no mischief, and we intended you
+none, then; we might have stopped your flight--that is, I might have
+done so, but I only threw myself across your path after you ran on, to
+stay your husband from pursuing you."
+
+"You were there?" she stammered, more and more frightened at the
+vastness of the serpent which involved her with its coils, and which was
+so careless about the loss of its golden scales.
+
+"Enough! all is well that ends well! You will serve us?"
+
+"But I have repented!"
+
+"Nonsense! you returned home because your husband was suddenly enriched
+above your dreams. Your repentance was simply a prompting of moral
+hygiene for you to take rest before a new and less unlucky flight. You
+had the instinctive warning that to the greatly successful inventor, the
+modern king or knowing man--for civilization has come round the circle
+to the point where savagery commenced and the wise man rules--to the
+wizard, power, riches, beauty, all gravitate. Your husband would be
+courted; duchesses would sue him to place their husbands or gallants on
+the board of his company--the dark-eyed charmer whom you ousted in the
+Munich music hall and whom you foresaw to be your eternal rival, might
+meet him again. With you beside him, she might be repulsed--with you
+distant, he would surrender at discretion. What a triumph for your
+self-conceit and banquet for your senses to make your husband love you
+even more than when he was the suitor! Look out! in battling with your
+husband you say you fight Conscience; with Mademoiselle Daniels, with
+whom I have had twenty minutes' pleasant conversation, enlightening him,
+you would conflict with Virtue. Tell your husband that the money you
+offered to help him, came out of our bank, and he will not forgive you
+or tolerate you this time. No, for his silence would no longer be
+loftiness of soul, but complicity of which I do not think him capable,"
+he grudgingly said. "He would hand you over to the police, and believe
+me, the Emperor Napoleon, having a mania on the subject of artillery,
+would personally instruct his _procureur_ to draw up an indictment
+against you which would not miss fire. And were you to escape in France,
+we should have that abstracted money's worth from you elsewhere. Now,
+dear lady, for how much will you sell us the secret of M. Clemenceau?"
+
+The woman bowed her head, like one imprisoned in a sand drift, not to be
+crossed in any direction, but closing in and weighing down. She was in a
+pitfall, overpowered like Gratian had been, subjugated, soon to be put
+to the yoke and compelled to draw steadily the harrow of transcendental
+politics. Her caprices, faults, fancies, duplicities, wiles, caresses,
+impudence, conquests and delights were but straws out of which some
+great diplomatist would draw supplies for his cattle. It was humiliating
+to the superb creature, but logical. She gnashed her teeth, but she was
+sure that her cajolery--even her tears would be thrown away on this
+soldier-spy whom once she had jilted, and who at present surfeited
+himself with her defeat.
+
+"It is a crime," she moaned, "a dastardly crime that you require me to
+do."
+
+"Not your first! You robbed us for your own private ends--we want you to
+rob another for ours! you must not always be selfish."
+
+'But I had really repented--"
+
+"Pooh! you may repent of this fresh misdeed while you are about penance.
+I have no objections to you becoming a good wife! it will be a novel
+sensation, and of nothing are you more fond! Suppose you convince your
+husband that it is wicked to kill his fellow-men by the myriad--that
+love of woman is better than glory--decide him to go into a cottage by
+the Mediterranean with you, and--sell us the invention. We could put it
+to a righteous end; clear Africa of cannibals, that the merchants'
+stores, and farms to raise produce to fill them, should replace
+cane-huts. But I doubt you will succeed!"
+
+"Never!" she exclaimed, afraid that her hopelessness would injure her,
+for she would be the creditor of this remorseless combination without
+any prospect of repaying them. But all resistance was useless, she was
+convinced; she had to submit or she would be expunged from life. She who
+had fancied herself so powerful was but the lowly, abject subaltern at
+the beck of a preponderating power of which she understood no more the
+details than the aim and principle.
+
+"There is always a second course," observed Von Sendlingen slowly. "That
+weak, inexperienced, young Italian, who loves you passionately."
+
+"Antonino?"
+
+"Antonino, yes; he carries the key to that coffer, and the key, too, of
+the private cipher in which the inventor records his discoveries."
+
+Shrinking away aghast, her blanched countenance expressed her wonder at
+this preternatural knowledge. These master-spies knew everything, even
+under this roof, better than the wife! This grim giant carried on an
+abominable craft with thorough insight. That she could never emulate,
+for completeness was not her forte. Oh, had she but been a virtuous
+woman--an honorable wife, he had not dared assume to govern her! but
+when of a girl's age, she had acted like a woman; when a wife she had
+acted like the dissolute and unwived; when a mother, she had
+disembarrassed herself of the token of her glory of maternity. She was
+not fit to be anything but the instrument of such universal
+conspirators. She whom the viscount had playfully called "Donna Juana!"
+had met the Statue of the Commander at last, and once grasped, she would
+no more be free.
+
+"I shall report to our committee that we have made our agreement," he
+said calmly and then, as he proceeded toward the door with the jolly
+swagger of the Marseillais transforming his stalwart and rigid frame, he
+added in the southern bland tone, "Delighted to see you again, dear
+Madame Clemenceau!"
+
+She did not hear him, for she had sunk too deeply within the abyss. She
+regretted she had come back. It is true that the company which he
+represented so terrifyingly, might have pursued her and pestered her for
+their money, but she had the gifts that would arouse defenders for her
+in any quarter of the globe.
+
+Had she not one ally? certainly no friend! and yet, if Clemenceau would
+only help her a little, she might cope with the arch-intriguer. If,
+indeed, Felix did not save her, she would be lost. It was a dreadful
+game, but glorious to win it, and she would be another and worthy woman
+if she came out unwounded. In her distress, she would have had recourse
+to the Jew and have utilized Rebecca though her rival, too! Besides,
+there was Antonino, so passionate as to rush blindly, dagger in hand, on
+even a Von Sendlingen.
+
+"Come, come, cheer up," she said to herself, "there is a chance or two
+yet. If only I could get over this crisis, I will reform and sincerely
+resolve not to do a single act for which to reproach myself!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII.
+
+A BITTER PARTING.
+
+
+With a somewhat less burdened mind, Césarine was still pondering when
+she saw Antonino, who had opened the door but perceived her, about to
+withdraw without notifying her of his presence. It was the act of a
+devotee who feared to pray in the chapel, when the priestess stood by
+the saint's image.
+
+"Do not go," she exclaimed with vehemence. "Come here after closing the
+door tightly, for I want you to enter into a little plot with me."
+
+She had regained her smiling visage and her sweet voice.
+
+"Would you do it?"
+
+"It depends upon who the object is," he said tremulously.
+
+"It is against my husband," she replied with her smile more bright and
+her tone more merry.
+
+"I forewarn you, madame, that I should turn informer," he answered in
+the same light key, but forced.
+
+"That would be very bad for him for I am conspiring for his benefit."
+
+"In that case, madame, I am entirely your man."
+
+"Are you able to keep a secret?" she asked with gravity.
+
+"I think so."
+
+They had withdrawn into the window recess, and could see the gardens, as
+they conversed. The light fell on her through the Valenciennes curtain
+and at her back was a sombre tapestry. Her late trial gave her an
+exhausted air which seemed the additional gloss with which melancholy
+makes a woman more fascinating in the sentimental eyes of youth.
+
+"I dare say you can keep your own," she pointedly said.
+
+"Not so well, I fear, as another's."
+
+"You must give me your word of honor that if my plot does not please
+you, nobody shall be told?"
+
+"I give you my promise," he said freely, just as he would have given her
+anything she asked for.
+
+He had debated with his passion, uttered every reason of others and all
+he could devise, overwhelmed himself with good advice and created a
+Chinese Wall of obstacles, but he heard himself murmuring: "I love her!"
+The only way, he feared, to put an end to his wicked craze was to put an
+end to his life--an irreputable argument, but to be used moderately. She
+allowed him to quiver under her lingering gaze, and finally said:
+
+"The fact is, I do not like the idea of M. Clemenceau selling this
+house. It would be a greater grief than he believes now. He has his
+dearest memories springing here. Besides, he could not work in peace in
+town. Fortunately, my uncle has provided me with the means to help him.
+I want to lend him the sum required, but I fear that he would accept
+nothing from me."
+
+"He is a very proud man," observed the Italian, courteously, for, while
+he worshiped the speaker, he knew that she was not morally without
+blemishes.
+
+Not because her affection for him was a proof of that delinquency, for
+love overlooked that and gave it another name, but because he believed
+Clemenceau, and the woman, while no less alluring, was terrifying as
+well.
+
+"It is an excess of very cruel justice!" said she with a strange warmth.
+"The greatest punishment on a wrongdoer is to refuse her, when
+repentant, the joy of doing a kindness. You need not pretend surprise,
+for I have done harm. I did not forsee what would be thought of my hasty
+conduct, and even if I were wicked; can you expect a woman to have the
+loftiness of genius like him, and the force for resisting temptation
+like you?"
+
+"Like me!" ejaculated Antonino, starting.
+
+"Yes; can you deny that you have had to wrestle and are wrestling now
+with yourself most strenuously?"
+
+He averted his eyes and made no reply.
+
+"Child that you are," she resumed. "You were right when you just now
+said that you could keep the secret of others better than your own. Can
+the eyes of an honest youth like you deceive those of a wayward woman
+like me? I thank you for the effort you have made--and the silence your
+lips have preserved. It matters not. I am glad that after doing the act
+of reparation proposed, I shall have the means to go away, literally,
+for good this time. It is time I went."
+
+He lifted his hand as if to detain her, but let it fall quickly.
+
+After all, if she departed forever without speaking out the secret of
+those two hearts, what harm would be done. Who had the right to prevent
+the susceptible Italian feeling the first impressions of the gentler sex
+and owing them to Césarine? He could but be thankful that he saw only
+the prologue to "the great dreadful tragedy of Woman." He might blame
+himself for cherishing the memory of the false wife, but he could not
+annul that early sensation. Was it her fault, brought to France at the
+sequel of a romantic adventure, if she met him, a castaway, and
+disturbed his youth and innocence? There had not seemed any evil
+intention in speech or behavior toward him, and he himself might be as
+proud as she was of the pure and respectful sentiment which should have
+contributed toward her amelioration. In this case, he--ignorant of the
+counter-attraction of the Viscount de Terremonde--imagined that she had
+struggled also against the pressure of nature and the sin was no more
+when she triumphed.
+
+"Well, listen to the secret which we can discuss," said she. "I wish to
+be associated with you in a good action, which, I hope, will lead to
+many another, if it is the first. One of these days, when you learn the
+story of my life, you will see there was a little good in it to shine on
+the dark background. Are you not willing to help me increase it? In this
+case, that good and honorable man will profit."
+
+Antonino listened spellbound, he could have been ordered up to their own
+terrible cannon's mouth by that resistless voice.
+
+"Let me live one day in your youth, illusions and unstained conscience,"
+she implored. "Well, here in this little pocketbook are letters of
+credit for two hundred thousand francs. It is all I have--take it."
+
+"What am I to do with it?" said Antonino.
+
+"Put it away somewhere out of my reach to retake it. I know myself and
+that, if I have a good thought one day, I might entertain the reverse on
+the next. If I broke into the money, I could not replace the sum
+extracted, and, another thing, I cannot make the use of it I intended.
+Leave me to win from my husband the acceptance of the help I wish to
+give him. It may take long, but until then, pray keep the money; that
+will not entangle you in any degree."
+
+What a strange woman! he thought. She does evil with the easy, graceful
+air of an almsgiver distributing charity, and she does good with the
+stealth of a criminal!
+
+"I am a fair example of my sex," said she, divining what was in his
+mind, "weak, ignorant, unfortunate: and stupid--and the proof is any
+harm I have done to others is nothing to that I have wrought to myself."
+
+Antonino, taking the pocketbook--a dainty article in Russian
+leather--went to the oaken chest which he opened after what seemed some
+cabalistic manipulation, and the muttering of what seemed an "Open
+Sesame!"
+
+"Have you no safe yet, is that box strong and secure?" she inquired in a
+tone of well assumed anxiety, as she hurriedly took three or four steps
+to bring her again beside him.
+
+"You need not be alarmed. That is a box of which we made the peculiar
+fastenings. It is too heavy to be carried off, and burglars will not
+tamper with it in impunity," said the Italian, smiling maliciously, as
+he put his hand on the lid to raise it.
+
+"I understand; it opens with a secret lock?"
+
+"Yes; one I cannot tell you about."
+
+"I have no use for it," she said hastily, "on the contrary, I wish the
+money to be where I cannot touch it."
+
+"Nobody will touch it there," returned the young man gravely. "Stop! how
+will you get it if anything happens to me--if I should die?"
+
+"A young man like you die in a couple of days!" laughed Césarine.
+
+"It may occur," he replied gloomily. "Death has hovered over this house
+at any moment of some of our experiments with the most powerful essences
+of nature. And only this morning, when I was out to the post-office,
+they were talking of a hideous discovery--a young man's remains, found
+in a ditch in the Five Hectare Field."
+
+"A--a young man?"
+
+"A foreigner, some said; but his clothes were in tatters, and the
+water-rats had disfigured him."
+
+"Poor fellow!" said she, and quickly she added as if eager to change the
+subject: "my name is on the letters of credit. In case of any mishap, I
+will plainly say so to my husband and he will return me my own
+property."
+
+That was sensible. He had no farther remonstrances to offer, and taking
+advantage of her glancing out into the garden, he closed the lid and
+fastened it so that she could not see how the trick was done. She was
+not vexed, for she saw that man is always weak and on the point of
+losing his Paradise. Antonino would betray as the price of love. She
+allowed him to go in to luncheon alone, wishing to inspect the
+mysterious casket; but, unluckily, she was interrupted by Hedwig, who
+rather officiously wanted to dust the room. Not for the first time,
+Césarine, remembering the wide occult sway claimed by Colonel Von
+Sendlingen, suspected that the girl was not so much her ally as she
+wished. She had begun to watch her under the impression that she was in
+confederacy with Mademoiselle Daniels. She had perceived no signs of
+that, but she believed she intercepted an exchange of glances with the
+false Marseillais. They were of the same nationality and this fact
+caused Césarine to be on her guard. Unless Hedwig repeated what had
+happened between Clemenceau and Antonino, how could the colonel know of
+their conversation?
+
+Hesitating to question her directly, disliking her from that moment, and
+feeling her heart shrink at her loneliness when such crushing odds were
+threatening her, she donned her "company smile" and went to the
+sitting-room bravely.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX.
+
+THE COMPACT.
+
+
+Luncheon was served and M. Cantagnac, seated comfortably, was trying the
+delicacies with rare conscientiousness about any escaping his
+harpoon-like fork. Césarine did not give him a second look and neither
+he nor Clemenceau, with whom he was chatting on politics, more than
+glanced up at her. M. Daniels was more polite, for he warmly accepted a
+second cup of coffee as soon as she, without any attempt to displace
+Mademoiselle Daniels at the urn, took her place beside her.
+
+"Pray go on and attend to the liquors," she said kindly. "I am so
+nervous that I am afraid I shall break something."
+
+She took a seat which placed her on the left of the old Jew. A little
+familiarity was only in keeping when two theatrical artists met.
+
+"What is the matter with your daughter? she seems sad," she remarked
+with apparent interest.
+
+"That is natural enough when we are going away from France, it may be
+forever."
+
+"Going away from here?" inquired Madame Clemenceau.
+
+"Yes; this evening, but we did not like to go without bidding you
+good-bye. Now that we have seen you in good health, and thanked you for
+your hospitality, we can proceed on our mission without compunction."
+
+"A mission--where?"
+
+"I have succeeded in interesting capitalists in your husband's
+inventions. That is settled; and I have taken up again a holy
+undertaking which should hardly have been laid aside for a mere money
+matter. But there is nothing more sacred, after all, than friendship, I
+owe to your husband more than I have thus far repaid," and he bent a
+tender regard on his daughter, with its overflow upon Clemenceau one of
+gratitude.
+
+"Are you going far?" asked Césarine, keeping her eyes in play but little
+rewarded by her scrutiny of the sham Marseillais who devoured, like an
+old campaigner, never sure of the next meal, or of Rebecca who
+superintended the table in her stead with a serious unconcern.
+
+"Around the world," replied Daniels simply, "straight on to the East."
+
+"Goodness! it is folly to take a young lady with you. Is it a scientific
+errand? No, you said holy. Religious?"
+
+"Scientific of an exalted type."
+
+"Is science somewhat entertaining for young ladies?"
+
+"Some think it so."
+
+"She might not. Leave her with me. We are comrades of art, you know,"
+smiling up cordially at Rebecca, as if they had been friends of
+childhood and had never parted any more than Venus' coupled loves.
+
+"Where?"
+
+"In our house," Césarine replied, as though she were fully assured that
+the smiling man on the opposite side of the board would not obtain the
+property. "I do not think we shall quit it."
+
+"If she likes," answered Daniels, easily.
+
+"Rebecca!" he gently called, "Madame invites you to stay with her during
+my journey. M. Clemenceau is my dearest friend, and from the time of his
+wife consenting, do not constrain yourself into going if you would
+rather remain."
+
+"I thank you, madame," replied the Jewess, "but I am going with my
+father, because we have never quitted one another, and I do not wish to
+leave him alone."
+
+"Dear child!" exclaimed Daniels embracing her before he let her return
+to the head of the table. "She will not listen to any suggestion of
+marriage. I know of a bright young gentleman who adores her--an
+Israelite like us, in a promising position. He will one day be a
+professor at the Natural History Museum. But she would not hear of him."
+
+"It is not very amusing to live among birds, beasts and reptiles," said
+Césarine.
+
+"Ha, ha! but then those are stuffed," exclaimed her opposite neighbor,
+showing that he was listening.
+
+"Very likely, she cherishes some little fancy in her heart," said Madame
+Clemenceau, thinking of both her husband and Antonino.
+
+"Possibly," said the Jew, complacently, for he knew that his daughter
+was very fair.
+
+"I believe I know the object," continued Madame Clemenceau.
+
+"I am rather astonished that she should have told you, and not me."
+
+"Oh, she has not told me anything, I guessed."
+
+Daniels seemed relieved.
+
+"And if you should like to hear the name," she began rapidly, but he
+stopped her with a dignified smile. "What, you do not want to know what
+I have found before you, and so much concerns you!"
+
+"If she has not told me, it is because she does not want me to know," he
+observed placidly.
+
+"But what if she tells him!" persisted Césarine.
+
+"She would not let her lover know the state of her heart without
+informing her father; she would commence with me."
+
+The wife smiled cynically at such unlimited trust and felt her hatred of
+Rebecca augment.
+
+"There are not many fathers like you!"
+
+"Nor many daughters like her," he retorted proudly. "I am of the opinion
+that there is a mistake in the French mode of educating girls. The truth
+about everything should be told them, as is done to their brothers. The
+ignorance in which they are left often arises from their parents
+themselves not knowing the causes and end of things, or have no time, or
+have lost the right to speak of everything to their children from their
+own errors or passions. My wife was the best of women and I believe
+Rebecca takes after her. When she was of the age of comprehension, I
+began to explain the world to her simply and clearly. All of heaven's
+work is noble; no human soul--even a virgin's--has the right to be
+shocked by any feature of it. Rebecca aided me when I sought to make a
+livelihood by the profession of music, to which she had strong
+proclivities."
+
+Clemenceau was listening in courtesy to this argument, and the false
+Marseillais did not lose a word--or a sip of his Kirschwasser.
+
+"Afterward, when my ideas changed, and I could make my way to fortune by
+a thoroughfare, less under the public eye, I associated her in my
+studies. She knows," proceeded Daniels, who had shaken off a spell of
+taciturnity which the stranger and Madame Clemenceau had inspired, and
+seemed unable to pause, "she knows that nothing can be destroyed, and
+that all undergoes transformation, and cannot cease to exists with the
+exception of evil which diminishes as it goes on its way."
+
+Cantagnac slowly absorbed another glass of the cherry cordial, which he
+had to pour out himself as Rebecca had retired to a corner where the
+host turned over the leaves of photographic album as a cover to their
+dialogue.
+
+"If my daughter loves," continued Daniels, seeing at last that his theme
+was too abstruse for his single auditor, "as you conjectured, dear
+madame, it is surely some honorable person worthy of that love; if she
+has not informed me it is because there is some obstacle, such as the
+man's not loving her or being bound to another woman. In any case, the
+obstacle must be insurmountable, or she would not go away with me into
+strange countries through great fatigue on a chimerical search."
+
+Cantagnac had risen and, very courteously for his assumed character, had
+come round the table without going near his host and the Jewess, and
+entered into the other dialogue.
+
+"Did you say you were going far, monsieur?" he inquired.
+
+Daniels nodded and opened his arms significantly to their utmost
+extent.
+
+"Leaving Europe with a scientific design? Ah! may one hear?"
+
+"Perhaps it would not much interest you?" returned the old man, who
+seemed to feel a revival of a prejudice against the visitor upon his
+coming nearer.
+
+"The atmosphere of this house is so learned," replied, the smiling man
+unabashed by the sudden coolness, "and, besides, more things interest me
+than people believe, eh, madame?" directly appealing to the hostess, who
+had to nod.
+
+"You see I have a great deal of spare time since I retired from business
+and I am eager to increase my store, ha, ha!"
+
+"Well, the idea which has tormented more than one of my race, has seized
+me," returned M. Daniels, "I wish to fill up gaps in our traditional
+story and link our present and our future with our past. The question is
+of the Lost Tribes of Israel. I believe after some research, that I know
+the truth on the subject, and, more that I may be chosen to reconquer
+our country. The ideal one is not sufficient for us, and I am going to
+locate the real one and register the act of claiming it. Every man has
+his craze or his ideal, and mine may lead me from China to Great Salt
+Lake, or to the Sahara."
+
+"What a pity," interjected Cantagnac merrily, "that the Wandering Jew
+did not have your idea. It would have helped him work out his sentence
+to walk around the globe!"
+
+"He had no money to lend to monarchs sure to vanquish or to peoples
+astounded by having been overcome. But his five pence have fructified by
+dint of much patience, privation and economy. The Wandering Jew has
+realized the legend and ceases to tramp. He has reached the goal. What
+do you think about my pleasure tour?" he suddenly inquired of
+Clemenceau, whose eye he caught. "Child of Europe, happy son of Japhet.
+I am going to see old Shem and Ham. Have you a keepsake to send them or
+a promise to make?"
+
+"Tell them," said the host, coming over to join the group, while
+Rebecca, during the continued resignation of Madame Clemenceau,
+superintended the servant's removal of the luncheon service, "tell them
+that we are all hard at work here and that more than ever there's a
+chance of our becoming one family."
+
+On seeing Clemenceau approach his wife, the pretended Marseillais
+delicately withdrew to the corner of the sideboard where the cigar-stand
+tempted him. But he kept his eyes secretly on the two men who gave him
+more concern than the two women. He reflected that fate had managed
+things wisely for his plans, for if Clemenceau had married the
+incorruptible Jewess, he might have been more surely foiled. As for
+Daniels, the amateur apostle who hinted at a union of his people, he
+might be dangerous or useful. He determined to put a spy on his track,
+who might smear his face with ochre and stick an eagle's feather in his
+cap so that, if seen to shoot him in a New Mexican canon, that supposed
+lost Tribe of Israel which include the Apaches would gain the credit of
+the murder. While reflecting, his quick ear heard a light loot draw
+near; he did not look round, sure that it was his new recruit who crept
+up to him. It was, indeed, Madame Clemenceau, who put his half-emptied
+liquor glass upon the sideboard by him.
+
+"No heeltapi in our house, Monsieur!" she exclaimed.
+
+Cantagnac tossed off the concentrated cordial with contempt; his head
+was not one to be affected by such potations.
+
+"Thank you! have you already opened the trenches?" he asked in an
+undertone.
+
+"By means of the Italian, yes. I have entered the stronghold."
+
+"But he closed the door in your face!"
+
+"No, no; I can open it at any time."
+
+"Excellent Kisschwasser, this of yours, madame!" exclaimed Von
+Sendlingen, in his satisfaction speaking the word with a little too
+accurate a pronunciation to suit a native of the south of France.
+
+"Mark that man!" whispered Rebecca to Clemenceau, whom she had rejoined
+as he stood by her father. "Distrust him! his laugh is forced and false!
+I am sure that he wishes you evil!"
+
+"Then stay here and shield the house!"
+
+"No; I must go this evening. Ah, you men of brains laugh at us women for
+entertaining presentiments. But we do have them and we must utter them.
+Be on your guard!"
+
+"And must you go?" went on Clemenceau to Daniels, as if he expected to
+find him less resolute than his daughter.
+
+"More than ever!" but, seeing how he had saddened him, he took his hand
+with much emotion and added: "Rebecca will explain. I go away happy to
+think that the honest men outnumber the other sort and that when we all
+take hold of hands, we shall see that the scoundrels excluded from our
+ring will be scarcely worth disabling from farther injury."
+
+Césarine, perceiving that her confederate was edging gradually toward
+the rifle which Antonino had been shooting with and which had been
+removed from the drawing-room, where the guest for a day had too many
+opportunities to be alone with it. To cover his inspection, she
+suggested that Rebecca should afford the company a final pleasure, a
+kind of swan's song, and went and opened the cottage-piano for her. The
+Jewess did not refuse the invitation and began Gounod's "Medje" in a
+voice which Von Sendlingen had room to admit had improved in tone and
+volumn, and would make her as worthy of the grand opera house as it had,
+five years before, of the Harmonista and its class. Daniels quietly left
+the room, loth to disturb Clemenceau, whom that voice enthralled and who
+became more and more deeply submerged in the thoughts it engendered. He
+suffered pain from the need to liberate his sorrows, confide his spirit
+and communicate his dreams. And was not this singer the very one created
+to comfort him and lull him to rest? Must he remain heroic and
+ridiculous in the indissoluble bond, and endure silently. On Antonino he
+rested his mind and on Rebecca, the daughter of the eternally
+persecuted, he longed to rest his soul.
+
+The greatness of this man and the purity of this gifted creature were so
+clearly made for one another that everybody divined and understood the
+unspoken, immaterial love.
+
+What an oversight to have let Césarine abduct him when it was Rebecca to
+whom chance had shown that he ought to belong! If he had remained free
+till this second meeting, she would have been his wife, his companion
+his seventh day repose, and the mother of his earthly offspring instead
+of the immortal twins, genius and glory, which poorly consoled the
+childless husband! As it was, the powers constituted would not allow
+them to dwell near each other. She could only be the bride in the second
+life--for eternity. She loved him as few women had ever loved, because
+he was good, great and just--and because he was unhappy. No man existed
+in her eyes superior to him. Nothing but death would set him free from
+the woman who had not appreciated him properly. She had let pass the
+greatest bliss a woman can know on earth--the love of a true heart and
+the protection of a great intellect. If death struck them before the
+wife, Felix would behold Rebecca on the threshold of the unknown land
+where they would be united tor infinity. Her creed did not warrant such
+a hope--his said that in heaven there were no marriages, but her heart
+did not heed such sayings, and her feelings told her that thus things
+would come to pass.
+
+She had concluded the piece of music. She rose and, for the first time,
+gave Césarine her hand.
+
+"Farewell!" she said.
+
+"Why say it now?" answered Madame Clemenceau, surprised. "You are not
+going till to-morrow morning."
+
+"To-night! I may not see you again, we have so many preparations to
+make."
+
+"Well, as you did not come here to see me, it is of no consequence.
+Farewell!"
+
+"I am your servant, madame," said the Jewess, bowing.
+
+"Ah, Hagar!" hissed she, "unmasked."
+
+"Farewell, Sarah!" retorted Rebecca, stung out of her equanimity by this
+sudden dart of the viper, but Césarine said no more, and she proceeded
+steadily toward the door.
+
+Clemenceau had preceded her thither.
+
+"What did she say?" he inquired.
+
+"Nothing worth repeating. Beware of her as well as of that man!" but she
+saw that he would not follow her glance and draw a serious inference
+from the way in which the wife and the unwelcome guest had drawn closely
+together. "Fulfil your destiny," she continued solemnly. "Work! remain
+firm, pure and great! Be useful to mankind. Above transient things, in
+the unalterable, I will await you. Do not keep me lonely too long," was
+wrung from her in a doleful sob.
+
+He could not speak, it was useless, for she knew already everything that
+he night say.
+
+"At last!" ejaculated Von Sendlingen in relief, when all had gone out,
+as he sprang on the rifle and feverishly fingered it. "This is the rifle
+of their latest finish. What an odd arrangement! Where the deuce is the
+hammer--the trigger--and all that goes toward making up the good old
+rifle of our fathers? Oh, Science, Science! what liberties are taken in
+your name!" he cried in drollery too bitter not to be intended to cover
+his vexation. "Mind, this rifle is included in our contract?"
+
+"Everything," she answered in a fever, looking toward the doorway, where
+her husband had disappeared with the Jewess. "Be easy! The rifle, the
+cannon, the happiness, the honor and the lives of all here--myself as
+well! If there is anything more you long for, say so!"
+
+"Talk sensibly!" said he severely and gripping her wrist.
+
+Restored by the pressure, she drew a long breath and said in a low
+voice:
+
+"One way or another, things will come to a head to-night. This Jewish
+intriguante and the old fox her father are going away by the railway at
+nine o'clock, and Felix will escort them. Antonino will be alone here,
+and I mean to make him my assistant as he has been my husband's."
+
+"Better trust nobody! it is risky, and, besides, with an accomplice, the
+reward becomes less by his share."
+
+"How much is all? Will you pay five million marks?"
+
+"That's too much. Put it two millions--half when you hand over the
+cipher, half when we hold the working drawings and Antonino's
+ammunition."
+
+"Be it so," she answered after a brief pause, during which both
+listened. "If Antonino will help me, so much the better for him. It
+would be delightful to see Italy with a native! Now go away. We must not
+be seen conversing together."
+
+"If the young man turns restive?" suggested the prudent spy.
+
+"Impossible! he is charmed. However, remember this: Return to-night
+after the party has gone to the station, secrete yourself in the grounds
+where you can watch the drawing-room windows. If one opens and I call,
+run up to aid me. If none open to you, hasten away. The danger with
+which I contend will be one which you could not overcome!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX.
+
+ON THE EVE.
+
+
+The evening was calm and clear over Montmorency, where there was even
+grandeur in the stillness. Nature--the discreet confident and
+inexhaustible counsellor, always ready to intermediate between God and
+man--nature was appeasing passion and misery in all bosoms but Felix
+Clemenceau's, as he strolled in the garden which he did not expect long
+to possess. Rebecca was going away and Césarine had come, two sufficient
+reasons for him to detest the place. He had called upon the scene to
+give him advice on his course, and he hoped to understand clearly what
+it had commanded to him in the hour of grief tempered with faith. He had
+not the resources of others; he could not consult the shades of his
+parents; his mother's tomb was not one to be pointed out with pride, any
+more than his father's.
+
+It seemed to him that he was ordered to continue struggling till he
+vanquished; this he had always tried. Work and seek out! And yet his
+mind wavered and his resolve was unsettled. It was the ever dulcet voice
+of that Circe which sufficed to agitate and obscure his soul in spite of
+his having believed it was forever detached from her. But these
+umbrageous and odoriferous hills, knew how deeply he loved her, for he
+had spoken of his thraldom to them when he might not speak to her under
+pain of shame and debasement.
+
+Had he not undergone enough and pardoned as far as could be expected?
+But she had disdained condonation, mocked at it and trampled it under
+foot.
+
+Again she came to entangle him in her love. No; her wiles and witchery,
+for she was not a woman to love anyone or anything. Unable to love her
+own flesh and blood, she was an alien to humanity, as well as to love.
+To such a mother, he owed solely indifference.
+
+Such a woman was only a human form, less to him than the least of the
+patient, laborious animals useful to man.
+
+As the stars grew darkened by clouds above the impassible horizon, his
+reflections turned more gloomy and deadly. Was it impious for him to
+arrogate the right to substitute his justice for that supreme, and wield
+its dreadful sword? But he shrank from acting as his father had done,
+and mainly because he saw that, if ever the world knew that he loved
+Rebecca, it would say that he had slain his wife to clear the path to
+the altar for his second marriage.
+
+Césarine had hinted of repentance, her return portended the same. The
+world would side with her. Yes; he would give her another chance. After
+the guests departed, he would let Antonino also go, he would resign
+himself to being coupled again with this chain-companion in the galleys
+of life!
+
+"If it is true," he concluded, "I will endeavor to lead her to the light
+and truth, although her soul is full of shadows and the divine spark is
+clogged with ashes. Oh, heaven, may she be filled with the temptation to
+do good and mayest thou receive her in thy endless mercifulness!"
+
+The squeaking of the gravel under a regular and heavy step induced him
+to look round, and a burly shape loomed up in the darkness between the
+plane trees. It was the so-called Cantagnac, who bowed, with his hat
+off.
+
+"I have been hunting for you everywhere," he said jovially. "I want to
+say good-bye without company by, for it makes me timid, ha, ha! though
+you would not think it. Nice wholesome air, here! cool, decidedly cool,
+but wholesome. Doing a solitary smoke over a new invention?"
+
+"No, monsieur, I was conversing."
+
+"Eh! but I do not see anybody!"
+
+"I was conversing with Nature."
+
+"Oh, what the poet-fellows call musing, eh?"
+
+"A kind of prayer."
+
+"I see! well, his church is always open and you can go to service
+anytime, and day or night! and no collection-plate, ha, ha!"
+
+"I make it a practice every day, if only briefly."
+
+"Quite right! quite! I am inclined that way myself, since I lost my wife
+and our boy. He said something about hoping to meet me one day up
+there!" and he flourished his handkerchief about his eyes and toward the
+clouds. "Blessed relief to pray and do you really get an answer now and
+then? in time, no doubt, for it's a great way off!"
+
+"Do you not believe in heaven, M. Cantagnac?" demanded Clemenceau,
+bluntly.
+
+In the twilight and loneliness, the question struck home, and the spy
+felt compelled to make some answer.
+
+"My dear M. Clemenceau," he faltered, "I never meddle with matters which
+do not teach me anything. One word has existed thousands of years, and
+yet full explanations on the highest secrets have been wholly refused,
+so that the finest intellects give up seeking them unless they want to
+go mad. So I think it my duty to abstain and not lose my time in studies
+useless and dangerous. It is not merely a matter of reasoning, but of
+prudence. Of course, every man is his own master. I grant that we
+certainly are subjected to a power above our wit and will. We are born
+without knowing how, and die without knowing why. Between birth and
+death, swarm struggles, passions, sorrows, maladies, miseries of all
+kinds; an unfair, uneven sharing of worldly goods, and scoundrels often
+happy and triumphant and honest people most often unhappy and
+erroneously judged. We are told that we should adore and praise this
+state of things; but I only hold such events as certainties that I can
+see and turn to my profitable use. Now you, M. Clemenceau, are a
+honorable man--a great man since you can carry on a conversation with
+Nature! Why not ask her a favor on account of your belief and your work?
+so that you will not have to doubt her some day more than I do. But let
+us talk of more substantial things. I have inspected the plan of the
+property and walked over the grounds. I have your agent's address, and
+in a week, I will write to him and make my offer. I dare say we shall
+come to an agreement. Let me thank you for your very kind welcome--I
+shall be off in ten minutes."
+
+Absorbed in meditation, Clemenceau did not hold out his hand, and, with
+the idea upon him of the engagement with Madame Clemenceau, the spy did
+not remind him of the omission.
+
+"You need not walk over to the station, for M. Daniels and his daughter
+are going in my carriage. I will find you a place."
+
+This arrangement might have necessitated the false Marseillais going
+into the cars and getting out at the next station; so he excused himself
+on the plea that the walk would please him better.
+
+"To tell you the truth, I am bound to take exercise or die of
+apoplexy--so my family doctor tells me. By the way, I have taken leave
+already of Madame Clemenceau. A Russian, you tell me? I never should
+have imagined it! Ah, one can see that you have converted her into a
+true French lady--lucky man! I can understand that you believe in lofty
+ideas beside a beautiful and talented woman like her! Lucky, lucky
+man!"
+
+And he turned aside, calling out as he departed:
+
+"I know my way! give my respects to your friends who are hunting for the
+Lost Tribes! ha, ha!"
+
+This laugh, loud but not jolly as it was intended to appear, routed
+Clemenceau's solemn thoughts. It seemed, like Pan's, from a statue,
+which gleamed in a vista, still to reverberate when the inventor went
+back to the house. At the upper windows gleamed lights which moved to
+and fro, and shadows flitted across the openings; it was the usual
+bustle when guests are packing up, and the idea of the too quiet and
+lonely house, of the morrow saddens the observer.
+
+A woman's form darted across the lawn and made the master start. It came
+along easily, and he saw that it was one familiar with the grounds.
+
+"Hedwig!"
+
+It was the servant who had run out to the stables to see that the horses
+were put to the carriage.
+
+"Stop a minute! we are in privacy here, and I want to have a word with
+you."
+
+The girl paused, intimidated and almost frightened; she lost color as
+she stood, agitatedly, shifting her weight from one foot to the other,
+and averting her eyes from the speaker. A thief caught in a felonious
+act would not have presented a more damning spectacle.
+
+"Not only are we breaking up the household, Hedwig, but the house is
+going to other hands. The mistress and I will live in a hotel at Paris
+for some time, on account of my changed business relations.
+Consequently, we must dispense with your services. Madame will, on grand
+occasions, have a professional hair dresser in, and so--in a word, I
+must ask you to please yourself about returning to your own country, or
+seeking another situation in this one. You can refer to Madame for a
+character; for, I believe, you have always served her faithfully. But
+you need not look to her for a present, too. Here is a couple of hundred
+franc notes by way of notice. I wish you well wherever you go."
+
+To the amazement of the speaker, instead of accepting the token of
+kindness, Hedwig suddenly put both hands behind her back, and stood
+confounded. Tears silently flowed down her cheeks; then, falling on her
+knees, she sobbed:
+
+"Oh, master, I do not deserve this! Oh, master please forgive me! I am a
+very wicked girl!"
+
+"What are you about?" he exclaimed, fearing that the unexpected boon had
+crazed her. "Do get up!"
+
+"No, no; not before master forgives me!" moaned she.
+
+"Oh, yes, yes--anything!" aiding her to rise.
+
+But she continued weeping, and with the fluency in the illiterate when
+they have long brooded over a speech to relieve their mind, she said:
+
+"You don't know what goes on, master! but I am forced to tell you now,
+since you are so good. I have always been in madame's service since we
+came out of Germany. I was devoted to her, and I knew her when I was at
+the Persepolitan Hotel, but devotion when women are concerned, becomes
+complicity.
+
+"Madame never has cared for you, monsieur, for you and yours. She did
+not marry you for any liking, but because of spite. Not spite from your
+father having punished one of her precious family--they are all a bad
+lot--a witch's brood! faugh! but to Mademoiselle Daniels whom she feared
+would secure the prize. Madame carried on dreadful! When she went away
+last time, it is true she had a telegram from her uncle--but that was a
+happy accident. She was going to bolt anyway, and that came in so
+nicely! She was planning to elope with one of her conquests--the
+Viscount--"
+
+"I know!"
+
+"You know? Well, you don't know that the dead man found in the ditch was
+the Viscount--"
+
+"I saw him killed!" in the same measured tone.
+
+"Oh!" She paused, but recovering, she continued, in a lower voice and
+looking furtively around: "You cannot know that she came back with no
+good end. I believe it was to meet the gentleman who came in at the same
+time, a-pretending to buy the house--"
+
+"M. Cantagnac!" muttered the inventor, a tolerable flock of suspicions
+which that ingenious individual had unintentionally excited, rushing
+upon his brain.
+
+"He's no Marseillais--he's a German, and he is a secret agent. He is--he
+is--well, I may make a clean breast of it--he is one you ought to have
+remembered, the major whom you cudgelled in Munich--"
+
+"Von Sendlingen!"
+
+"Yes, and a colonel--I do not know but he is a general now; he has the
+manner and means of one!" said Hedwig, shuddering. "He knows all of
+madame's peccadilloes--ay, all her crimes--"
+
+"Crimes! be careful, girl!"
+
+"Yes, crime, for she killed her little boy! Thank heaven, I had no hand
+in that--she would not trust me there, and that shows I am not so very
+bad a woman, don't it? She poisoned the little innocent as surely as we
+stand here under the eye of God!"
+
+"Go on; go on," said Clemenceau, hoarsely.
+
+"The colonel threatened to tell you these and other things unless she
+consented to sell him all your business secrets--and give him the model
+gun that goes off without any powder and caps."
+
+"Ah! she consented?" growled the inventor, grinding his teeth and his
+eyes kindling.
+
+"Nobody can hold out against the colonel. He soon made me play the spy
+on everybody for his benefit. But this is not all!"
+
+"Not all! what a sink of iniquity! Would she poison Mademoiselle
+Rebecca, too?"
+
+"I do not doubt it! The old witch her grandmother must have taught her
+all the tricks of her trade. But I meant to say that she is setting her
+cap at poor, dear, young M. Antonino--"
+
+"I know that. Take your money! and live honestly."
+
+"No, monsieur," she replied with some dignity. "And here is money that
+the colonel gave me. It burns me! I beg you to give it toward some good
+work, which you understand better than me. Will you not--and forgive
+me?"
+
+"Have you anything more to say?"
+
+"I have been peeping and listening, but they are all very cunning. I
+only gleaned that the colonel who has just gone out as if to the
+station, should return later and hang around to have the rifle and some
+papers delivered to him."
+
+"By Antonino?"
+
+"If your wife can make him a cat's-paw; if not, she is capable of doing
+all herself--though, anyway, she is driven to it. But, monsieur, it
+burdened me and if you had not called me, I was coming to tell you of
+their schemes. I do not like your idea of killing people by hundreds,
+but it may be good to honest folks, beset by savages and such like, and
+it is not right of a servant to let a master be robbed by more than
+bandits and brigands."
+
+"I am grateful to you, girl." She seized his hand and covered it with
+grateful kisses. "Keep your money and this I give you. Do good with your
+own hand, then it will bless both giver and receiver, as is written."
+
+"Monsieur, you are too good. Could I ask a favor--a proof that you do
+not think me altogether bad? Will you recommend me to Mademoiselle
+Daniels. The Jews do not object to Christian servants, and, besides,"
+she said with simplicity, "I am so poor a Christian."
+
+"You shall enter her service. You will continue, reformed under her
+charge. Go and pack up and hasten from this house--accursed as an eyrie
+of vultures!"
+
+"I am glad you have the warning. Excuse me, but if you were to do like
+the colonel only pretend to go away and come back here to use your ears
+and eyes, you would see what happens."
+
+By the look that passed over her master's face, the girl, though no wise
+woman, perceived that she had mistaken. He was not the sort to act like
+a Von Sendlingen and hide himself to peep and listen. He would be no
+better than herself if he acted thus.
+
+"I have advised you to go away with the Daniels. I shall drive the party
+over in the carriage to the station and return as though I knew of
+nothing. There are times for men to act; times for God to have a clear
+field. Persevere in the right path, girl, and say no more to anybody not
+even Mademoiselle Daniels."
+
+"But you will be seeing madame first?" inquired the girl, fearing the
+collision to which she had contributed, but lighter of soul since she
+had flashed the danger-signal.
+
+"M. Antonino first, and then your mistress," replied he in a stern tone
+which put an end to the dialogue.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI.
+
+THE LAST APPEAL.
+
+
+In the large room where Césarine was to achieve her crowning act of
+treachery, she and her husband were closeted. On the latter's unruffled
+brow not even her feline gaze could read what a perfect acquaintance he
+possessed with all her past and her purposed moves.
+
+"Your maid tells me that you wished to speak to me," he said.
+
+"It is necessary, on the eve of a change in our mode of life, so extreme
+as a home broken up in favor of a stay at a hotel."
+
+"I am listening to you," he said curtly.
+
+"If I were to say to you that I love you, what would be your answer?"
+she said, changing the subject and her tone entirely.
+
+"Nothing! I might wonder what new evil you intended to commit to my
+prejudice. Pure curiosity for you can do nothing more with me."
+
+She was convinced of that, and she thrilled with all the irritation of a
+woman who has lost her power of fascination over even one man.
+
+"Admitting that I cannot do you any harm," she said, "others may and,
+perhaps a great deal. Would you believe that I love you at least if my
+pledge of love consisted in my aiding you to repel the harm and to
+triumph over your enemies at the risk of the greatest danger to myself?"
+
+He shook his head resolutely.
+
+"What other proof do you want?"
+
+He intimated that he could do without any aid from her.
+
+"I am sincere, I swear it!" she exclaimed.
+
+"On what can you swear?"
+
+"It would appear that you, whom people rate as a saint, and so just, do
+not believe in repentance?"
+
+"I do!"
+
+"Then, I repent," said she, rolling her eyes like Magdalen in a Guido
+picture.
+
+"No; those repenting do not say so before they prove it--they give the
+evidence and do not boast."
+
+"But what if I have no time to wait?" she said piteously. "What if it is
+necessary for my soul's sake and perhaps for yours, that I should tell
+you at once what I intended to exhibit gradually when I arrived? make
+the effort to believe me without delay, for one single minute may redeem
+my blackened life and save all to come. Is it so hard for you to listen
+to me, and to believe me?" she wailed. "It would only be renewing
+an old habit of yours, for you used to love me, and ardently, too!
+The first kiss you ever gave to a woman, and the only ones you ever
+received from a woman, are mine! you see I do not doubt you, though
+appearances were against you when I returned to this house. All your
+chastity--enthusiasm--energy, love and faith--all were poured into this
+bosom. Can these things be forgotten? No, no, never! I am sure that when
+a man like you loves a woman like me, her memory never leaves him."
+
+"You mistake!" he said dryly.
+
+"And you, if you think that those fops at the marchioness' were not
+tricked and fooled by me! even the cheat who induced me to leave my
+home--you see, I am frank--he was my dupe, and I saw all the time his
+inferiority to the husband whom I quitted. In that case, it was a
+fortune that tempted me, for you know how pressed we were! But when
+alone, sobered--horrified by the warning conveyed in the sudden death of
+that man, I valued you correctly, and saw that I loved you above all
+men. I was subjected to the power of goodness and loving which is
+enthroned in you. All of a sudden, as you fell in love, I adored you,
+and if only you could have been kept in ignorance of what I did, there
+would have been no wife more faithful, devoted, submissive and loving
+than your own Césarine."
+
+"Did I not forgive you when I learned of your faults?" he reproached
+her.
+
+"True, you pardoned me," she answered, "but loftily, as one at a
+distance, shaking me off and regaining possession of yourself. In short,
+ceasing to be a man. You led me to see that you would no longer believe
+me, because I had once told a lie. Your behavior was grand, noble and
+lofty, for any other man would have whipped me out of his house like a
+cur; and yet I ought not to have been treated so."
+
+"How? like a daughter of the Vieradlers--though you are probably not
+one?"
+
+"You should have abused me, trampled me under foot, even--but then
+forgiven me like an erring man. I am earthly--worldly--and I do not
+understand grand sentiments and half-forgiveness."
+
+There was some sense in her argument, but arguments would not have any
+effect on a character like his, which losing esteem once, was not to be
+deceived again. He had not required Hedwig's revelation about the web of
+treachery spun around him to be invulnerable to the pleading one. Her
+murder of her infant had ruined her irredeemably. Over it he had shed
+tears, though it was more in her image than his and, she had offered no
+one!
+
+"Are we women more angelic than you men," she exclaimed the more
+feverishly, as she felt she was not gaining ground and that over the
+crumbling edge of which she vaguely hoped to climb, he would not stretch
+a hand in help. "Are faults, errors and failures your privilege, as
+force is? Did I really care for any of those men? Do I even recall one
+of them? It was only in rage and spite against your coldness that I went
+over to the marchioness. I ran to these flirtations to forget, as I
+would have taken morphine to sleep. But I have not forgotten you, and I
+have not slept off my love for you, and this is the truth!"
+
+He made an impatient gesture.
+
+"In short, nobody could wile away my heart. All those men together would
+not equal such a one as you, whom I loved and longed for. I do not wish
+to live--I was really ill in Paris, though you will not believe a word
+of it, and will not trouble to learn that I speak the truth--so ill that
+I sat at death's door and the peeping in terrified me. In that black
+cavern there was no love-light, and I crave for love! Then I discovered
+that I could not live without you, and that I was right to forgive you
+so much, though you will not forgive me heartily a little. See how
+abject I am! You are the master, but do not abuse your power. If I have
+no soul--inspire me with one--animate the statue of white clay--or
+share with me your own. We are bound to each other by sacred ties, and
+the marriage law must have been made by those who forsaw that the
+noblest and most generous of men might be wedded to the most guilty of
+women, but that he would save her. Rescue me!" she cried, sinking upon
+her knees.
+
+"I am ready; what do you want?" he said in moved voice so that at last
+she began to hope.
+
+"Forget my faults and the wrong they have caused you. I want you to
+forgive me everything up to the present minute--proudly hurl the past
+into dead eternity and make all that ought not to have been like what
+never was. Lastly, I crave for our departure for a change of sun and air
+and sky, so that the woman I mean to become henceforward should never be
+reminded for a single instant of the wretch that I was. Oh, let us live
+no more but for each other--you entirely mine as I entirely your own!"
+
+Almost carried away by the eloquent outburst, Clemenceau had but one
+thought to cling to and hold him in the flood. His work of patriotism!
+
+"Your work? well, there should be no work where love presides! after
+all," she continued, rising and venturing to slide her arms upon his
+shoulders, "you only toiled because you believed I did not love you. You
+tried to become celebrated only because you were not happy. You were a
+student when I opened the book of love to you and the little I showed
+you to read gave you the yearning for more. Labor came after love. When
+I caused you pain, you looked for consolation and you owe your genius to
+me. Genius understands or divines everything, and knows what human
+weakness is. Ah, if you had been weak and I mighty, how gladly I would
+have pardoned you! Had you done any wrong--if you were wrung by remorse
+like most of us--what joy to make you forget it. But no, you are honor
+itself, and I lose all hope?"
+
+"Poor creature!" sighed he, but still like marble though her arms
+enfolded him and palpitate warm unlike serpents whose coils their curves
+resembled.
+
+"You pity me?" she murmured coaxingly, although he did not thaw under
+her tightening clasp; "then, you agree?"
+
+He shook his head. As usual, when perversity defends, the pleading
+reached the judge too late. Her pressure became irksome, he thought of
+the devilfish tightening its rings till fatal, and, by an effort,
+irresistible while gentle, he disengaged himself from her arms. They
+dropped inert by her panting sides as if broken. But only for an instant
+her defeat overpowered her.
+
+"I see," she exclaimed, with a great change in her tone, "there is no
+more room in the heart which I deserted! You have replaced me with that
+Rebecca!"
+
+"It is true I love her," her rejoined, "but not as you suppose. Do not
+try to understand how, for you cannot understand. Heaven knows that I
+would have wished to associate you with me in the same love and the same
+glory, but it is impossible. Once we were ships in company, sailing side
+by side--I thought with the same sailing orders--but you stole away in
+the night and I have had to direct my course alone toward a sea
+eternally forbidden to you. Oh, if you only knew how far I am already
+from you! The being who speaks to me by your lips is not known to me--I
+see her not! I do not know who you are. The only bond between us is the
+chain the law imposes--let us carry it between us but each with the
+share apart."
+
+"What is to become of me?" cried Césarine, forced to try her last
+weapon. "You picked up a starving boy on the road and was kind to him. I
+am an outcast at your feet, hungry for love--succor me, no less kindly!
+I am a living creature, and I may be taught many things. Utilize me by
+your intelligence. Can I not be your pupil, your helper, your assistant?
+Do for me what Daniels has done for his daughter--initiate me into
+science, explain your labels to me and, associate me in your work."
+
+"Teach you what you would sell!" he burst forth at the end of his
+endurance.
+
+"Can you believe that?" she faltered, receding a step, turning white and
+trembling in the fear that he knew all.
+
+"Believe? I am certain that you are lying now as always!" he thundered.
+"It is impossible that your remorse should be sincere; it must mask some
+infamy. You have perpetrated faults which are unattended by remorse.
+Enough! If I am wrong, and you really do repent, it will not take a
+minute, but years for you to be believed, and it does not concern me.
+Apply to the Church, which alone can redeem and absolve such culprits as
+you."
+
+Convinced that she had lost the battle and forgetting her cunning,
+Madame Clemenceau threw off the veil and showed herself the direct
+offspring of the infernal regions. Her voice sounded like the hiss of
+fiery serpents, and her frame quivered as if she stood in a current of
+consuming vapor. Her eyes, too, wore that painful expression of depth of
+agony as though her disappointment were excruciating. With his pardon,
+love, protection and fortune, she might have defied Von Sendlingen and
+his league, but, alone, she was a stormy petrel flapping its
+insignificant pinions in the face of the God of Storms. Felix refused to
+be cheated by her and she was lost. But the criminal hates to stand
+alone in the dock; she wished to be terribly avenged because he was so
+great and so implacable. She would show that she could be extreme, too;
+if she were not encouraged to love, she would hate.
+
+"Oh, you pitiless one, because you have right on your side and your
+conscience," she screamed; "I will drag you down with me into curses and
+blasphemies, and others as well! whoever you hold dear shall perish with
+us!"
+
+"My father was threatened in the same way," retorted Clemenceau. "He had
+not the patience I enjoy. Had he but waited a little, the viper would
+have died in her own venomous slime!"
+
+"Then you will not kill me as your murderer did my aunt?"
+
+"No! you have wrecked my happiness, my home, my private life, but I
+forgive you, and that is your punishment. You have cast your wicked,
+unholy lures about my adopted son, Antonino, but I overlook this because
+he will repulse you and, that will be an augmentation of your
+punishment. You threaten Rebecca Daniels, but such are protected by the
+great Giver of good and, that is again an augmentation of your
+punishment. No, I will not hurt you--I would not kill one to whom long
+life--as it was to your witch grandmother, embitters every fraction of
+time. Live! and, remember, if you are here when I return, that our paths
+diverge forever here and beyond the earth!"
+
+She had sunk in a heap on the tiger-skin rug and her hair, loosened by
+accident or perhaps by design, streamed in a sheet of graven gold over
+her faultless shoulders. Through this shimmering net, her tears flowed,
+detached like strung diamonds scattered from the thread. But her weeping
+and her attitude were thrown away, for she heard his step as regular as
+a soldier's, leaving the room, crossing the vestibule and taking him out
+to where the carriage wheels ground the gravel. Von Sendlingen had gone;
+the Daniels were descending the stairs; even the servants gave no sign
+of life. Already the doomed house began to sound with those dull echoes
+when spectres promenade where human tenants have dwelt. Under ordinary
+conditions, her place was to speed the parting guests, but her farewell
+to Rebecca had expressed her sentiments, and she dared not risk another
+contest of wits with the Hebrew.
+
+She heard the horse's hoofs and the wheels beat the sand, and the click
+of the gate closing after the vehicle. The silence of death fell on the
+deserted house.
+
+"I am alone," she said, sitting up but not rising.
+
+"Now it will be everyone for himself and myself upon the side of evil,
+where they forced me to rank."
+
+Hardly had she risen to her feet, very tremulous, and prepared to go to
+the mirror over the sideboard to re-arrange her hair, than she heard
+footsteps in the hall.
+
+"Hedwig!" but listening more coolly, "no, a man!" she added, "has Von
+Sendlingen the audacity to enter?"
+
+A man opened the door, but stood petrified on the threshold.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII
+
+FELIX
+
+
+It was Antonino.
+
+"Is this the keeper?" thought Césarine, laughing scornfully within
+herself. "A pretty boy for the austere Clemenceau to trust! Do not
+excuse yourself," she called out. "Close the door--it causes a draft!
+So, you told my husband that you loved me?"
+
+Far from expecting this address, the Italian let several seconds pass
+before he faltered:
+
+"Who told you so?"
+
+"He did! he never lacks frankness, I will say that for him. Well, you
+have destroyed my chances of securing a peaceful life. And yet I never
+did you any harm, did I?"
+
+"I destroy you?" repeated he, as she began to weep after a vain attempt
+to hide her eyes in her tresses.
+
+"How is that?"
+
+"Because I lost control of myself under his anger and his threats, and I
+confessed to him also that I was fond of you. We have a fellow feeling
+and selected the same confidant!"
+
+"You love me?"
+
+"For what else did I come back to this gloomy house? What else would
+have induced me to stay? He drove me away before, and I never suspected
+that it was to clear the scene for Rebecca, fool--child that I was! And
+now he picked the quarrel with me about you in order to go off with the
+heathen! You men are so monopolizing! He wants to be let love the
+inky-eyed Jewess, but I must not say a kind word to you! Oh, what am I
+to do now?" and in pretending to repair the disarray of her hair, down
+came a luxuriant tress. "What does it matter which way I turn? All roads
+lead to the river or the railroad--a step into the cold water or repose
+on the track of the iron horse, and no one will then torment poor
+Césarine!"
+
+"You have some sinister plan," said Antonino, frightened by her manner.
+"I will not let you go away alone."
+
+"Is it thus you guard your master's house?"
+
+"Then wait till he returns and decide upon something."
+
+"He will decide on separating us, that is sure. Do you think if he takes
+me, that you could go with us?"
+
+"No! but if you meant to kill yourself, I should die after you."
+
+"Why not die together?"
+
+"I do not care."
+
+"Then you love me thoroughly?" she exclaimed in delight.
+
+"Death would be repose, and this struggle is driving me frantic," said
+he, in a deep voice.
+
+"Well, we will die some day," she said with pretended fervor, "but we
+are young and have time before us. Lovers do not willingly die! If you
+love me as I love you, you would, like me, find life all of a sudden
+wondrously bright! What a blessing that I have money for our enjoyment!"
+clapping her hands like a child.
+
+"In your fair Italy, we--"
+
+"Money," repeated he, raised by her magic into a region above such
+sordid ideas and falling quickly.
+
+"Of course! my bank orders! stay, they are in your box. Let us hasten
+away before he returns. Quick, take!"
+
+"No;" said Antonino. "When he left the house in my charge he bade me
+touch nothing, and let nothing be touched until his return."
+
+"He forsaw!" muttered the faithless wife, gnawing one of the tresses
+furiously as she studied the Italian's emotion. "Get me my money!"
+
+"Wait until--"
+
+"And with it those papers that describe your discoveries."
+
+"What do you mean?" he cried, coming to a halt, half-way toward the
+chest while she was undoing one of the windows of which she had drawn
+back the curtains. "The papers--they are not mine, or yours."
+
+"They will make the man I love rich and famous!" she replied, with eyes
+that seemed to light up the room far more than the starlight entering.
+"You know all about the work. With those plans in the language you also
+read, you can rise higher than he! He restricts his genius to his
+country--you--we will sell to the highest bidder!"
+
+"Mercenary fiend! I comprehend all now!" said the Italian.
+
+"So much the better!" she replied, coolly, having opened the window and
+descried a shadow standing guard in a narrow alley. "We shall lose no
+time in explaining."
+
+"You mean to betray your country?"
+
+"Neither mine nor yours! our country is wherever love and gold are
+rulers."
+
+"Wretch!" cried he, taking a step toward her so threateningly that she
+retreated from the window to which his back was turned as he continued
+to face her.
+
+"Which is the meaner?" she responded. "I deceive a man who loaths me,
+scorns me and threatens me with the love of another! You deceive the man
+who shelters you and to whom you owe everything. I betray him who does
+me harm--you, him who did you good. We are on a level, unless you have
+surpassed me. This is love! Did you imagine that you can withdraw the
+foot that takes one step in this path? An error, for one must tread it
+to the end. The steps are passion, the fault, the vice and the crime.
+But I have need of you to save me. I am yours and your soul is mine!
+Take the spoil and follow me!"
+
+In his surprise, Antonino did not remark a footstep, sounding harsh with
+gravel grinding the wood of the verandah, or a grim face at the open
+window.
+
+"You are right," he said. "I am a scoundrel, but I am not going to be a
+villain. It is I who should commit suicide. Farewell! my death be on
+your head!"
+
+"You have spoken your doom!" said she quickly, as she made a sign to Von
+Sendlingen in whose hand she saw naked steel abruptly gleam.
+
+"Who's there?" began the Italian, but, before he could turn, the long
+stiletto, drawn out of a sword-cane, was passed through his slender
+body.
+
+He fell without a groan and his staring eyes, sublimely unconscious of
+his assassin and of the instigator of the crime, were riveted, on the
+ceiling.
+
+"Confound it!" said the colonel, "this is not your husband!"
+
+"No, another conscientious fool!" she said brutally. "Waste no time on
+that boy. Before the man returns, let us seize our prise. Keep your
+hands off. This is no common chest. It opens with a combination lock and
+the word is 'R-e-b-e-c-c-a!'"
+
+She quickly fingered the studs which opened the lock when properly
+played upon, and to the joy of Colonel Von Sendlingen, she could lift up
+the loosened lid. But for a temporary vexation, they saw in the dim
+light that a kind of steel grating still closed the discovered space.
+
+"That will not detain me long," said the colonel, contemptuously, and
+relying upon his great strength as he forced his fingers between these
+bars, he secured a firm hold and began to draw the frame up toward him.
+"You have done your part, madame, well, and I--"
+
+At the same instant, the chest became a mass of the whitest flame which
+expanded monstrously and the whole house shook in a dreadful explosion.
+
+It was supernaturally that Clemenceau had been warned to stand aside and
+let the justice of heaven deal its stroke. No longer fear that Césarine
+will work evil alone or directed by Von Sendlingen. At the last moment,
+all was put in order again by the execution by the soulless mechanism of
+the burglar defying-safe. The law of heaven shone forth in triumph and
+what was repentant in the errant soul was recalled to where goodness is
+omnipotent.
+
+The flame leaped over the three dead bodies and seized upon the
+furniture, spreading in all sides. The timbers of the villa were old and
+kiln-dried. The proprietor, returning from the station, had a dreadful
+beacon to guide him.
+
+All Montmorency turned out of doors to assist in extinguishing the
+conflagration. Not often does the quiet suburb treat itself to such
+spectacles, and when, to that sensation, was added that of three dead
+bodies dragged from the shattered drawing-room where every thing else
+was consumed, it may be believed that the night was memorable.
+
+The Daniels were telegraphed to at Paris, and they returned before
+midnight. They alone knew that the grief of Clemenceau was given to
+Antonino and not to his wife, but the lookers-on were deceived, and many
+a man, returning to his slippers and the evening journal, scolded his
+wife for having repeated baseless scandals about the proprietor of the
+Reine-Claude Villa living on cool terms with his unfortunate wife.
+
+The coroner of Montmorency did not display any broad perception of the
+tragedy, although the superfluity of eight inches of Sendlingen's steel
+in the side of a young man pronounced dead by asphyxia would have struck
+one of the laity. But the reporters of the Paris press were more
+perspicacious. They related that an envoy of a foreign union of
+unscrupulous capitalists had attempted to rob M. Clemenceau's residence
+of his inventions and France of a glory, but had been met by his
+dauntless wife and an assistant who had punished the brigand, although
+losing their own lives in defence of the patriotic trust. It was formed
+convenient to suppress all mention of the fact of the lady being Russian
+and the man Italian.
+
+But in his death, Von Sendlingen gained some revenge. The loss of
+Antonino the detailed plans delayed Clemenceau in his project. The War
+farther threw them back and it was only recently that his perfected
+cannon was formally accepted. In all his tribulations and
+disappointments, Daniels supported him, for he, too, was an idealist,
+and so truly his friend as to defer his own scheme until he should be at
+ease.
+
+After the fortuitous meeting of those men had come irresistible
+attraction and communion, moral, intellectual and scientific--friendship
+to the full meaning of the word.
+
+Poetic justice, as we call the fate least like what man deals out,
+decreed that the château of the Marchioness de Latour-lagneau should be
+dilapidated during the Prussian occupation of Montmorency. On its ruins
+rises the manufactury of he new rifle. On the side of the heart, too,
+the same justice rewarded Clemenceau, for he married Rebecca, and they
+were happy in having sons to bear his name worthily. Césarine was
+forgotten, since, however great a conflagration may be--however far the
+flare may be cast on the sky--whatever the extent of damage--it must die
+out in time. Such is Passion, and the brighter its blaze the blacker the
+ruins it leaves after it--the deeper the misery--the wider the
+loneliness. It devours itself, with no revival like the Phoenix; but
+Love occupies the whole of life, however extended, and still has the
+strength and volumn to transport its worshipers to the realm of the
+happy.
+
+
+
+***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE SON OF CLEMENCEAU***
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+<h1>The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Son of Clemenceau, by Alexandre (fils)
+Dumas</h1>
+<pre>
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at <a href = "https://www.gutenberg.org">www.gutenberg.org</a></pre>
+<p>Title: The Son of Clemenceau</p>
+<p>Author: Alexandre (fils) Dumas</p>
+<p>Release Date: October 1, 2004  [eBook #13572]</p>
+<p>Language: English</p>
+<p>Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1</p>
+<p>***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE SON OF CLEMENCEAU***</p>
+<br><br><h3>E-text prepared by Steven desJardins<br>
+            and Project Gutenberg Distributed Proofreaders</h3><br><br>
+<hr class="full" noshade>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<h1>THE SON OF CLEMENCEAU</h1>
+
+<h3>A NOVEL OF MODERN LOVE AND LIFE</h3>
+
+<h3>A SEQUEL TO <i>THE CLEMENCEAU CASE</i></h3>
+
+<h2>BY ALEXANDER DUMAS (FILS)</h2>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<center>
+<hr>
+</center>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+
+ <h3><b>Table of Contents</b></h3>
+ <h4><a href='#CHAPTER_I'><b>CHAPTER I.&mdash;STUDENT AND SOLDIER.</b></a><br />
+ <a href='#CHAPTER_II'><b>CHAPTER II.&mdash;SOLDIER'S SWORD AND WANDER-STAFF.</b></a><br />
+ <a href='#CHAPTER_III'><b>CHAPTER III.&mdash;&quot;THE JINGLE-JANGLE.&quot;</b></a><br />
+ <a href='#CHAPTER_IV'><b>CHAPTER IV.&mdash;THE STAR IS DEAD LONG LIVE THE STAR!</b></a><br />
+ <a href='#CHAPTER_V'><b>CHAPTER V.&mdash;UNDER MUNICH.</b></a><br />
+ <a href='#CHAPTER_VI'><b>CHAPTER VI.&mdash;TWO AUGURS.</b></a><br />
+ <a href='#CHAPTER_VII'><b>CHAPTER VII.&mdash;ONE GOOD TURN DESERVES&mdash;A BAD ONE.</b></a><br />
+ <a href='#CHAPTER_VIII'><b>CHAPTER VIII.&mdash;A SECOND DEFEAT.</b></a><br />
+ <a href='#CHAPTER_IX'><b>CHAPTER IX.&mdash;REPARATION.</b></a><br />
+ <a href='#CHAPTER_X'><b>CHAPTER X.&mdash;THE FOX IN THE FOLD.</b></a><br />
+ <a href='#CHAPTER_XI'><b>CHAPTER XI.&mdash;A SPRAT AND THE WHALE.</b></a><br />
+ <a href='#CHAPTER_XII'><b>CHAPTER XII.&mdash;WHEN THE CAT'S AWAY.</b></a><br />
+ <a href='#CHAPTER_XIII'><b>CHAPTER XIII.&mdash;THE REVOLUTION IN ARTILLERY.</b></a><br />
+ <a href='#CHAPTER_XIV'><b>CHAPTER XIV.&mdash;TRULY A MAN.</b></a><br />
+ <a href='#CHAPTER_XV'><b>CHAPTER XV.&mdash;THE MAN OF MANY MASKS.</b></a><br />
+ <a href='#CHAPTER_XVI'><b>CHAPTER XVI.&mdash;STRIKE NOT WOMAN, EVEN WITH ROSES.</b></a><br />
+ <a href='#CHAPTER_XVII'><b>CHAPTER XVII.&mdash;DEMON AND ARCH-DEMON.</b></a><br />
+ <a href='#CHAPTER_XVIII'><b>CHAPTER XVIII.&mdash;A BITTER PARTING.</b></a><br />
+ <a href='#CHAPTER_XIX'><b>CHAPTER XIX.&mdash;THE COMPACT.</b></a><br />
+ <a href='#CHAPTER_XX'><b>CHAPTER XX.&mdash;ON THE EVE.</b></a><br />
+ <a href='#CHAPTER_XXI'><b>CHAPTER XXI.&mdash;THE LAST APPEAL.</b></a><br />
+ <a href='#CHAPTER_XXII'><b>CHAPTER XXII&mdash;FELIX.</b></a></h4>
+
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+<center>
+<hr>
+</center>
+<br>
+<br>
+<br>
+
+<a name='CHAPTER_I'></a><h2>CHAPTER I.</h2>
+
+<h3>STUDENT AND SOLDIER.</h3>
+<br />
+
+<p>The sunset-gun had been fired from the ramparts of the fortifications of
+Munich and the shadows were thickly descending on the famous old city of
+Southern Germany. The evening breeze in this truly March weather came
+chill over the plain of stones where Isar flowed darkly, and at the
+first puff of it, forcing him to wind his cloak round him, a lonely
+wanderer in the low quarter recognized why &quot;the City of Monks&quot; was also
+called &quot;the Realm of Rheumatism.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The new town, which he had not yet seen, might justify yet another of
+its nicknames, &quot;the German Athens,&quot; but here were, in this southern and
+unfashionable suburb, only a few modern structures, and most of the
+quaint and rather picturesque dwellings, overhanging the stores, dated
+anterior to the filling up of the town moat in 1791.</p>
+
+<p>The stranger was clearly fond of antiquarian spectacles, for his eye,
+though too youthful to belong to a Dryasdust professor, and unshaded by
+the almost universal colored spectacles of the learned classes, gloated
+on the mansions, once inhabited by the wealthy burghers. They were
+irregular in plan and period of erection; the windows had ornamental
+frames of great depth, but some were blocked up, which gave the facades
+a sinister aspect; the walls had not only ornamental tablets in stucco,
+but, in a better light, would have shown rude fresco paintings not
+unworthy medi&aelig;val Italian dwellings. Many of the fronts resembled the
+high poops of the castellated ships of three hundred years ago, and they
+cast a shadow on the muddy pavement. As they resembled ships, the slimy
+footway seemed the strand where they had been beached by the running out
+of the tide.</p>
+
+<p>As the darkness increased, the amateur of architecture became more
+solitary in the streets where the peasants in long black coats, their
+holiday wear, were hurrying to leave by the gates, and the storekeepers
+had renounced any hope of taking more money, in this ward, gloomy,
+neglected and remote from the mode, no display of goods was made after
+dark. But the man, finding novel effects in the obscurity, continued to
+gaze on the rickety houses and bestowed only a transient portion of his
+curiosity on the few wayfarers who stolidly trudged past him to cross a
+bridge of no importance a little beyond his post.</p>
+
+<p>One or two of the passengers, rather those of the gentler sex than the
+rude one, had, however, given attention to the figure which the flowing
+cloak did not wholly muffle. With his dark complexion and slender form,
+not much in keeping with the thickset and heavy-footed natives, and his
+glistening black eyes, he made the corner where he ensconced himself
+appear the nook where an Italian or Spanish gallant was waylaying a
+rival in love.</p>
+
+<p>Presently there was a change in the lighting of the scene, the gloom had
+become trying to his sight. Not only were two lamps lit on the small
+bridge, one at each end in the ornate iron scroll work, which Quintin
+Matsys would not have disavowed, but, overhead, the sky was reddened by
+the reflection of the thousands of gas jets in the north and west; the
+gay and spendthrift city was awakening to life and mirth while the
+working town was going to bed. This glimmer gave a fresh attraction to
+the architectural features, and still longer detained the spectator.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Superb!&quot; he muttered, in excellent German, without local peculiarity,
+as if he had learned it from professors, but there was a slight trace of
+an accent not native. &quot;It has even now the effect which Gustavus
+Adolphus termed: 'a gilded saddle on a lean jade!'&quot; Then, shivering
+again, he added, struck as well by the now completely deserted state of
+the ways as by the cold wind: &quot;How bleak and desolate! One could implore
+these carved wooden statues to come down and people the odd, interesting
+streets!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>He was about to leave the spot, when, as though his wish was gratified,
+a strange sound was audible in the narrow and devious passages, between
+tottering houses, and those even more squalid in the rear, a commingling
+of shuffling and stamping feet, the smiting of heavy sticks on uneven
+stones and the dragging of wet rags.</p>
+
+<p>Struck with surprise, if not with apprehension, he shrank back into the
+over-jutting porch of an old residence, with sculptured armorial
+bearings of some family long ago abased in its pride. Here he peered,
+not without anxiety.</p>
+
+<p>By the exact programme carried out in cities by the divisions of its
+population, a new contingent were coming from their resting-places to
+substitute themselves for the honest toilers on the thoroughfares; each
+cellar and attic in the rookeries were exuding the horrible vermin
+which shun the wholesome light of day.</p>
+
+<p>The spruce trees, stuck in tubs of sand at a beer-house beyond the
+bridge, shuddered as though in disgust at this horde of Hans hastening
+to invade the district of hotels, supper-houses and gaming clubs, to beg
+or steal the means to survive yet another day.</p>
+
+<p>For ten or fifteen minutes the stranger watched the beggars stream
+individually out of the mazes and, to his horror, form like soldiers for
+a review, along the street before him, up to the end of the bridge at
+one extremity and far along at the other end of the line. Some certainly
+spied him, for these wretches could see as lucidly as the felines in the
+night&mdash;their day from society having reversed their conditions. But,
+though these whispered the warning to one another, and he was the object
+of scrutiny, no one left his place, and soon as their backs were turned
+to him, he had no immediate uneasiness as regarded an attack, or even a
+challenge upon his business there.</p>
+
+<p>Probably the good citizens were not ignorant that this meeting of the
+vagrants took place each evening, for not only were all store-doors
+closed hermetically, but the upper windows no longer emitted a
+scintillation of lamplight. The spy by accident concluded that he would
+raise his voice for help all in vain as far as the tradesmen were
+concerned. But he was brave, and he let increasing curiosity enchain him
+continuously.</p>
+
+<p>From time out of mind the sage in velvet has serenely contemplated
+Diogenes in his tub; not that our philosopher seemed the treasurer of an
+Alexander!</p>
+
+<p>Ranged at length in a long row, cripples, the blind, the young, the
+aged, it was a company of mendicants which eccentric painters would have
+given five years of life to have seen. Except for consumptive coughs,
+the misstep of a wooden leg of which the clumsy ferule slipped on a
+cobblestone, and the querulous whimper of a child, half-starved and
+imperfectly swaddled in a tattered shawl, on a flaccid bosom, the mob
+were silent in an expectation as intense as the lookers-on. The wind
+brought the whistle of the railway locomotives and the clanking of a
+steam-dredger in the river, like a giant toiling in massive chains.</p>
+
+<p>For this platoon of vice and misery, crime and disorder, laziness and
+rapine, the stranger confidently expected to see a commander appear
+whose flashing, fearless eye, and upright, powerful frame, would account
+for the awe in which all were held.</p>
+
+<p>What was his amazement, therefore, to perceive&mdash;while a tremor of
+emotion thrilled the line and announced the commander whom all
+awaited&mdash;a bent-up, scarcely human-shaped form, hardly to be
+acknowledged a woman's. It was enveloped in a heavily furred pelisse
+fitted for a man.</p>
+
+<p>This singular object appeared up the trap of a cellarway, much like the
+opening of a sewer, on the opposite side of the street. She proceeded to
+review the vagabonds and put questions and issue orders to each, which
+were received like mandates from C&aelig;sar by his legions. The voice was
+fine and shrill, the movements betokened vigor, but the whole impression
+was that the female captain-general of the beggars of Munich was far
+from young.</p>
+
+<p>In the obscurity, and keeping in the background as he did, it was not
+possible for the stranger to scan her features; besides, they were
+veiled by the long hair of a Polish hunter's cap, with earflaps and a
+drooping foxtail, worn as the pompon but half-loosened in time. The
+eyes that inspected the file of vagrants, shone with undiminished force,
+and when they fell on the burliest and most impudent, these became quiet
+and submissive. In a word, the cohort of beggary yielded utter
+subserviency to this remarkable leader.</p>
+
+<p>Questions and answers were uttered in a thieve's jargon which were
+sealed letters to the eavesdropper, but it seemed to him that they all
+addressed her as <i>Baboushka!</i> This struck him as more odd from its being
+a Slavonic title, meaning &quot;grandmother.&quot; Was it possible that he had
+before him one of those prolific centenarians, truly a mother of the
+tribe, a gypsy queen to whom allegiance went undisputed and who rules
+the subterranean strata of society with fewer revolts against them than
+their sister rulers know, who sit on thrones in the fierce white light?</p>
+
+<p>In any case, he was given no leisure for deciding the question, for an
+active urchin had whispered a word of caution which led the feminine
+general to direct a piercing glance toward him, and hasten to conclude
+her arrangements. The line broke up into little groups, though most of
+the men went singly, and all tramped over the little foot-bridge, which
+swung under the unusual mass.</p>
+
+<p>Left alone, the vagrants' queen, placing her yellow and skinny hand on a
+weapon, perhaps, among her rags, resolutely moved toward the spy. He
+expected to be interrogated, for an attack was unlikely from a lone old
+woman; but he grasped his cane firmly.</p>
+
+<p>Luckily, a noise of steps at the other end of the street checked the
+hag; she thrust back out of sight what had momentarily gleamed like the
+steel of a knife or brass of a pistol-barrel; listened again and stared;
+then, muttering what was probably no prayer for the stranger's welfare,
+she crossed the street with amazing rapidity. The student, hearing a
+heavy military tread at the mouth of the street, expected to see her
+vanish down her burrow, but, to his astonishment, she proceeded toward
+the new-comer.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;The Schutzmaun,&quot; muttered he, as there loomed into sight a decidedly
+soldier-like man in a long cloak, thrown back to show the scarlet
+lining, and dragging a clanking sabre.</p>
+
+<p>Relying on her good angel, apparently, the witch boldly passed him, and
+it seemed to the watcher that a sign of understanding was rapidly
+exchanged between them. Baboushka seemed to enjoin caution for the
+stranger hooked up his trailing sabre, wrapped his cloak around him and
+came on less noisily. Certainly the old hag did not beg of him, but
+hastened to leave the street.</p>
+
+<p>If the new-comer had been the night guardian coming on duty, the student
+might have lost any misgiving about the vagrants or their ruler; but he
+was not sure that in him was a friend.</p>
+
+<p>This was an officer, not a gendarme or military policeman. Cloak and
+uniform were dark blue and fine. He bore himself with the swagger of a
+personage of no inconsiderable rank, and also of some degree in the
+nobility. Tall, burly, overbearing, the stranger took a dislike to him
+from this one glance, and would have hesitated to appeal to him for
+assistance had he felt in danger.</p>
+
+<p>But the beggars had flocked into the rich quarter, and their
+chieftainess vanished. He allowed the military gentleman to pass, and
+was not sorry to see him cross the bridge with a steady, haughty step,
+which made his heel ring on each plank. But, on reaching the farther
+end, to the surprise of the watcher, his carriage immediately altered;
+his step became cautious and, like the other whom he had not noticed, he
+skulked in a doorway. He might have been thought a visitor there, but,
+at the next moment, his red whiskers reappeared between the turned-up
+collar of his mantle as he showed his head under the cornice of oak.</p>
+
+<p>For what motive had the officer and nobleman stooped to skulking and
+prying. One alone would amply exonerate the son of Mars&mdash;devotion to
+Venus. And the architectural student, not fearing to pass the soldier in
+his excusable ambush for a sweetheart, since his route over the bridge
+into the new city, and not wishful to spoil the lover's sport, since he
+was of the age to sympathize, prepared to leave his nook.</p>
+
+<p>But it was fated that continual impediments were to be thrown in his
+path on this eventful night. He had hardly taken two steps out of his
+covert, which kept him hidden from the officer but revealed him to any
+one approaching in the street, before a third individual of singular
+mien caught his view and transfixed him with a thrill so sharp, poignant
+and profound that a stroke of lightning would not have more dreadfully
+affected him.</p>
+
+<p>And yet, it was a woman&mdash;young by her step, light and quick as the
+antelope's, graceful by her movements, charming by her outlines which a
+poor, thin woolen wrapper imperfectly shrouded. She enchanted by the
+mere contour; it was her weird burden which appalled the watcher. In one
+hand, suspended horizontally, lengthwise parallel to her course, she
+held what seemed by shape and somber hue to be an infant's coffin.</p>
+
+<p>Her dark and brilliant eyes had descried him from the distance, but, in
+an instant recognizing that he was neither one of the usual nocturnal
+denizens nor another sort of whom she need entertain dread, she came on
+apace.</p>
+
+<p>Indeed, he was far from resembling the vagrants. He was clad without any
+attention to the toilette, after the manner of the German student, who
+likes to affront the Pharisee but without overmuch eccentricity. Under
+the voluminous cloak, warranted by the chilly wind, a tight-fitting
+tunic of dark green cloth, caught in by a broad buff leather belt with
+the clasp of a University, admirably defined the shapeliness of a slight
+but manly form. His hair, black as the raven's wing, was worn long and
+came curling down on his shoulders; his complexion was dark but clear.
+But the whole appearance was of a marvel in physical excellencies; a
+physiologist would have pointed to him as a model and result of the
+combination of all desirable traits in both his progenitors. His
+attitude, checked in the advance, denoted this perfection. The young
+woman, set at ease by her glances and that peace which true symmetry
+inspires, continued her way, averting her head with calculation, but he
+felt sure that she was not offended.</p>
+
+<p>He could laugh at the mistake he had made for, at this close encounter,
+he perceived that what in the tragic mood originated by the review of
+beggars in the shades of night, he had taken to be a child's casket, was
+a violin-case. The girl&mdash;she was perhaps but sixteen&mdash;had the artist's
+eye, black, fiery, deep and winning, while haughty for the vulgar
+worshiper; her hair was treated in a fantastic fashion as unlike that of
+the staid German maiden as its hue of black was the opposite of the
+traditional flaxen. Even in the feeble street-lamplight, she appeared,
+with her finely chiseled features of an Oriental type, handsome enough
+to melt an anchorite, and in the beholder a flood of passion gushed up
+and expanded his heart&mdash;devoid of such a mastering emotion before. He
+believed this was love! Perhaps it was love&mdash;real, true, indubitable
+love&mdash;but there is a mock-love with so much to advance in its favor that
+it has won many a battle where the genuine feeling has fought long in
+vain.</p>
+
+<p>Sharing some shock not unlike his own in extent and sharpness, the girl
+with the violin-case had paused just perceptibly in an unconscious
+attitude which kept in the lamplight her bust, tightly encased in a
+faded but elegant Genoa brocade jacket, with copper lace ornamentation,
+coming down upon a promising curve, clothed in a similarly theatrical
+skirt of flowered satin and China silk braid. On her wrists were
+bracelets and on her ungloved hands many rings, with stones rather too
+large to be taken for genuine on a woman promenading alone at such an
+hour. Conjoined with the musical instrument, the attire confirmed the
+student in his first impression after the tragic one, that this was a
+performer in one of the numerous dance-houses of the popular region,
+bordering the fashionable one.</p>
+
+<p>He almost regretted this conclusion, for the girl's forehead was so
+high, her eyes so lofty and her delicate mouth so impressed with a proud
+and energetical curl that no ambition would seem beyond the flight of
+one thus beautiful and high-spirited.</p>
+
+<p>Whatever the revolution she had exercised over him, he dared not avow
+it, such respect did she inspire, and on her recovering from her
+fleeting emotion, he let her resume her way without a word to detain
+her.</p>
+
+<p>She had not reached the first plank of the bridge before he suddenly
+remembered the officer, like himself, in ambush; and in the same manner
+as love&mdash;if that were love&mdash;had clutched his heart with the swiftness of
+an eagle seizing its quarry, another sentiment, as fierce and
+overpowering, jealousy, stung him to the quick.</p>
+
+<p>As he glanced&mdash;but he had not taken his eyes off her, not even to look
+if the military officer were still at his post&mdash;she had swept her
+worsted wrapper round to set her foot on the first board of the bridge;
+and he caught a glimpse, delightful and bewildering, of a foot, long but
+slim and delicately modeled, and of a faultless ankle, in a vermilion
+silk stocking and low-cut cordovan leather slipper&mdash;as theatrical as the
+rest of her attire. Something innately aesthetical in the student, which
+made him adore the exquisitely wrought, impelled him now to be the
+slave&mdash;the devotee&mdash;the worshiper of this masterpiece of Nature.</p>
+
+<p>Perhaps she stood in need of a defender?</p>
+
+
+<br />
+<a name='CHAPTER_II'></a><h2>CHAPTER II.</h2>
+
+<h3>SOLDIER'S SWORD AND WANDER-STAFF.</h3>
+<br />
+
+<p>The place was historically favored for adventures. In 1543, the riot of
+Knights and Knaves had begun here. On the bridge which preceded this
+structure, a band of young noblemen had taken possession of the passage
+more important then, as this now foul and noisome channel, into which
+the effluvia of the breweries and tanneries was discharged, was a strong
+and pellucid tributary of the Isar. They levied tribute on the
+burghers, kissing the comely women and not scrupling to cut the purses
+of the master-tradesmen; in this, imitating the mode of operation of
+their country cousins, the robber barons in the mountains to the south,
+or over the river in the opposite direction.</p>
+
+<p>But, as for the third or fourth time, the student was on the verge of
+quitting his haven, another interrupter arose. Pausing at the head of
+the bridge, prompted by natural caution or instinct, for the officer
+remained prudently invisible to her, the girl, with the violin-case,
+looked over her shoulder and beckoned to some one on the further side of
+the astonished student.</p>
+
+<p>The desert was becoming animated, indeed, as he had wished, for, in the
+hazy opening, a man appeared, carrying under one arm what seemed a
+musket or blunderbuss, while leaning the other hand on a staff which
+might be the one to rest the firearm on. He had a flat felt hat on, with
+wide shaggy margins, ornamented with a yellow cord in contrast with its
+inky dye, and a dingy, often mended old cavalry-soldier's russet cloak,
+covering him from a long, full grey beard to the feet, encased in
+patched shoes. The aspect of a Jew peddler in the pictures of the Dutch
+school, who had armed himself to defend his pack of thread and needles
+on the highway.</p>
+
+<p>But, as before, nearness dispelled the romantic conceit: the supposed
+gun resolved itself into a Turko-phone, or Oriental flute, while, on the
+other hand, the bright eye and well-shaped features, with the venerable
+impression suggested by the beard, lifted the wearer into a high place
+for reverence. Just as the girl was unrivaled for beauty, this man, a
+near relative, perhaps her father, would have few equals in the councils
+of his tribe.</p>
+
+<p>While not old, spite of the grey in his beard, illness had enfeebled
+him, for he needed the walking-staff. The brisk pace of his daughter had
+left him far behind and it cost him an effort to make up for the delay.
+But in parental love he found the force, and quite nimbly he passed the
+student without observing him in his haste to join his daughter.</p>
+
+<p>At the sight of him coming, she had not waited for his arm, but retaken
+her course. She was half way over the bridge when he began to ascend the
+gentle slope, and when he was arduously following with the summit well
+before him, the officer emerged abruptly from his covert. He must have
+been calculating on this moment and this separation to which Baboushka
+had no doubt contributed. She now loomed into view. Repulsed by the Jew
+in his detestation of beggars&mdash;for while the Christian accepts poverty
+as a misfortune to which resignation is one remedy, he regards it as an
+affliction to be violently removed&mdash;she hesitated to continue her
+annoyance. The bridge was so narrow that he had no difficulty, thanks to
+the length of his arms, in placing a hand on each rail, so that, as he
+bent his broad, smiling face forward between them, he effectively barred
+the way. With a tone which he intended to be winning and tender, but
+which nature had not allowed him to modulate very sweetly, he said:</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Divine songstress of Freyer Brothers' Brewery Harmonista Cellars!&quot; She
+stopped quickly and faced half round, so as to be in a better position
+for retreat if he made an advance toward her. &quot;In the hall on
+Thursday&mdash;when you made the circuit with the cup for the collection
+after your delightful ballad&mdash;you refused me even a reply to my request
+for an interview. That was for the favor of a salute from those
+somewhat thin but honeyed lips! Now, there is nobody by and I mean to be
+rewarded for the bouquets I have nightly sent you!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Father!&quot; cried the Jewess, too frightened by the position of her
+assailant to flee.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Your father? Bah!&quot; with a contemptuous glance at the old man
+approaching only too slowly. &quot;I repeat, there is no one by! <i>That</i> I
+arranged for.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The speaker had red curly hair like his whiskers; his brow was not
+narrow but his eyebrows overhung; his face was flushed with animation
+and carnal desire&mdash;perhaps by potations, though his large lower jaw
+denoted ample animal courage. He was powerful enough in the long arms
+and strong hands to have mastered the girl and her father, but it was
+not the dread of his prowess physically which awed the daughter of the
+race still proscribed in this part of Germany.</p>
+
+<p>Frederick von Sendlingen, Baron of ancient creation, enjoyed a wide fame
+among the knot of noble carousers who strove to make one corner of
+Munich a pale reflection of the &quot;fast&quot; end of Paris and Vienna. A major
+in a crack heavy cavalry regiment, allowed for family reasons to remain
+in the garrison after it had been removed elsewhere, he enjoyed enviable
+esteem from his superiors and the hatred and dislike of all others.
+Though inclined to court after the manner of the pillager who has
+captured a city, his boisterous addresses pleased the wanton matrons
+and, more naturally, the facile Cythereans of the music halls and
+dance-houses.</p>
+
+<p>At an early hour, he had cast his handkerchief, like an irresistible
+sultan, at the chief attraction of the beer cellar, which he named&mdash;the
+so-called &quot;La Belle Stamboulane,&quot; and baffled in all his less brutal
+modes of attack, he had recourse to one which better suited his custom.</p>
+
+<p>It looked as though he had lost time in not putting it into operation
+before, since the girl, around whom, taking one stride, he threw his
+arms, could not, by her feeble resistance, prevent him snatching a kiss.
+As for her father, casting down his turkophone, and raising his staff in
+both hands, his valorous approach went for little, as his blow would
+have been as likely to fall upon his daughter as the ruffian.</p>
+
+<p>While he was bewildered and his stick was raised in air, the latter,
+perceiving his danger, did not scruple to show his contempt for one of
+the despised race whom he likewise scorned for his weakness, by dealing
+him a kick in the leg with his heavy boot which, fairly delivered, would
+have broken an oaken post. Though avoiding its full force, the unhappy
+father was so painfully struck that he staggered back to the opposite
+rail of the bridge and, clapping both hands to the bruise on the shin,
+groaned while he strove in vain to overcome the paralyzing agony. From
+that moment he was compelled to remain as a stranger in action to the
+outrage.</p>
+
+<p>Still struggling, though with little hope, the girl saw the defeat of
+her natural champion with sympathetic anguish. Though he had not spied
+the student, she had regarded him with no faint opinion of his manliness
+for&mdash;repelling the kind of proud self-reliance of her race to have no
+recourse to strangers during persecution&mdash;she lifted her voice with a
+confidence which startled her rude adorer.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Help! help from this ruffian-gentleman!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Silence, you fool,&quot; rejoined Sendlingen. &quot;I tell you, the coast is
+clear&mdash;for I have arranged all that. It is simple strategy to secure
+one's flanks&mdash;&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Help!&quot; repeated the songstress, redoubling her efforts&mdash;not to escape,
+which was out of the question, but to shield her mouth from contact with
+the red moustaches, hovering over it like the wings of a bloodstained
+bird of rapine.</p>
+
+<p>As this repetition of the appeal, steps clattered on the bridge, and the
+officer lifted his head. He may have expected Baboushka or one of her
+fraternity, and the tall, slender student, who had flung off his cloak
+to run more swiftly, gave him a surprise. The agile and intelligent girl
+took the opportunity with commendable speed, and glided out of the
+major's relaxing grasp like a wasp from under the spider's claws. She
+retreated as far as where her father tried to stand erect, and helping
+him up, led him prudently down the bridge slope so that they might
+continue their flight. It would have been the basest ingratitude to
+depart without seeing the result of the interference, and the two
+lingered, though it would have been wiser to let the two Christians bite
+and tear each other without witnesses of another creed, and with the
+witness of none.</p>
+
+<p>It was a free spectacle, but, if it had cost their week's salary at the
+casino, it would have been worth the money.</p>
+
+<p>As the major had empty hands after the loss of his prize, the student
+had the quixotic delicacy to make the offer in dumbshow to lay aside his
+cane and undertake to chastise the insulter of womanhood with the naked
+fist. But this is a weapon almost unknown in the sword-bearing class
+which Von Sendlingen adorned, and, infuriated by the civilian
+intervening at the culmination of his daring plan, to say nothing of
+the annoying thought that his failure would be no secret from the old
+hag, his accomplice, looking on at the extremity of the bridge, he
+yielded to the worst devil in his heart. He inclined to the most
+high-handed and hectoring measure. Whipping out his sabre with a rapid
+gesture, and merely muttering a discourteous and grudging: &quot;Be on your
+guard!&quot; he dealt a cut at the student which threatened to cleave him in
+two.</p>
+
+<p>The other was on the alert; he had suspected one capable of such an
+outrage, likewise capable of worse, and he parried the coward's blow so
+dexterously with his cane that it was the soldier who was thrown off his
+balance. A second blow, with the tremendous sweep of the stick held at
+arm's length, tested the metal of the blade to its utmost, and, as the
+wielder's hand was thoroughly palsied, drove it out of the opening
+fingers, and all heard it splash in the black and pestiferous waters
+under the bridge.</p>
+
+<p>Von Sendlingen would almost have preferred the blow falling on his head.
+An officer, whose reputation in fencing was no mean one, to be disarmed
+by a student who swung but his road-cane! This was not all: he had lost
+his sabre, and, noble though he was, he had to pass the vigorous
+inspection of his weapons like the humblest private soldier! The absence
+of the regimental sword might cause degradation, ruin militarily and
+socially! And all for a &quot;music-hall squaller&quot;&mdash;and a Jewess at that!</p>
+
+<p>He ground his teeth, and his eyes were filled with angry fire. His face
+bore a greater resemblance to a tiger's than a man's, and had not the
+victor in this first bout possessed a stout heart, he might have
+regretted that he had commenced so well, so terrible would be the
+retaliation.</p>
+
+<p>All the animal in the man being roused, he longed to throw himself on
+his antagonist to grasp his throat, but the successful use of the cudgel
+against the sword indicated that this was an adept at quarter-staff and
+a man with naked hands would have easily been beaten if pitted with him.
+Sendlingen, warily and rapidly surveying the limited field of combat,
+caught sight of the Jew's walking-staff and sprang for it with an outcry
+of savage glee and hope.</p>
+
+<p>On perceiving this move, in spite of the pain still crippling him, the
+old man started to retrace his steps to regain possession of his weapon,
+but he was soon distanced by the younger one.</p>
+
+<p>Armed with this staff, the officer, remembering his student days, when
+he, too, was an expert swinger of the cane, a Bavarian mountaineer's
+weapon with which duels to the death are not unseldom fought, he stood
+before the student.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Had you been a gentleman,&quot; began the major, with a sullen courtesy,
+extorted from him by the gallantry of his antagonist.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;A stick to a dog!&quot; retorted the latter, falling into the position of
+guard with an ease and accuracy which caused the other to begin his work
+by feints and attacks not followed up too rashly, in order to test him.</p>
+
+<p>This time, it was the stouter and more brutal man who played cautiously
+and the younger and more refined who was spurred into recklessness by
+the contiguity of the fair Helen&mdash;or, rather, Esther&mdash;who had caused the
+fray.</p>
+
+<p>The girl stood at the end of the bridge, opposite to Baboushka at hers,
+there making them simple lookers-on. The old Jew seemed eager to join
+in the struggle, but the staves were in continual swing, and he could
+not draw near without the risk of having a shoulder dislocated, or, at
+least, his knuckles severely rapped. In the gloom, his hovering about
+the involved pair would have led an opera-goer to have seen in him the
+demon who thus actively presides at the fatal duel of Faust and
+Valentine.</p>
+
+<p>But the conflict, whatever the major's wariness, could not be long
+protracted, for canes of this sort are tiring to the arm, unlike
+smallswords; he was still on the defensive when the student assailed him
+with a shower of blows which taxed all his skill and nerve, and the
+strength of the staff which he had borrowed from his foe. Well may one
+suspect &quot;the gifts of an enemy!&quot; as the student might have cited:
+&quot;<i>Timeo danaos</i>,&quot; etc. At the very moment when the officer's head was
+most in peril, while he guarded it with the staff held horizontally in
+both hands separated widely for the critical juncture, it ominously
+cracked at the reception of a vigorous blow&mdash;it parted as though a steel
+blade had severed it, and the unresisted cane came down on his skull
+with crushing force.</p>
+
+<p>Out of the two cavities which the broken staff now presented, rattled
+several gold coins. At the sight, the old hag scrambled toward where the
+major had fallen senseless. The Jew, after picking up the broken pieces
+of wood, would have lingered to recover those of the precious metal
+though at cost of a scuffle with Baboushka. But his daughter rebuked him
+in their language with an indignant tone, which brought him to his
+senses in an instant. She seized him by the arm, and hurried him away at
+last.</p>
+
+<p>After a brief survey of the defeated man, wavering between the fear
+that he had killed him and the prompting to see to his hurts, if the
+case were not fatal, the student took to flight in the direction the
+beautiful girl had chosen. He well knew that this was a grave matter,
+and that he trod on burning ground. At twenty paces farther, he
+remembered his cloak, but on the bridge were now clustered several
+shadows vying with Baboushka in picking up the coin before raising the
+unfortunate Von Sendlingen.</p>
+
+<p>Not a light had appeared at the windows of the houses, not a window had
+opened for a night-capped head to be thurst forth, not a voice had
+echoed the Jewess's call for the watch. It was not to be doubted that
+Footbridge street had allowed more murderous outrages to occur without
+anyone running the risk of catching a cold or a slash of a sabre.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;A cut-throat quarter, that is it,&quot; remarked the student, still too
+excited to feel the cold and want of his outer garment. &quot;After all, one
+cannot travel from Berlin to Paris without getting some soot on the
+cheek and a cinder or two in the eye. In the same way it is not possible
+to see life and go through this world without being smeared with a
+little blood or smut.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>While talking to himself, he smoothed his dress and curled his dark and
+fine moustache, projecting horizontally and not drooping. He had walked
+so fast that he had overtaken the Jews, delayed as the girl was by her
+father's lameness, and having to carry the violin in its case which she
+had recovered and preciously guarded.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;What an audacious bully that was,&quot; the student continued; &quot;but even a
+good cat loses a mouse now and then.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The pair seemed to expect him to join them, but as he was about to do
+so, at the mouth of a narrow and unlighted alley, he heard the measured
+tramp of feet indicating the patrol.</p>
+
+<p>Already the character of the streets and houses changed: there were
+vistas of those large buildings which give one the impression that
+Munich is planned on too generous a scale for its population. Only here
+and there was a roof or front suggestive of the Middle Ages, and they
+may have been in imitation; the others were stately and were classical,
+and the avenues became spacious.</p>
+
+<p>All at once, while the student was watching the semi-military constables
+approach, he heard an uproar toward the bridge. The major had been
+discovered by quite another sort of folk than the allies of Baboushka,
+and the alarm was given.</p>
+
+<p>To advance was to invite an arrest which would result in no pleasant
+investigation.</p>
+
+<p>He had tarried too long as it was. The watchman's
+horn&mdash;tute-horn&mdash;sounded at the bridge and the squad responded through
+their commander; whistles also shrilled, being police signals. The
+student was perceived. It was a critical moment. The next moment he
+would be challenged, and at the next, have a carbine or sabre levelled
+at his breast. He retired up the alley, precipitately, wondering where
+the persons whom he befriended had disappeared so quickly.</p>
+
+<p>A very faint light gleamed from deeply within, at the end of a crooked
+passage through a lantern-like projection at a corner. A number of iron
+hooks bristled over his head as if for carcasses at a butchers, although
+their innocent use was to hang beds on them to air. On a tarnished plate
+he deciphered &quot;ARTISTES' ENTRANCE,&quot; and while perplexed, even as the
+gendarmes appeared at the mouth of this blind-alley, a long and taper
+hand was laid on his arm and a voice, very, very sweet, though in a mere
+murmur, said irresistibly:</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Come! come in, or you will be lost!&quot; He yielded, and was drawn into a
+corridor under the oriel window, where the air was pungent with the reek
+of beer, tobacco-smoke, orange-peel, cheese and caraway seeds.</p>
+
+<br />
+<a name='CHAPTER_III'></a><h2>CHAPTER III.</h2>
+
+<h3>&quot;THE JINGLE-JANGLE.&quot;</h3>
+<br />
+
+<p>The person to whom the shapely hand and musical voice belonged,
+conducted the student along the narrow passage to a turning where she
+halted, under a lamp with a reflector which threw them in that position
+into the shade. The passage was divided by the first lobby, and on the
+lamp was painted, back to back: &quot;Men,&quot; &quot;Ladies;&quot; besides, a babble of
+feminine voices on the latter side betrayed, as the intruder suspected
+from the previous placard, that he had entered a place of entertainment
+by the stage-door, a Tingel-Tangel, or Jingle-Jangle, as we should say.</p>
+
+<p>It was the Jewess who was the Ariadne to this maze. Seen in the light,
+at close range, with the enchanting smile which a woman always finds for
+the man who has won her gratitude by supplementing her deficiency in
+strength and courage with his own, she was worthier love than ever. At
+this view, too, he was sure that, unlike too many of the <i>divas</i> of
+these <i>spielungs</i>, or dens, she was not one of the stray creatures who
+sell pleasure to some and give it to others, and for themselves keep
+only shame&mdash;fatal ignominy, wealth at best very unsubstantial, and if,
+at last, winners, they laugh&mdash;one would rather see them weeping.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;What's your name?&quot; she inquired, quickly. &quot;I am Rebecca Daniels, whom
+they call on the Bills 'La Belle Stamboulane'&mdash;though I have never been
+farther east than Prague,&quot; she added with a contemptuous smile. &quot;That
+was my father, whose maltreatment you so promptly but I fear so severely
+chastised. But your name?&quot; impatiently.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I am a student of Wilna University, traveling according to custom of
+the college, through Germany and to make the Italian Art Tour. I am
+Claudius Ruprecht.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Not noble?&quot; she inquired, sadly, on hearing two Christian names and
+none of family, for her people treasure the pride of ancestry.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I am an orphan. I never knew my family. Perhaps, as I am of age, I
+shall soon be informed. But&mdash;&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Enough! time is getting on, and we cannot long stay in privacy
+here&mdash;the passage-way for the performers. This is Freyers' Hall, where I
+sing&mdash;where I was a player. But my father can speak to you in the public
+room and see to your safety&mdash;for I fear this night's affair will end
+ill. But do not you fear! neither my father nor I have the powerlessness
+which that noble ruffian seemed to think is ours. You, at least, shall
+be saved&mdash;even though you killed that brute.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I do not think that, unless his head is not so hard as his heart.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>She opened a narrow door in the dirty wall. It was brighter in the
+capacious place thus shown.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Go in and sit down anywhere. My father will be with you in a few
+minutes. We were so delayed that they feared we would not arrive for
+'our turn.' They were glad of the excuse&mdash;I fancy they were told it
+might occur&mdash;and they are trying to break our agreement. But never mind!
+that is but a bread-and-butter business for us. For you, it will be life
+and death, if that officer be slain.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Claudius, the student, mechanically obeyed the gentle impulsion her hand
+imparted to him on the shoulder, and walked through the side-door. A
+number of benches were before him with corresponding narrow tables, and
+he sat down at one, and looked round.</p>
+
+<p>He found himself in a very long, rectangular hall, low in the ceiling in
+proportion to the length, once brightly decorated, but faded, smoked and
+tarnished. On the walls, in panels, between tinted pilasters of a
+pseudo-Grecian design, were views of the principal towns of Germany and
+Austria, the details obliterated in the upper part by smoke and in the
+lower by greasy heads and hands. Around the sides, a dais held benches
+and tables similar to those on the floor. At the far end was a bar for
+beer and other liquors less popular, and an entrance from a main street,
+screened and indirect, down steps at another level than the rear or
+stage door. Where Claudius sat was a small stage with footlights and
+curtain complete, and an orchestra for a miniature piano such as are
+used in yachts, and six musicians; the performers sat to face the
+audience respectfully in the good Old German style.</p>
+
+<p>The lighting was by means of clusters of gas-jets at intervals in the
+long ceiling and along the walls. The announcement of the items of
+attraction appearing on the stage was made by changeable sliding cards
+in framework at the sides of the stage; to the left the name of the
+<i>scena</i> was exhibited, that of the artist on the other.</p>
+
+<p>When Claudius took his seat, the other places were almost all empty; but
+they soon began to fill up. The majority of the spectators seemed to be
+of the tradesman and workman class, with their wives and daughters, but
+the stranger, who had been so surreptitiously &quot;passed in,&quot; was not blind
+to the presence of a more offensive element. There were faces as
+villainous as any under the immediate command of Grandmother
+&quot;Baboushka;&quot; and their dress was not much better. More than one dandy of
+the gutter nursed the head of a club called significantly the
+&quot;lawbreaker's canes of crime,&quot; with a distant air of the fop sucking his
+clouded amber knob or silver shepherd's-crook. In more than one group
+were horse-copers, and their kin the market-gardeners' thieves and
+country wagoners' pests, who not only lighten the loads on the way to
+the city market on the road, but plunder the drivers after they receive
+their salesmoney by cheating at cards.</p>
+
+<p>The student, crowded in by this mixed throng, began to doubt the
+providential quality of the intervention saving him from an explanation
+to the police; it was very like leaping from the proverbial frying-pan
+into the fire.</p>
+
+<p>At this stage in his reflections, he felt that a person in the next seat
+had risen and he soon perceived that he had politely, or from a stronger
+reason, given up his place to another. This was the old Jew, but he
+would not have known him by his dress, it was so changed for the better;
+the fine profile, the venerable beard which an Arab Sheikh would have
+reverenced, and the sharp, intelligent eyes were unaltered.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Do you speak Latin?&quot; inquired Daniels in that tongue.</p>
+
+<p>But Claudius, though reading the dead tongue fluently, pronounced it
+after the University manner, and felt that he could not sustain a
+dialogue with one who followed the Italian usage. He could speak
+Italian, however, for he had long studied it to be at home in the world
+of Art.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;The officer was not killed,&quot; remarked the Jew, and before his new
+acquaintance could express his relief, he added gravely, &quot;but he has
+been spirited away.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Then it's those vagabonds&mdash;&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Of whom that old <i>Tausend-Kunstlerin</i> (witch of a thousand tricks) is
+in the position of parent? I guess as much. He said he had connived with
+her, one who is the actual though occult ruler of the filthy region. We
+have had to pay her blackmail regularly, like the other artists, for we
+are obliged to go home after midnight. Well, if he is in their hands, it
+is among congenial spirits. Tell me your name and as much of your
+affairs as you please to enlighten me with. I am bound to assist you as
+far as possible&mdash;though my debt to you will ever remain uncanceled. I am
+Daniel Daniels, of Odessa, Marseilles, and elsewhere, and an
+introduction to my correspondent nearest where you sojourn is not to be
+despised.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Impressed with his tone, the young man related his life-story
+succinctly.</p>
+
+<p>He had a dreamy remembrance of a long journey, lastly in a sledge,
+buried in fur robes, his clearer later memories were of a happy home in
+Poland, in the country, where, though strangers, all were kind to the
+lonely orphan. There was a mystery about his parentage; his mother was
+probably a native as he acquired the language as easily as the art of
+eating, the peasants said. His father had been killed, he thought, on
+one of those riots which, in a small way, repeat the olden revolutions
+of Poland against the triumvirate of oppression, Austria, Prussia and
+Russia. But he had heard a tutor say, when he was not supposed in
+hearing, that he had perished by the executioner's steel.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;A death honorable as under the bullets,&quot; said Claudius, but half
+doubtingly.</p>
+
+<p>As became a man who abhorred homicide in any shape, Daniels made no
+reply.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;At the age of eighteen, while at the University, I was given a private
+tutor in art and architecture, to which I had a bent. He was a Frenchman
+and I acquired his elegant tongue with that well-known facility of us
+Poles in attaining proficiency in the Western ones. Armed with that and
+Italian&mdash;&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Which you speak with finish,&quot; interrupted the Jew.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I expect my Italian and French tour to be delightful. But I am not over
+the frontier yet, and hardly will be soon if my passport is commented
+upon by an authority cognizant of this night's adventure.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I regret to find that it was deliberately planned,&quot; resumed Daniels.
+&quot;My daughter's virtue has raised more hostility under this roof than
+even her talent. The proprietor is a notorious rascal, but he is too
+useful to the profligate among the town officials to be reprimanded. The
+police, too, wink at his personal misdoings, because he is always their
+friend to deliver the criminals who make this haunt their rendezvous.
+All those painted women, as well as the waiter-girls, are spies and
+Dalilahs who betray the Samsons of crime to the police at any given
+moment. That would be neither here nor there, however, if my daughter
+and I were allowed to conclude our engagement&mdash;which, believe me, would
+never have been signed if we had guessed the character of the resort.
+Not only would they lodge me in prison for a pretended attempt to elude
+my contract, but they seek to throw my poor Rebecca into the arms of
+such reprobates as this Major the Baron. The hag whom you noticed is not
+unconcerned in the plot. It is a prot&eacute;g&eacute; of hers&mdash;a lovely young girl,
+guileless in appearance as a cherub, whom they would substitute for my
+girl, if she had been detained to-night. In fact&mdash;&quot;</p>
+
+<p>He paused. The orchestra had played and two or three vocalists had
+appeared and sang, without Claudius, absorbed in this conversation,
+noticing that the entertainment had commenced. A little fat man in a
+ruffled and embroidered shirt, buff waistcoat with crystal buttons, knee
+breeches and silk stockings of reproachless black, and steel buckled
+shoes, had come before the curtain, sticking one thumb in his waistband
+and the other in his vest armhole, to display a huge seal ring and a
+mammoth diamond hoop, respectively, as well as his idea of ease in
+company. He announced in a high flute-like voice that in consequence of
+indisposition, which a sworn medical affirmation confirmed&mdash;here he
+raised a laugh by sticking his tongue in his cheek&mdash;&quot;La Belle
+Stamboulane&quot; would not appear&mdash;might have to depart for Constantinople
+for convalescence, but that the bewitching Fraulein von Vieradlers&mdash;one
+of the few authentic <i>noble</i> vocalists on the variety stage&mdash;following
+in the footsteps of certain princesses&mdash;would oblige, for the first time
+on any stage, with selections from her repertoire, etc.</p>
+
+<p>This was concerted, for the outburst of applause, started by the most
+sinister of aspect among the auditors, was vehement and so contagious
+that the <i>hussah</i> was unanimous as the stage-manager retired.</p>
+
+<p>La Belle Stamboulane was already eclipsed! so evanescent is theatrical
+fame. Of all the audience, only one felt indignant, and that was the
+student Claudius, who had not heard her sing or wear stage costumes!</p>
+
+<p>&quot;All is over,&quot; observed Daniels placidly. &quot;I cannot cope with these
+rogues. I must go and join my daughter and get our dresses to our
+lodgings; thankful if we succeed so far. In about an hour, will you not
+call, when we will resume our conversation which I wish to have, and
+with practical gain to you. This is the card of our hotel. It is not
+aristocratic, but once there, you will be safe.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>He spoke with such tranquil assurance that Claudius had not a doubt. He
+took the card, read the address: &quot;Hotel Persepolitan,&quot; so that if he
+lost the card, it might be in his mind, and nodded with a kind of
+gratefulness. The father of a beautiful woman is not like any other man
+in the world to a young man, who is not indifferent to her.</p>
+
+<p>Following the old Jew with his gaze to the narrow side-door leading to
+behind-the-scenes, Claudius thought that, in the brief period of its
+opening and closing, he spied the bright black orbs of the Jewess
+striving to catch a glimpse even so transient of him. It did not need
+this encouragement to make him resolve to respond to the invitation.</p>
+
+<p>An hour would soon pass, even in this tedious recreation. He felt also
+some resentment and curiosity to see the person whom the director of
+these Munich circeans considered in adequate succession to the peerless
+Stamboulane. The announcement had at least kindled the public: being
+plebeian, the promised aristocrat was already discussed. The family was
+existent, whether this variety vocalist was legitimately a daughter
+being another question. Vieradlers was a barony that had a right to fly
+its four eagles&mdash;as the name signifies&mdash;in the face of the double-headed
+king of the tribe. The baron was the latest of an old Bavarian line,
+famous in story. One of his ancestors was eagle-bearer to C&aelig;sar after
+the defeat of Hermann. The continuators had always been near the
+emperors. There might be a drop of imperial blood in the child who had
+so strangely degenerated as to prefer royalty on the stage to that of
+the court and country-house.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;She may be good-looking,&quot; thought Claudius, &quot;for I have noticed that
+where the men are uncomely the women are often the reverse. A Berlin
+professor has boldly likened the male Bavarian to the gorilla and the
+caricaturists have taken his cue. They are of the beer-barrel shape,
+coarse, rough, quarrelsome and quick to enter into a fight. It is the
+national dish of roast goose&mdash;a pugnacious bird&mdash;and bread of oatmeal
+that does it. They may well have one beauty of the sex among them. And
+the carnation on the cheeks of these waitresses is so remarkable that
+they find rouge superfluous. They are dull, and yet the twinkle in their
+eyes indicates cunning.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Before him, the next seat was occupied by two gentlemen. They spoke in
+French, thinking no one would comprehend their conversation. They were
+discussing the ascending star, about which one had a deeper knowledge
+than the subjects of Baboushka.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;She is the cause of the disgrace of the Grand-Chamberlain of a northern
+kingdom,&quot; said this well-informed man. &quot;He has been obliged to send in
+his grand cross of the Royal Order and his rank in the Holy Empire,
+after what was almost a revolution in the palace. He is a man over
+sixty, who was in Russia on an important mission, when he met by chance
+this young girl, whose mother was married to a noble, although the elder
+sister of one of those beauties notorious for their depravity in Paris.
+Perhaps, though, she secured her husband before her sister won this
+dubious celebrity. At all events, she lived blamelessly, but <i>bad</i> blood
+does not lie! This girl seems to aim at the reputation of her aunt, the
+celebrated Iza, whose portrait was painted, her figure copied in
+immortal marble, and her charms sung by French bards. At all events, she
+bewitched the old Count von Raackensee, who took her on a tour through
+our country and Austria. It was at Vienna that he, an old statesman and
+courtier, committed the folly of presenting her as his daughter! The
+truth came out&mdash;Austria and Prussia made remonstrances, and he was
+compelled to resign his office or this witch. He would not give her up
+and so he was punished.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Punished?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes; he went on to live at Nice, where he had bought a villa in
+foresight for some such day of disgrace. The Circe was to follow him,
+but, instead of that, she has shaken off the golden links and
+condescends to stay a week in Munich to amuse us coarse swiggers of
+beer.&quot;</p>
+
+
+<br />
+<a name='CHAPTER_IV'></a><h2>CHAPTER IV.</h2>
+
+<h3>THE STAR IS DEAD LONG LIVE THE STAR!</h3>
+<br />
+
+<p>By listening to others and observing them, man obtains the material for
+self-preservation. Evidently this star of the minor stage was a woman to
+be avoided; a rising light which might scar the sight and burn the
+fingers of too venturesome an admirer. Claudius had a premonition that
+he ought to go out and kill the few minutes in strolling the streets,
+before keeping the appointment, even at the risk of being questioned by
+the police. But he overcame the impulsion, and waited to face what might
+be a danger the more.</p>
+
+<p>All the hall, by instinct and from the stories circulating&mdash;perhaps
+circulated by the agents of the management&mdash;divined that no common
+attraction was to be presented. Besides, to displace La Belle
+Stamboulane worthily on the stage, that chosen arena where the female
+gladiator carries the day, a miracle of beauty, wit and skill was
+requisite. Elsewhere, ability, practice, art, artifice, many gifts and
+accomplishments may triumph, but the fifth element as indispensable as
+the others, air, water, fire and earth&mdash;it is <i>love</i>, which legitimately
+monopolizes the theatre for its exhibition and glorification. Men and
+women come to such places of amusement to hear love songs, see love
+scenes, and share in the fictitious joys and sorrows of love, which they
+long to enact in reality. Nothing is above love; nothing equals it. He
+reigns as a master in a temple, with woman as the high-priestess, and
+man the victim or the chosen reward.</p>
+
+<p>Preceding the novelty, a bass-singer roared a drinking-song, in which
+he likened human life to a brewer's house, in which some quenched their
+thirst quickly and departed; others stayed to quaff, jest, tell stories
+to cronies, before staggering out &quot;full;&quot; the oldest went to sleep
+there. Though rich-voiced and liked, this time he retired in silence,
+for the audience was tormented with impatience.</p>
+
+<p>The orchestra struck up a fashionable waltz, and, as the door, at the
+back of a drawing-room scene, was opened in both flaps by the liveried
+servants, a young lady entered, so fresh, delightful and easy that for a
+moment it seemed as if it were a member of the &quot;highest life&quot; who had
+blundered off the street into this strange world.</p>
+
+<p>From her glistening hair of gold to the tip of her white satin slippers,
+with preposterously high heels, this was the new incarnation of the
+woman who ends the Nineteenth Century. She was indisputably beautiful,
+and Claudius, who had thought that the Jewess was incomparable, feared
+that the apple would have to be halved, since neither could have borne
+it entire away. But the Jewess's loveliness exalted the beholder; this
+one's was of the strange, irritating sort, resisted with difficulty and
+alluring a man into those byways which end in the gaming hell, the
+saturnalian halls, and the suicide's grave. Love had never chosen a more
+appetizing form to be the pivot on which human folly&mdash;perhaps human
+genius&mdash;was to spin idly and uselessly, like a beetle on a pin in a
+naturalist's cabinet.</p>
+
+<p>Kaiserina von Vieradlers was the modern Venus, a creation of the modiste
+rather than of the sculptor; though hips and bosom were developed
+extravagantly, the long waist was absurdly small; but no token of ill
+health from the tight lacing appeared in the irreproachable shape, the
+well-turned arms and the countenance which was unmarred in a single
+lineament; the movements were not strictly ladylike, they were too
+unfettered in spite of the smooth gloves and the stylish unwrinkled ball
+dress, rather short in front to parade the slippers mentioned and silk
+stockings so nicely moulded to the trim ankle as to show the dimple. She
+was more fair in her eighteenth year&mdash;if she were so old&mdash;than a Danish
+baby in the cradle. The yellow hair had a clear golden tint not tawny,
+and the fineness was remarkable of the stray threads that serpentined
+out of the artistic braid and drooping ringlets. The blue eyes had a
+multitude of expressions and gleams; now hard as the blue diamond's ray,
+now soft as the lapis lazuli's glow of azure; the expression was at
+present one of longing, tender, cajoling and coaxing&mdash;like a gentle
+child's, never refused a thing for which it silently pleaded.</p>
+
+<p>The costume was a trifle exaggerated, as is allowable on the minor
+stage, but what was that in our topsy-turvy age, when the disreputable
+woman in a mixed ball is conspicuous among her spotless sisters by the
+quiet correctness of her toilet?</p>
+
+<p>Kaiserina came down to the flaring footlights, after a little
+trepidation, which the inexorable demon of stage-fright exacted from
+her, with the swing and confident step of one sure that&mdash;while man may
+be unjust, cruel and oppressive to her sex off the stage&mdash;here she would
+reign and finally triumph. She bowed her head, but it was to acknowledge
+her gracious acceptance of the tribute of applause; she moistened her
+fiery-coal lips with a serpent's active tongue; she surveyed her
+dominion with eyes that assumed a passing emerald tint. There was a
+depth to those apparently superficial glances. It seemed to Claudius
+that one had singled him out, and he fancied, as his eyes became
+fastened on this vision of concentrated worldly bliss, that it was for
+him that she stretched her plump neck, waved her arms in long gloves,
+undulated her waist and murmured&mdash;though to others she was but repeating
+her song during the orchestral prelude:</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You talk of plunging into the strife; you are ready to endure
+privations, you would study and toil till you vanquish. Nonsense; you
+had far better repose, recruit after the humdrum, exhaustive life of
+college; enjoy life a little. Hear a love-song, not a professor's
+lecture&mdash;see a dance of the ballet, not the procession of the deans and
+proctors; come to me for I am immediate sensation&mdash;the pleasure for all
+times&mdash;eternal intoxication&mdash;certain oblivion&mdash;the ideal bliss of the
+Hindoo! I am the grandest proof of Life&mdash;I am Love embodied!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>What did she sing to the strains of the voluptuous-waltz made vocal? The
+words mattered not; in Esquimaux they would have been as intelligible
+from the intonation with which she imbued every note, and the restricted
+but perfectly comprehensible gestures with which she emphasized the
+phrases of double meaning&mdash;one for the literary censors who had &quot;passed&quot;
+this corruption, the other for even the more obtuse of the common herd.</p>
+
+<p>The rival whom, without having seen her, she had dethroned, was
+obliterated. It was not a transfer of allegiance&mdash;it was Semiramis;
+trampling an overthrown empress among the charred ruins of her palace,
+acclaimed without one dissentient shout, in her stead, and as the
+initial of a new line of sovereigns. She enchanted, interested and
+amused, while Rebecca had awed, ravished and strove apparently in vain
+to lift to a level where the &eacute;lite alone soar without dread of a fall.</p>
+
+<p>A witty cardinal has said that if a fly were seen in the drinking-cup by
+an Italian, a Frenchman and a German, respectively, the first would send
+it away, the second fish out the insect before he drank, while the
+German would gulp liquor and fly, without demur.</p>
+
+<p>The good audience of Freyers' Harmonista swallowed the so-called
+Fraulein von Vieradlers, flies and all! Claudius saw no more clearly
+than they; not only was the girl an unsurpassable idol, but to its very
+feet it was pure gold and immaculate ivory. An insane idea seized him
+not only to win her&mdash;a hundred around him shared that desire&mdash;but to
+keep her spotless, as he thought her, whatever the gossips had said.
+After all, slander had no opening to attack one whose youth was
+manifest; who owed no complexion to the wax-mask, the bismuth powder,
+and the carmine; whose hair was real and fine and of a shade which no
+dye could imitate; and whose movements, though in a society dance far
+removed from the wild whirl of the monads seen on this same stage, had
+the freedom of the bacchantes.</p>
+
+<p>After all, the unworthiness of the object no more changes the quality of
+love than that of the glass alters the banquet of wine.</p>
+
+<p>Oh, to withdraw her from this turbulent career, for which surely she was
+not inextricably destined, and let her be the bright but flawless
+ornament of a happy home and a choice circle&mdash;if not the lady of
+fashion, in case the student realized one of his fantastic dreams of
+aimless ambition. The quiet learner felt an immense flame usurp the
+place of his blood; he seemed gifted with the powers of the athletic
+Duke of Munich, Christopher the Leaper, whose statue adorned the
+proscenium, and like him, clearing the orchestra with a bound of twelve
+feet, he would have grasped the girl wasting her graces of voice and
+person on these boors, and carried her off to a more congenial sphere.</p>
+
+<p>Obliged to repeat her song and the dance which filled the gap between
+two verses, the charmer held the spectators in a spell even more firm
+than that she had first imposed.</p>
+
+<p>No one was conscious at the first that down the central aisle had come a
+little party odd enough in its components and awe-inspiring in what
+might be called its rear-guard to break even enchantment more potent.</p>
+
+<p>An old woman, wearing over sordid garments an old furred Polish pelisse,
+was the guide&mdash;the herald, so to say, to a gentleman in gold spectacles
+and a black suit and silk hat, an inspector of police, a sergeant of the
+watch, while behind this formidable official nucleus marched a serried
+body of civil and of military police. After them all, wringing his fat
+hands, trotted the proprietor, with a terrified expression too great not
+to be assumed. Waiters completed the retinue, wearing faces much whiter
+than the napkins slung on their arms.</p>
+
+<p>As the orchestra faced the audience, they perceived this inroad before
+the latter and, as by a signal, ceased playing. The startled dancer, for
+all her aristocratic self-command, stopped immediately for explanation,
+and, riveting her glances on the female head of the intruders, whom she
+recognized&mdash;that was clear&mdash;stood stupor-stricken.</p>
+
+<p>Claudius, following her hint, turned to the center and had no difficulty
+in recognizing in the woman arrayed in the Polish pelisse, the chief of
+the beggars, Baboushka. He recalled the remark of the Jew, that she
+befriended this debutante, and he was averse to believing it. That
+delicious creature and this hideous one in ties of communion!
+ridiculous, monstrous!</p>
+
+<p>Spite of his concern for himself, Claudius noticed that twenty or thirty
+of the spectators, apparently perplexed at the rare conjunction of their
+leader and the authorities in friendly communication, would not wait for
+the elucidation but began to make a rush for the outlets.</p>
+
+<p>The voice of the town inspector, rotund and sonorous, froze them with
+terror, although not personal.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Gentlemen&mdash;(the ladies were apparently here only on sufferance, and the
+stage-performer was of no consideration in the authorities'
+eyes)&mdash;Gentlemen, a murder has been committed and we seek the culprit
+here in your midst!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Murder!&quot; and the audience rose to their feet like one man.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Stand up here,&quot; said the functionary, pointing to a place on a bench
+which a timid spectator had vacated, and pushing Baboushka roughly, &quot;and
+point out the man who has made away with the honorable Major von
+Sendlingen.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Major von Sendlingen!&quot; repeated the audience, shocked, as the officer
+had been seen but the night previously among them in lusty life, and
+death is a spectre most terrible in a saloon of mirth and carousal.</p>
+
+<p>After that general exclamation, a silence ensued; one that meant
+acquiescence in the proceedings of the police.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I must have killed him,&quot; thought the student. &quot;This is a black
+prospect! I had better have quitted the hall and profited by the
+invitation of refuge which Herr Daniels offered me.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>For the moment, he could take no part, though he could not doubt that
+Baboushka would denounce him&mdash;a stranger, and the principal in the duel
+with canes. His cloak would help toward the identification and unless
+the hag's crew had abstracted it, it would be forthcoming, he doubted
+not.</p>
+
+<p>Indeed, elevated on her perch, able to see the faces of all around her,
+the hag's aged but brilliant eyes rapidly scanned those nearest her in
+wider and wider circles. All at once they became fixed upon Claudius,
+and by instinct, the neighbors fell away from him so that he was
+isolated. She extended her arm with an unnatural vigor, and in a voice
+also unexpectedly strong with malice, cried:</p>
+
+<p>&quot;That is he! there you have the slayer of poor Major von Sendlingen!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>At that very moment, a shrill, ear-splitting whistle sounded; and the
+gas-jets all over the hall went out too simultaneously for the act not
+to be that of a hand at the inlet from the street-main. Claudius heard
+the soldiers and policemen buffeting the people to scramble over the
+benches toward him. He had but a single road to a possible escape: by
+the little door in the wall through which Rebecca Daniels had ushered
+him into the auditorium. He stooped as he turned, to elude any
+outstretched hands, drove himself like a wedge through the compacted
+mass of frightened spectators and, spite of the gloom, the deeper
+because of the glare preceding it, he reached the egress. The
+uninitiated would never have suspected its existence, for the actors and
+staff of the establishment alone had the right and knowledge to use it.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Lights, lights!&quot; the functionaries were shouting.</p>
+
+<p>By the time matches were struck and lanterns brought into the scene of
+confusion, Claudius had opened the panel, leaped through and closed it.
+He did not dally in the passage, but hastened to follow the walled-in
+road as well as he might by which he had penetrated the theatrical
+region.</p>
+
+<p>At the dividing-line, where the path parted to the men's and to the
+ladies' dressing-rooms, he perceived a ghostly figure in the obscurity
+which also prevailed here from the general extinction of the illuminant.
+He was about shrinking back and fleeing in another direction when eyes
+blazed in the dark like a cat's, and the sweet, unmistakable voice of
+the singer, who had enthralled him, ejaculated:</p>
+
+<p>&quot;As God lives, it is you!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Suppose it is I!&quot; he returned, impatiently. &quot;Stand aside, or&mdash;&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You must not pass here!&quot; she returned, laying her hands on his lifted
+arm.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Must not? We shall see about that!&quot; and he repulsed her violently.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No, no; you are too hasty! I mean that would be a fatal course. Here,
+here!&quot; seizing him again and dragging him with her. &quot;You were right to
+kill that ruffian! to cane him to death&mdash;like the Russian grand-dukes,
+he was not born to die by the sword. To abduct one woman while paying
+court to another, the traitor! But, never heed that! He is punished, and
+you must be saved. Here is an outlet: pursue the passage to the end and
+leave the town!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;But I&mdash;&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;How can you repay me? Bah! repay me in the other world&mdash;below, with a
+drop of cold water when I parch!&quot; And with a dulcet yet demoniacal
+laugh, the singular creature pushed him into a lightless lobby, slammed
+a door and seemed to run away, singing the refrain of the waltz which
+was to haunt him forever-more.</p>
+
+
+
+<br />
+<a name='CHAPTER_V'></a><h2>CHAPTER V.</h2>
+
+<h3>UNDER MUNICH.</h3>
+<br />
+
+<p>After an instant's reflection in the impenetrable shades, Claudius
+concluded to follow the advice of the variety theatre's prima donna.
+While a stranger to the City of Breweries, he knew that its
+predestination toward thirst was due to its being the site of an ancient
+rock-salt mine. In other cities, subterraneans were melodramatic; here,
+a labyrinth under the surface and at the level of the dancing and
+drinking cellars was so natural that a child of Munich, dropped into a
+well, would have no misgivings as to his worming his way up into the
+outer air.</p>
+
+<p>At the worst, when pressed by hunger, he could no doubt make an appeal
+to the mounted patrol by night or the foot-passengers by day, whom he
+would hear overhead, and be released from this living burial at the cost
+of the imprisonment and trial which he had temporarily evaded.</p>
+
+<p>Remembering that he had a box of cigar-lights, and regretting again the
+want of the cloak so useful in these damp passages, he lighted a match
+and began his flight by the sole opening that he spied. An odor of
+sausages, cheese and coarse tobacco was here and there strong, and he
+correctly divined that at these points, fugitives, probably from the
+same enemy as he fled, had recently made halts. Once assured that he was
+in a kind of thoroughfare, though one for the nefarious, he felt bolder
+and more hopeful about reaching a desirable goal.</p>
+
+<p>He did not pause to think, as he continued, choosing, where there was a
+bifurcation, the most trampled corridor, hewn originally by the miners'
+pick. But he had much on his mind for future elaboration. Heretofore no
+man could have lived a less eventful life, passed among books, globes,
+drawing tools and lecture notes. In a few hours the change was great.
+The quiet student, with no aspirations but the completion of his
+wandering-year in Italian picture-galleries, had become a fugitive from
+justice, and on the hands, groping in a lugubrious earthen alley, were
+the stains of a fellow-creature's blood. Then, too, the singular
+friendships he had formed, the old Jew and his daughter, who were
+awaiting him&mdash;and this still more remarkable creature who had glanced
+across his path, like the divinities from above in antique poems, to
+point out the safe retreat.</p>
+
+<p>But too long a time elapsed without his finding such an evidence of his
+security as he had too confidently expected. He might have mistaken the
+true line, for while at any point of divergence there were marks in the
+earth, where traces of saline flows still glistened, and even stones and
+bits of stick placed in cavities in the manner of the gypsy clues
+familiar to social outcasts, he could not interpret them; for once, his
+university education proved faulty.</p>
+
+<p>A new alarm arose from the presence of swarms of rats; larger and more
+hideous than their fellows of which one catches a fleeting view in
+houses and in the streets, they seemed to be less afraid of the lord of
+creation than fables teach. They scuttled off in front of him, it is
+true, but he began to think that they followed him when he went by. One
+ray of comfort came in the two beliefs that his flashing matches
+frightened them, and that, for certain portions of the way,
+well-regulated droves of the vermin had districts assigned them; those
+that ventured in chase of him too far were beaten back by those on whose
+grounds they rashly trespassed.</p>
+
+<p>This latter consolation was lost almost at the same time as the other:
+his stock of fuses ran out, while with the last flash he feared that he
+saw a larger mass than ever before in his track. The rats had united to
+overwhelm him.</p>
+
+<p>Seized with panic, spite of his philosophy, dropping the all but empty
+wax-light case in his haste, he dashed madly forward, groping to save
+his head and shoulders from contact with the capacious gallery sides,
+but unable to take a step with any certainty how it would end.
+Fortunately, he had strayed back into an often-traveled path, and while
+the scamper of the rats died away at the close of his frantic race, he
+heard a sound but little above his level revealing the presence of man.
+It was not a cheerful sound; being the tolling of a bell such as is
+swung when a dead body is entering a cemetery, is carried to the chapel
+before interment.</p>
+
+<p>Nevertheless, fellow beings would be near and he had only to find the
+opening by which this burial-ground could be reached. He remembered that
+the old cemetery had been immensely extended, if the guide-books were to
+be credited, and, while he had no clear idea of the direction he had
+rambled, he might have reached the town of twenty thousand dead. The
+idea was gruesome of having to call for the aid of a grave-digger, but
+he felt that he could not much longer support this journey in the
+underworld without the bodily support of food or the mental one of human
+fellowship.</p>
+
+<p>Silence most oppressive had followed the patter of the myriad of rats'
+feet, and it checked his efforts. They were brought to a termination
+just when he looked forward with joy to a grey light dimly indicating
+some aperture on the other side of which shone the day. The ground
+seemed to give way under him, and he was hurled senseless into the pit
+which he had not suspected.</p>
+
+<p>When he returned to consciousness, the bell had ceased to toll; the
+silence was once more heavy. But the pangs of hunger&mdash;remorseless master
+over the young&mdash;spurred him into rising.</p>
+
+<p>He was thankful that he had not been attacked in his helplessness by the
+vermin, and he muttered a prayer in his first stride toward where he
+recalled the feeble light. The rats' compact column had figured in his
+dreams, and while they were led by the fair waltz-singer and dancer in
+order to devour him, unable to resist, the benignant fairy, for once
+dark&mdash;contrary to all precedent&mdash;wore the appearance of Rebecca.</p>
+
+<p>He could not see the light; but a current of warm air stealing steadily
+into the underground indicated the orifice. It was a welcome draft, for
+it differed in many features from the noisome, dank and earthy
+exhalations to which he had luckily become accustomed in his indefinite
+sojourn.</p>
+
+<p>His surmise was correct. Through a grating of iron bars, straight at the
+side and semi-circular at the top, set in massive masonry of some
+building, in the foundation of which he crouched, he saw, in the
+vagueness of clouded starlight, the domain of the dead.</p>
+
+<p>On being assured of this, the panic, mastering him before, resumed its
+sway; it gave him a giant's strength to escape the fancied, grisly
+pursuers, and he moved the whole series of bars far enough away to
+enable him to crawl through the gap.</p>
+
+<p>He stood, exhausted, panting, glad of the relief from the waking
+nightmare which the darkness encouraged. His weakness could be accounted
+for, as his wandering had lasted long; the syncope could not be brief
+since nearly thirty hours must have transpired from his rush out of the
+variety music-hall.</p>
+
+<p>Before him, for at his back stood the chapel for services, stretched out
+the vast cemetery. Some of the cracked, dilapidated tombs dated back to
+1600; others marked the addition in 1788 to the original God's-acre. All
+was hushed; it was difficult to imagine a phantom where neglect seemed
+to rule. It was not in this olden part that descendants of the departed
+flocked on All Saints' Day to decorate the mausoleums with evergreens,
+plaster images and artificial immortelle garlands. Except for a
+screeching-sparrow, which his first steps dislodged, not a sign of life
+appeared in this town around which the living city slept as quietly.</p>
+
+<p>His eyes clearing, he believed he descried the gateway and, sure that so
+large a <i>campo santo</i> would have a warder in hourly attendance, he made
+his way, deviating as the tombs compelled, toward the entrance. To his
+surprise, all was still there, and though a lamp burned in the little
+stone lodge, it was certainly untenanted. The gate was ajar; there was
+no fear of the tenants flitting out bodily for a night's excursion.</p>
+
+<p>Claudius was dying for refreshment and he was not fastidious about
+intruding. A man who has traversed the underlying catacombs need not be
+delicate about taking a nip of spirits or a hunch of bread. Both were in
+a cupboard in the little domicile, supplied with a porter's chair so
+ample as to be the watcher's bed, and a stove where a fire merrily
+burned, crackling with billets of pine wood.</p>
+
+<p>The disappearance was the more strange, as on a framed placard, at the
+base of which was a row of brazen knobs, there was a formal injunction
+for the gatewarder never to go away without his place being taken by
+another &quot;from sunset to sunrise and an hour after!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Claudius knew what those knobs and the instructions portended in this
+adjunct to the charnel house. The public mortuary was at the other end
+of the wires from those bells; the custom was to attach them to the dead
+so that, if their slumbers were not that knowing no waking and they
+stirred even so little as a finger, the electric transmitter which they
+agitated would sound the appeal.</p>
+
+<p>And now the watcher, on whom perhaps depended the duration of a worthier
+life than his, had paltered with his trust, while drinking at the
+beer-house or chattering with a sweetheart, the bell might ring
+unheeded, and the unhappy creature, falling with the last tremor of
+vitality, to obtain a desperate succor, would become indeed the corpse
+like which he had been laid out in the morgue.</p>
+
+<p>Claudius smiled grimly and sadly. On what flimsy bases the best plant of
+wise men too often rest! The latest power of nature had been harnessed
+to do man service in his utmost extremity; science had perfected its
+instruments, but one link in the chain was fallible man. The bell would
+tinkle&mdash;the watcher would be laughing out of earshot&mdash;and the life would
+sink back into Lethe after swimming to the shore!</p>
+
+<p>The student sighed as he ate the piece of bread broken off a small loaf
+and drank from the bottle out of which the faithless turnkey hobnobbed
+with the sexton, the undertaker's men and the hearse-coachman.</p>
+
+<p>If the bell should ring, with him alone to hear, ought he hasten out by
+the gate providentially open, and leave for the care of heaven alone the
+unknown wretch who would have summoned his brother-Christians most
+uselessly? The resuscitated man would not be &quot;of his parish,&quot; since he
+was a wanderer from afar. Let the natives bury their own dead!</p>
+
+<p>At this instant, when philosophy pointed out to the student the unbarred
+portals, the bell in the midst of the row rang clearly if not very
+loudly. It sounded in his ear like the last trump. Could he doubt that
+this appeal was to him exclusively? The removal of the custodian, his
+own miraculous escape&mdash;all pointed to this conclusion.</p>
+
+<p>But might he not run out and, if he saw the traitorous warder on his
+road, repeat to him the alarm? Not much time would be lost, for the gong
+still vibrated, and his personal safety ranked above his neighbor's in
+such a crisis.</p>
+
+<p>But Claudius' hesitation had been that of physical weakness; confronted
+in this way with the problem of fraternity, he did not waver any longer.
+On the threshold of safety, he turned straight back into the jaws of
+destruction. He had not emerged from that darkness and depth of earth,
+to descend into a lower profundity and a denser darkness of the soul.</p>
+
+<p>He glanced at the brazen monitor: its surface still shivered, though his
+senses were not fine enough to hear the faint sound. But there was no
+delusion; the dead in the morgue had signaled to the world on whose
+verge it was balanced.</p>
+
+<p>It cost the student no pang now to retrace the steps he had painfully
+counted, to reach the building, out of the cellars of which he had so
+gladly climbed. On thus facing it, he knew by a window being lighted
+that his goal was there.</p>
+
+<p>He had found fresh energy in his mission, rather than the scanty
+refreshment, and in three minutes was at the door. Heavy with iron
+banding the oak, it was not made for the hand of the dying to move it,
+but Claudius dragged it open with violence. He sprang inside with the
+vivacity of a bridegroom invading the nuptial chamber, although here was
+no agreeable sight.</p>
+
+<p>A long plain hall, of grey stone, the seams defined with black cement;
+all the windows high up, small and grated; only the one door, never
+locked. Two rows of slate beds, three of which only were occupied; two
+men and a boy, nude save a waistcloth; over their heads&mdash;sluggishly
+swayed by the air the new-comer had carelessly admitted&mdash;their clothes
+were hung like shapeless shadows. They had been dredged up in the Isar's
+mud, found at a corner, dragged from under a cartwheel. No one
+identifying them, they were deposited here; their fate? dissection for
+the benefit of science, and interment of the detached portions in the
+pauper's hell.</p>
+
+<p>Which had rung the bell?</p>
+
+<p>Claudius investigated the three: the boy had been crushed by the
+sludge-basket of the steam-dredge; not a spark of life was left there,
+his companion was green and horrible; he, too, had passed the bourne.</p>
+
+<p>But on the other row, alone, a robust man with disfigured face, and red
+whiskers, looked like a fresh cut alabaster statue. Cold had blanched
+him; but a faint steam arose from his armpits, in the sepulchral light
+of a green-shaded gas-jet. There heat remained to prove that the great
+furnace in the frame had not ceased to be fed.</p>
+
+<p>The student bent over him to feel the heart, when, as promptly, he
+sprang back. Spite of the maltreated face, he recognized his combatant
+in the duel with canes; it was Major Von Sendlingen, who had been flung
+on the slab in the public dead-house.</p>
+
+<p>Had Baboushka commanded his death to prevent her complicity in the
+assault on Daniels and his daughter being published, and had she
+suggested the stripping which caused the police to confound the noble
+officer with the victim of the &quot;pickers-up&quot; of drunkards?</p>
+
+<p>But the major shivered in the blast from the door left open, and a brief
+flush ran over the icy skin.</p>
+
+<p>If his enemy did not extend relief to him immediately, he would never
+recover strength to ring the death-bell to which ran the wires appended
+to his fingers and toes.</p>
+
+<p>With three or four rapid strokes and twistings, Claudius broke them. He
+looked round; this waif of the gutter had no clothes, but a torn and
+shapeless garment dangled over his head; it was the old cloak of the
+student. The pockets had been torn bodily away to save time; it was the
+mere integument of the garment.</p>
+
+<p>But it sufficed to retain the scanty heat lingering in the unfortunate
+man, when wrapped about him. With a surprising spell of strength,
+Claudius lifted him upon his breast when so enveloped, and crossed the
+grounds for the third time.</p>
+
+<p>The warder had returned but he had left the gate open to close its
+sliding grate by mechanism worked within his little house. To his amazed
+eyes, Claudius presented himself with the burden.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Help him! revive him! he is living!&quot; he said. &quot;I will go fetch the
+police surgeon! it is my officer&mdash;Major von Sendlingen!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>After the announcement of the rank, Claudius knew that the officer would
+want for nothing. He let the body fall into the large armchair and,
+taking advantage of the warder's consternation at seeing the dead-like
+body sitting between him and the only exit, glided through the narrow
+space between the sliding rails and disappeared.</p>
+
+<p>The boom of an alarm bell, set swinging over the gateway by the warder,
+added wings to his feet, for he feared that police and patrol would
+hurry to the cemetery from all quarters, and he wanted, above all, to
+reach the Jew's hotel before morning.</p>
+
+
+
+<br />
+<a name='CHAPTER_VI'></a><h2>CHAPTER VI.</h2>
+
+<h3>TWO AUGURS.</h3>
+<br />
+
+<p>Fortunately for the student, the night birds whom he met and to whom in
+asking information to arrive at the Persepolitan Hotel, he gave
+preference over the policemen, felt a fellow feeling for a man pallid,
+tottering, and in clothes which had suffered during his scramble through
+the exhausted mines underlaying Munich.</p>
+
+<p>He reached the hotel before dawn and was not sorry to find it one of
+those old-fashioned hostelries continuing traditions of the
+posting-houses, where he might not expect to be challenged because of
+his appearance. In the stable yard, between a half-awakened horse and a
+sleepy watchdog, who received the new guest with a blinking eye and
+affectionate tongue, an ostler was washing down a ramshackle chaise.
+Claudius guessed that it was prepared for his flight and his heart
+warmed at this proof of the Jew having counted on his coming, though
+belated. The shock-headed man, clattering over the rounded stones in
+wooden shoes, made to fit by the insertion of straw around his naked
+feet, no sooner heard him name Herr Daniels as the one expecting him,
+than he bade him welcome in a cordial tone which his surly face had not
+presaged.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I suppose he is asleep,&quot; he said, &quot;but he left word that he was to be
+aroused at any hour on your coming. I am not allowed within doors in my
+stable dress,&quot; he added, &quot;but you will have no trouble in finding the
+rooms. It is that one where the candle burns, one floor above, numbers
+11, 12 and 13&mdash;the number is unlucky for a Christian, but that does not
+matter for the likes of them!&mdash;and a lamp burns at the turn of the
+stairs. The back door is on the latch.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Claudius, with the satisfaction of having anchored in the harbor,
+crossed the yard and entered the house. He was closing the door behind
+him when he heard a heavy tread at the street gate where he had come in.
+and the dog began to growl. The ostler caught it by the collar as it
+made a bound, and cried out:</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Who is there?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The schutzman, who had dismounted, prudently held the door close, with
+one hand, to prevent the dog gliding through, while he showed his sword
+drawn in the other, and answered with affected joviality:</p>
+
+<p>&quot;What, Karlchen, am I not known by you better than by your pagan of a
+hound? But catch me putting silly questions to my boon-companion, my
+oldest friend! It is not in here that I saw a suspicious shadow creep,
+eh?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;By my faith!&quot; replied the groom, laughing heartily, &quot;it may have been a
+shadow&mdash;but flesh-and-blood is what my true Ogre is waiting for! We are
+up betimes, worthy Hornitz, and we have neither had our breakfast. What
+has put you on the alert?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;A general order! There was a riot at the great music hall of the
+Freyers Brothers&mdash;plague on it! What art they have in brewing beer that
+leaves a pleasant memory! and we have orders to overhaul every
+suspicious character in the streets, while none can get out of the town.
+It appears that some monstrous criminal is at large! Oh, for the reward,
+that would buy me a little cottage on the Friedplatz road with beer
+unstinted!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Pooh! as usual, you gentlemen of the nightwatch are badly informed,&quot;
+grumbled the ostler, pushing the dog into a corner. &quot;I know what it was,
+for one of the theatrical players is a lady lodger of ours. She was
+unfairly supplanted by some insignificant young upstart and, of course,
+the public, always knowing true talent from shallow pretension, broke up
+the seats and pelted the manager with it along with his imposter!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Well, good-morning, Karlchen,&quot; said the gendarme, taking the
+correction in good part, and withdrawing his booted leg from the door.
+&quot;I may see you when I am off duty and we will make sure that Freyers
+have better taste in brewing beer than in choosing actresses.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Having heard enough to convince him that Daniels was in a house guarded
+by the faithful, Claudius proceeded up the stairs dimly visible before
+him at the end of a clean, bricked passage. His progress was more easy
+when he reached the landing, as the lamp mentioned, in a recess and
+projecting its rays in two directions, shone on the door of the suite of
+three rooms where the Jew and his daughter were lodged.</p>
+
+<p>Pausing before he knocked, Claudius heard the soft step of slippered
+feet. On tapping discreetly, a reserved voice ordered him to come in. It
+was Daniels who spoke; he was in a dressing-gown, with bare head, and,
+having cleared the chairs back to enable him to make the circuit of the
+table in the center of the spacious room, had apparently been walking
+round it like a caged lion. On the table were various articles heaped up
+without order and an open trunk, partly packed. He looked up in emotion
+while Claudius paused on the sill, more affected than he understood the
+reason for.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Ah, heaven be praised! it is you,&quot; said the old man with grave joy, and
+holding out his hands, paternally. &quot;I feared for the worst&mdash;that you
+would never come. It is so serious a matter: a nobleman and an officer
+who belongs to the Secret Intelligence Department&mdash;his death is not to
+go unpunished.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;At least, he is not dead,&quot; said the student; and he hastened to tell
+his story.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Speak at any tone you please,&quot; interrupted Daniels, at the stage of his
+having escaped from the music-hall by the artistes' door and of the
+help of the woman whom he did not profess to distinguish. &quot;My daughter
+is sleeping, and a sitting-room is here between her apartment and this
+one.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>But, though without any fear that the noble girl would stoop to listen,
+the student related the rest with a cautious voice. Others might not be
+so delicate.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You have a great heart,&quot; said Daniels, when he heard of the rescue of
+the major from the frigid slab of the morgue. &quot;To do this for an enemy
+is lofty conduct. God grant that you have not met one of those monsters
+of ingratitude whom a kind act embitters. But it would hardly appear
+that he could survive the beating by Baboushka's gang, the ill usage
+from the street sweepers and that of the ghouls of the dead-house. All
+this makes me tremble for the plan I formed to have you conveyed hence
+in a chaise. I have the papers to cover your departure as a clerk whom a
+business firm of good standing are sending out to Buenos Ayres. Once at
+Hamburg, you may turn your face in any direction you desire. But the
+slayer of Major Von Sendlingen would not be able to cross the French or
+Italian frontier.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;For a man intending to see Italy, that would be taking me greatly out
+of the road,&quot; muttered Claudius, sinking into a chair.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Then go as far as Ulm only, where you will let the train proceed
+without you. Send for a doctor whose address I will give you and I
+answer for his helping you to get into Switzerland. After all, that will
+be better. But I see that you are weak with your exertions and want of
+proper nourishment.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;It is rest I most need.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Then stretch yourself on this sofa, and let me cover you with a
+traveling-rug. When you awake, refreshments will be at hand.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;But you, whom I deprive of rest?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;It is true that anxiety about you, my young friend, has prevented me
+lying down, but I am not desirous of sleep now. Do as I tell you. I will
+countermand the chaise, and return with the food. This house is not a
+famous inn, but my coreligionists, who are traveling merchants, frequent
+it, and the edibles are good. As for the honesty of the servants and of
+the host, I guarantee it. Unless you have been dogged to the door, I
+believe you are safe.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Claudius said that he seemed not to have been followed. At the house, a
+patrolman had caught a glimpse of him but the ostler had jestingly
+turned him off and quieted his suspicions. Before his host had reached
+the door, where he paused to look back, the young man was nodding with
+eyes closing in spite of his will, and he was soon steeped in slumber.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;The sleep on the night before execution,&quot; muttered the Jew. &quot;This is a
+sad matter! That Baboushka is a witch of malevolence, or I am woefully
+misinformed, and the major an awkward antagonist. I would a thousand
+miles separated my daughter, and this young man, from both of them.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>In the lobby he saw a young girl, with her hair in curl-papers and a
+candle in her hand, descending the stairs from above.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Ah, Hedwig,&quot; he said gently, &quot;I am not sorry you have risen so early.&quot;
+The girl blushed.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You are as rosy as a carnation. Will you please bring me up some coffee
+and light food as soon as you get the hot water? My daughter and I will
+probably start before your regular breakfast-hour.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The girl seemed vexed by this news, for she bit her lip, but forcing a
+smile, she continued her journey to the kitchen. No one else seemed
+afoot in the large and rambling house, through which the Jew sent
+searching looks as he took the turn to the yard. The ostler received him
+with a grin, and the dog with friendly wags of the stub tail.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;We shall not use the chaise as we purposed, Karl,&quot; said the Jew. &quot;At
+your breakfast-time, my daughter will go out alone for an airing, with
+you or your fellow to drive. The young gentleman whom you welcomed is
+quite unfit for a journey before at least three days are over.
+Meanwhile, not an incautious word that will betray where he took
+shelter. In these three days,&quot; he added to himself, &quot;we shall know how
+the major fares. Unfortunately, his race have iron constitutions.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>This was said with a sorrow rare in one of a people who seldom deplore
+the survival of a brother man.</p>
+
+<p>Daniels was right in his fear: the student needed repose, and only the
+most vigorous counter measures drove off an attack of fever. Rebecca was
+his nurse in the same devoted and intelligent manner as her father was
+his physician, but as he was on the margin of delirium half the time, he
+saw her like one in a vision.</p>
+
+<p>His antagonist, Von Sendlingen, was not so blessed. After a cursory
+treatment in the cemetery gate-keeper's lodge, he was removed, wrapped
+in blankets, to his quarters in the great barracks; the iron
+constitution, of which Daniels spoke, bore him up, and before Claudius
+was on foot again, the officer was outdoors&mdash;a little pale, but
+seemingly none the worse for his horrible adventure.</p>
+
+<p>He took up his own case. Fraulein von Vieradlers had already tired of
+her assay in elevating the stage in a social point of view. She had
+excited the adoration of the eccentric Marchioness de Latour-lagneau, a
+very old lady of fortune, who had the habit of conceiving singular
+fancies. This lady engaged the cantatrice as a &quot;noble companion,&quot; and
+she hurried off with her into Italy. So the story ran, and added that
+her manager found that the Vieradlers promptly repudiated any kinship
+with her when he talked of their paying the forfeit money. He had
+thereupon endeavored to win back La Belle Stamboulane to his deserted
+stage, but she was obdurate, and the beer flowed flat in the double
+absence of stars inimitable.</p>
+
+<p>The major, whose body, reeking with arnica and iodine, reminded him at
+every step of the drubbing he owed to the civilian, concentrated his
+searches therefore to discover him. He was sure that he had not left the
+town by the ordinary channels, but, as time passed, and the week ended
+fruitlessly, he was inclined to believe that the fiend which befriended
+Baboushka had also shielded Claudius with his wing.</p>
+
+<p>He did not doubt that the old hag, believing he was lifeless, had
+hounded on her followers to steal his uniform and hurl him into the
+kennel for the most hideous of fates, which even the homeless and
+hopeless dread. But for the enemy whom he hated, he might now be a
+boxful of dissected bones in the poor man's lot instead of still
+enjoying the prospect, dear to the scion of an ancient race, of
+occupying his shelf in the family vault.</p>
+
+<p>Although a soldier, he had such intimate relations with the civil
+powers, that the police aided him in searches which he took care
+astutely to represent as quite non-personal. They led him to the street
+of the Persepolitan Hotel, where, before he entered, he was scrutinizing
+the vicinity when he spied the well-known form of the old beggar-chief.
+Their surprise was alike.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Traitress!&quot; he said, with a red spot blazing on his pale cheeks, as he
+played with the swordknot on his new sword as if he wanted to loose it
+and flog her. &quot;After receiving my gold, to bring me to death's door!
+What have you to say to stay me from handing you to the town's officers
+to be whipped out of it at the cart's-tail?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>To his surprise again, she met his glance firmly, and her eyes seemed as
+irate as his own.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You are mistaken,&quot; she replied, carelessly, as if the matter were of no
+consequence. &quot;How can you expect those stalwart bullies to obey an old
+woman like me? They would have beaten me to a jelly if I had tried to
+shield you. Besides, my officer, I thought you had not a spark of life
+left in you after that beating.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;He shall pay for it&mdash;with the sword if worthy&mdash;with the stick if a
+plebeian.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You need not believe he will ever meet you with the sword,&quot; said the
+hag, glad to have the dialogue turn on another head than her own in
+spite of her unconcern. &quot;I am going to tell you all about one whom I
+hated by instinct and whom I find to be a hereditary enemy.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;What do you mean? He is but a boy and cannot have wronged you or
+yours.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;His father, major, murdered my loveliest daughter and interrupted her
+career of splendor! Alas! one that had a palace where kings were
+received and to whom princes often sued in vain!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Halloa! you, to have a daughter of that calibre!&quot; and he laughed
+coarsely.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You, who know everything, my officer, must at least have heard of the
+peerless Iza, the original of the most beautiful statue
+which&mdash;reproduced in the precious and the mean metals, in clay, in
+parian, in plaster&mdash;made the round of the civilized world? 'The Bather!'
+That was my daughter! She had her faults&mdash;even the truly lovely have
+mental flaws, though bodily they are perfect&mdash;but whilst she lived, her
+poor old mother dressed in silks and velvets&mdash;not in rags; she ate and
+drank delicately, not sour crusts and sourer wine; she slept on down and
+not in a cellar!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Von Sendlingen shook his head; he was of the new generation and he
+preserved but a dim remembrance of the noted beauties&mdash;the stars of the
+living galaxy decorating the first cycle of the Bonapartist Restoration.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I foresaw it all and I warned her; but she was so perverse! It is my
+duty to avenge her, and to see that the same blunder is not made by&mdash;no
+matter! Enough that my science&mdash;at which you smile, I see&mdash;points out to
+me that your greatest enemies and mine are in that house.&quot; She gestured
+toward the hotel, which the major had been studying.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Do you say enemies in the plural?&quot; he said, ceasing to curl his lip in
+mocking of the witch.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;In that house are the Jewish couple, father and daughter, who played at
+the Harmonista, La Belle Stamboulane and the Turkophonist Daniel, and
+the young man who belabored your excellency so that he almost died of
+the drubbing.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Hang you for being so profuse in your explanations! How do you know all
+this?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;The servant-maid is a customer of mine. I tell her fortune and she
+tells me all that goes on in her master's house. The young man has been
+cared for there these five or six days, and they only await the chance
+to smuggle him out of the city. Have him seized and secure him in
+prison, where he shall rot&mdash;for I declare to you, as surely as there are
+stars above, these letters of the divine volume in which soothsayers
+read, he will be your death in the end unless you are his.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I would not be contented with that. I want to return him blow for
+blow&mdash;and yet you say I cannot fight him in duello.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Listen, my officer. He has been brought up in ignorance of his name and
+origin, in my country Poland. He is French by birth, and his name is
+Felix Clemenceau. It was his father, a celebrated sculptor, who married
+my daughter Iza, after decoying her to Paris from her mother's side, and
+he murdered her on some frivolous pretext when they were living
+separated and he, heaven knows, had no farther claim upon her&mdash;his
+existence was pure indifference to her. I answer for it! They tried his
+father for the atrocity. Even a French jury could not find extenuating
+circumstances for that kind of cold-blooded assassin who slays in the
+small hours the wife of his bosom&mdash;after having cast her off and driven
+her to evil ways, poor, spotless angel! They brought him in guilty of a
+foul murder and he was guillotined&mdash;gentleman and artist of merit though
+he was. They were kind to his young son; his friends made up a purse and
+sent him afar to be educated and reared in ignorance. But the shadow of
+the guillotine is projected afar, and I saw its red finger point to the
+assassin's offspring. I have found him. If my hand is not too feeble to
+strike, it may anticipate yours.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I cannot measure swords with a felon's son!&quot; muttered Von Sendlingen.
+&quot;But I shall not cease aching in the heart until he is in the shameful
+grave he imprudently snatched me from.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You are a man after my own liking,&quot; said the hag, chuckling. &quot;I can
+foresee that you will go far and perish in a blaze of glory! Listen!
+There are troublous times when an unscrupulous and ambitious soldier may
+make his mark and carve a good slice out of the great, rich cake called
+Europe. Aid me, and I will aid you. Yes, Herr Major, it is one potentate
+speaking with another,&quot; the singular woman went on with sinister pride,
+and trying to draw her shrunken form into straightness; &quot;I rule an army
+of my own, camped by cohorts in the capitals of Europe&mdash;dating farther
+back than your own, and, perhaps, as formidable. It is we who spy out
+the weak spots in great cities. The next time, we shall swarm into the
+doomed city in a mass and we shall devour its wealth and luxuries until
+we are gorged. But for the day, it will be glut enough for me to have
+the life's blood of this man. You cannot honor him with single combat,
+it appears. Then, let me propose another mode to finish him.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The major was silent. Standing high in the ranks of the police, he was
+not sure how closely he might ally himself with this avowed leader of
+the evil-doers, who announced the pillage of a metropolis. She took his
+silence for consent or approval, for she jauntily continued:</p>
+
+<p>&quot;The house-maid has told me all they are hatching. They have a chaise
+always ready and passports to mask the departure of the young man as a
+clerk going abroad. But for precaution, they will not have him go to the
+train at the depot; he might be questioned and the discrepancies in the
+passport be perceived. The chaise is to convey him down the line, and he
+will get on the cars at a rural depot where the gendarme and
+ticket-seller will be dull and easily hoodwinked.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Very neat,&quot; said Von Sendlingen, appreciating the plan at its due
+value. &quot;I always said old Daniels was no fool.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;What more easy than to post a couple of the horse patrol on the
+road&mdash;young, hot-headed fellows with restless fingers on the triggers?
+The youth will certainly refuse to surrender, whereupon, bang, bang! he
+falls into the ditch with a brace of bullets in his body. You and I will
+have an enemy the less. This is not the way I planned it in my dreams,
+but we must take our revenge with the sauce fate serves it up to us 'on
+the table of Fact.'&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;The scheme is plausible.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Feasible! especially will it work like well-oiled machinery if you play
+your part of lure creditably.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;My part?&quot; questioned the major.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes, yours. With a sorrowful eye and a smooth face, I confess I could
+not confront the man I hate as strongly as his father. You are
+different&mdash;you are an arch-villain&mdash;a born diplomatist who wears the
+very mask for this task and has no face, no compunction, no pity of his
+own. Go into that house, ask for Herr Daniels&mdash;that is the Jew player's
+non-professional name&mdash;and see him and his daughter, perhaps, the young
+student, too. Boldly proclaim your position as the Secret Intelligence
+Agent, by which you learned their whereabouts, and that they harbor the
+charitable young man who saved your life. Touch lightly on his thumping
+you within an inch of it, and enlarge on your undying gratitude.
+Apologize to the young lady&mdash;lay all blame on her irresistible charms
+and abuse a little the fair and fickle Fraulein von Vieradlers who has
+eloped without so much as an adieu to you! Depend upon it, Jews though
+they are, they will applaud your Christian forgiveness, and, I do not
+doubt, Frenchman though he is, young Clemenceau will give you his hand.
+Dilate not at all, but urge him to leave the town without delay. From
+the maid I will get to know the hour of the chaise's starting and the
+route so that you can plant your men. I grant that this has the air of a
+highwayman's attack, but, after all, the uniform covers a host of civil
+sins, and, really, I do not see a better way to have done with the
+youth. It will never do to have him strut about Paris boasting that he
+snatched the sword away from an officer and drubbed him with a cane into
+the bargain.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Sullen fire burned in the hearer's eyes. He stamped his foot, suppressed
+an oath, and when he looked up, had a serene countenance.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You have said enough. A willing steed does not need the spur. I will
+lay the train and prepare the match. Let each look to himself lest he
+suffer by the explosion.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Successful though the old woman had been in her arrangement to convert
+an offended employer into a vigorous ally, she shuddered as if he were,
+in these ominous words, as good a soothsayer as he pretended to be.</p>
+
+
+
+<br />
+<a name='CHAPTER_VII'></a><h2>CHAPTER VII.</h2>
+
+<h3>ONE GOOD TURN DESERVES&mdash;A BAD ONE.</h3>
+<br />
+
+<p>Probably no more terrifying a figure could have presented itself at the
+Persepolitan Hotel than the major of cavalry, and he looked the type of
+his class, insolent with aristocratic hauteur, martial to the point of
+arrogance, and domineering and as blustering toward inferiors as he
+would have been bland and meek to his superiors. The landlord, one of
+the hybrid Levantines in whose blood that of a dozen races flowed, was
+as alarmed as the maid, whom he sent up the stairs to announce the
+visitor to Herr Daniels. Strange to say, the officer, who had taken a
+seat in the sitting-room, unasked, with his heavy sabre held upright
+between his knees, bore the somewhat lengthy delay with patience. The
+girl returned to say that Herr Daniels would be honored with the visit,
+although, he had said, he had not a pleasant remembrance of the
+gentleman. In fact, before his assault in the street upon La Belle
+Stamboulane, the major had persecuted her and deserved the reproof from
+her father which it was too dangerous, as Munich society was ruled, for
+him to utter.</p>
+
+<p>But, contrary to all precedent, the military Lovelace quietly walked
+into the room where Claudius was restored to health and whence he had
+been removed to the inmost chamber vacated by the young singer. The
+major's accident might account for his meekness, but his manners and
+voice accorded with his speech so that one attributed the change to an
+altogether different cause than a purely physical one.</p>
+
+<p>He approached the Jew with open countenance, wearing a chastened and
+subdued expression, and extended his hand as to a brother officer.
+Daniels accepted it, struck by the unexpected mien, although he could
+not, in his astonishment and inveterate prudence, return the pressure.
+The major spoke an apology for his outrageous conduct, in a faltering
+voice and with moist eyes, spacing the apparently unstudied phrases with
+a cough as if to master tearfulness unbecoming even an invalid soldier.
+He laid the blame on the surpassing charms of the songstress who had
+enflamed him beyond his self-control and, partly, on the infernal French
+wine in which he had imprudently over-indulged at the evening's garrison
+officer's dinner. Had he but patriotically stuck to the beer! But that
+was not worth lamenting now. He tendered his regrets to the father of
+the young lady and promised to use his poor influence&mdash;here he smiled at
+the disparagement as if he knew his power and that his hearer was sure
+of it&mdash;for her professional advancement as long as she rejoiced Munich
+with her beauty and accomplishments.</p>
+
+<p>The night in the dead-house, on the very brink of the deathpit, had
+transformed him, he freely acknowledged. He hardly recognized his own
+voice in communicating the sentiments that carried him into new
+directions, so strange was it all, but he was eager to show by deeds
+that his conversion was great and sincere. He had engaged his protection
+for the distinguished turkophone-player and his unparalleled daughter,
+but he felt that was enough.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Ample,&quot; said Daniels, at last able to speak a word on the torrent of
+glib language momentarily pausing; &quot;but we are going away to fulfill an
+engagement in Paris.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;One moment,&quot; said the major, politely lifting his hand from which he
+kept the buckskin gauntlet as if he meant again to shake hands with the
+Ishmael at their farewell. &quot;Perhaps I cannot, then, be of service to
+you, but there is another to whom my assistance is of other value&mdash;nay,
+of the highest consequence. I am not referring to the young lady&mdash;whom
+Munich will be so sorry to part with and whom I do not expect to see
+again even to accept my excuses&mdash;but the student from the Polish
+University who deservedly corrected me and brought me to my sober
+senses&mdash;although, perhaps, he had a heavy hand.&quot; He spoke with an
+assumption of manly regret, which enchanted the hearer and completed his
+revocation of the bad opinion of the rough suitor of his daughter. Still
+the Jew had not laid aside all his habitual caution and he did not by
+word or movement betray that he had an acquaintance with his champion.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I see that I must drop all flourishes and speak unfettered,&quot; went on
+the major, bluntly. &quot;In two words, our brawl has got to the ears of the
+provost-marshal as well as those of the town guardians, and the search
+is going to be thorough for that young gentleman. I know it is absurd,
+and I protested against it, but the idea has penetrated their wooden
+heads that he is one of those tramp-students who are permeating the
+masses&mdash;worse, the dangerous classes&mdash;with seditious ideas, and they
+think he and Baboushka's gang too long lording it in the poor quarter,
+are hand and glove. In fact, in a day or two&mdash;perhaps now&mdash;the forces
+will be a-foot in uniform and in disguise to make a keen and searching
+inspection of the dwellings suspected of harboring the liberal-minded;
+and God knows that you have, Herr Daniels, chosen a veritable hot-bed!
+Two months ago, we arrested a Nihilist with a portmanteau full of glass
+bombs, luckily uncharged, in the attic upstairs; not three weeks since,
+two Hungarian malcontents were stopped at the door&mdash;but why enter into
+these details, fitter for the police than a soldier to relate? You, of
+course, were not told of these blots on this hotel's fame or you would
+have selected it as the last roof to shelter your talented daughter. It
+is one thing to cross swords&mdash;I mean staves&mdash;with a man, and another to
+guide the watchmen to clap their coarse paws on his shoulder. I have
+made honorable amends, I hope, to the lady and yourself, for my
+rudeness; as for the gallant fellow, I bear him no ill will&mdash;on the
+contrary! since I could wish to meet with him again, and tell him that
+the Great Prison of Munich is not badly constructed and promises little
+chance of an escape. I beg you to convey the warning to him that he must
+lose not one instant if he can escape beyond the walls.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Still Daniels believed it prudent, if not polite, to make no
+compromising admission. But the speaker was not offended. He smiled
+wisely, not without good humor, and offered his hand so frankly that the
+Jew again took it and this time slightly returned the generous pressure.</p>
+
+<p>But on the way to the door, he was stopped by the entrance of Rebecca.
+Although she was clad in the plain garments affected by the Jewess in
+ordinary days, and they were in the most striking contrast with the
+stage flippery in which the officer had previously seen her, her
+loveliness was as manifest as the stars when even a fleecy cloud veils
+them on an autumnal eve. In her anxiety as regarded her father&mdash;or,
+perhaps, the student, who can tell?&mdash;she must have stooped to listening
+to some portion of the singular and one-sided dialogue. For she said,
+without any prelude:</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Herr Officer, you have acted a noble part and it would be a grief if I
+had not taken the occasion to accept your apology and thank you for the
+warning which may save the life of one who&mdash;believe me&mdash;is no longer
+your foe, if he had been one. I am not able to judge the greatness and
+loftiness of your act from your people's point of view, but I shall no
+longer have a mean opinion of the creed which can perform such a
+conversion as yours&mdash;that is, making you a true gentleman instead of
+leading one to believe you a heartless libertine.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>She held out her hand and he took it so reverently, without haste and
+with tenderness, and kissed it so respectfully that her last doubt
+vanished&mdash;although she scarcely had the ghost of one.</p>
+
+<p>He had triumphed completely, and he retired with an airy step and a
+heart replete with gratification.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;If he is dragged into the prison and locked up to rot in the dungeon,
+they will blame me the last of all,&quot; he muttered. &quot;Heavens, how
+supernally beautiful she is! There are times when I think that if she
+and her rival occupied the scales of the balance, a butterfly's wing
+would turn them. My heart would be divided in their mutual favor.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>With the same aerial step, he passed two or three men in threadbare
+suits and shabby hats, who were hovering about the Persepolitan, and who
+carefully exchanged glances of understanding with him. He went straight
+to the superintendent-inspector of police, and sat down in his cabinet
+to concert with him on the best way to suppress, without scandal, the
+dangerous emissary from ever-restless Poland, lodged in consultation
+with the Jew, the bugbear of the monarchies of Europe.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Tut, tut! tell not the official that Daniels and his daughter, for the
+paltry lucre of the drink-halls or for artistic satisfaction, made the
+tour of the capitals!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>In the meantime, the &quot;suspects,&quot; not themselves suspicious, commenced,
+with Rebecca a listener, upon the move counseled by the chivalrous
+major. It was one they had almost settled upon and they determined to
+put it all the sooner into execution. The post chaise was kept in a
+state of readiness, alike with the horse that drew it on these important
+occasions, a surefooted nag whose pace was better than her appearance.
+Claudius, to be sure, rested under the disadvantage of being a stranger
+to the roads, as he had traveled only upon one to enter this
+city&mdash;commonly accounted dull, but so far crammed with serious
+adventures. This blank in his topographical lore was easily filled: the
+bright-eyed Hedwig was to meet him at the first corner, mount into the
+vehicle of which the capacious hood of enameled cloth would hide her,
+and there pilot him in steering to the Sendling <i>Thur</i> or gate. Once in
+the open country, the road was plainer&mdash;in fact, he could be guided by
+the locomotive's smoke and whistle till he reached the little station.
+Even twenty miles out, the Persepolitan's landlord had
+acquaintances&mdash;perhaps they were brothers in some occult league&mdash;and the
+vehicle could be left without misgivings at any of the inns which he
+named.</p>
+
+<p>There was nothing in this plan, so simple as to promise success, to
+trouble the brain, but, all the same, Claudius had a sleepless night,
+though he retired early to be prepared for the probably eventful
+morrow.</p>
+
+<p>He wished to think only of Rebecca, who had added sound hints to her
+father's and the host's experienced advice; but, do what he could, it
+was another's image that haunted him. It was the winning one of the
+aristocratic singer. Again he beheld her matchless shape, her caressing
+and enthralling eyes, her supple undulations in the waltz and her
+shimmering golden curls. And whatever the sounds in the street, where
+there seemed more footfalls than before that evening, all though actual,
+were overpowered and formed the burden to the ghostly but delightful
+strains from that silvery voice. He was not only at the age to be
+impressionable, but he had not known one of those college amorettes
+which may be as innocent as a page of a scientific text-book. No woman
+even in the poetry had caused him to vibrate in the untouched
+heart-chords like this unexpected star in the firmament of beer fumes
+and tobacco smoke! But it was not joyous to muse upon this vision for he
+had no doubt that she marked a new starting-point in his life.</p>
+
+<p>Did he love her, or Rebecca? They had appeared to him so closely
+together that he was confused. He viewed them as a double-star, without
+yet having the coolness to separate them. He was a man to love once
+only, and there is but one love. There are different phases of it as
+there are different lodgers in the same house; they do not know each
+other, but they come in and go forth by the same staircase-way.</p>
+
+<p>Of this he was instinctively certain that if he loved Kaiserina, she
+would guide him in altogether another direction than he had looked and
+whither his proud and admiring professors had pointed. Enormous wealth
+in our days is to the monopolist, immense fame to the specialist. To
+rise above contestants, one must be patient, resigned, long toiling and
+abhorrent of the social ties which fetter one when most of the time is
+demanded to solve a problem, and pester one to recite the two or three
+letters he has learnt when he ought to study till he masters the entire
+alphabet. A man must immolate himself.</p>
+
+<p>Oh, he had been so happy at whiles with the thought, accounted
+providential, that he stood alone, with no one to distract him, to
+impose burdens on him and to claim a right to make inroads on his
+precious hours. He loved the loneliness in which he sank when he stepped
+out of the lecture-room and the amphitheatre. He had not felt the need,
+which others confessed, of some one with whom to share griefs, debate
+enigmas and communicate projects. Since he saw Rebecca, he had, indeed,
+had an almost momentary glimpse of a home where a dashing woman, moving
+silently and airily, guarded his meditations from the external plagues.
+Such a woman was created to comfort, cheer and encourage if he flagged.
+But the love she inspired was ideal, perceived hazily during the hours
+when he was out of health, and divined rather than watched her tender
+ministrations.</p>
+
+<p>The courtships are long when love is based on respect. She gave repose
+to the soul, not excitement to the spirit. He saw that she admired him
+for his courage in daring so much&mdash;more than he had fully realized&mdash;for
+the despised and trampled-upon, and she pitied one before whom yawned
+the dreadful prison which rarely lets out the political prisoner with
+enough life in his wrecked frame to be worth living out. But he did not
+see that she was truth and that he should follow her. As the sailors
+drive the ship toward the false beacon, near them and garish and
+flaring, so he thought the erratic orb brighter than the serene fixed
+star.</p>
+
+<p>He felt ungrateful. This sneaking out of the town was ridiculous after
+the heroic introduction to La Belle Stamboulane. He examined a pair of
+pistols which the host had generously presented him with, when, after
+the restless night, he rose with the dawn, and he determined to use them
+if assailed. It is the inoffensive, quiet man who works most mischief
+when roused&mdash;nothing so terrible even to the wolves as the sheep gone
+mad. The student, having dipped his hand in blood, was now eager to be
+attacked on the highway by a company of unrepentant Von Sendlingens.</p>
+
+<p>This was no mood, however, in which to start on a journey of possible
+peril. Rebecca did not appear at the breakfast table. She, too, had
+passed a wakeful night, but it was in prayer for the safety of the first
+real friend she had so far met among the Gentiles. The host looked in at
+the conclusion of the meal. Nothing could wear a fairer aspect. Even the
+hovering figures which he, for good reason, set down as spies, had
+become tired of their useless quest, and disappeared with the fog that
+floated amid the smoke of the numerous brewery chimneys.</p>
+
+
+
+<br />
+<a name='CHAPTER_VIII'></a><h2>CHAPTER VIII.</h2>
+
+<h3>A SECOND DEFEAT.</h3>
+<br />
+
+<p>The sun was well up, showing a jolly red face, which indicated that he
+had been passing the night in the tropics, when Claudius, having said
+his farewell within the hospitable house where his bill had been
+obstinately withheld from him, took the reins in the chaise. The
+grinning ostler held the unbarred door of the yard ready to open it
+quickly and slam it behind him. At least, he had not the host's delicacy
+and he had accepted his gratuity.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Good speed, master!&quot; he had hastily cried out as the equipage rolled
+out into the street.</p>
+
+<p>It was deserted. The horse and vehicle aroused no curiosity where odder
+animals and more curiously antiquated rattletraps were also out. He
+traversed the town as unimpeded as a Czar environed by secret guards.
+The officer at the gate, yawning behind the passport which he did not
+trouble to read, wished him a good dinner at the rural friend's, where
+it was hinted he would put up, and returned into the guardroom to resume
+telling a dream which he wished interpreted. Since Joseph, these
+functionaries at the gate and in prison seem to be tormented with
+puzzling visions.</p>
+
+<p>All had gone well but for one serious omission: Hedwig had not appeared
+to be taken up; yet he had not mistaken the streets laid down in the
+itinerary. But once outside the walls, he was forced to go slowly and
+foresaw the moment when he must stop. It was hazardous to inquire, for,
+while he was dressed, by the hotel-keeper's provision, like a citizen of
+Munich, he had not the speech of the residents.</p>
+
+<p>In his quandary he was greatly relieved when the horse pricked up his
+ears and gave a whinny in a kind of recognition. Claudius glanced to the
+roadside gladly and hopefully, as a young, feminine figure stepped out
+from the cover of a post painted in stripes to indicate parish, township
+and other boundary marks. But although the short frock, coarse woolen
+stockings, cap and velvet bodice were Hedwig's Sunday clothes, sure
+enough, in which the student had once seen the pretty maid, this girl
+was no rustic slightly polished by the hotel experience.</p>
+
+<p>He felt his heart melt like wax in a cast when the bronze rushes within
+the clay&mdash;it was Kaiserina von Vieradlers!</p>
+
+<p>A strange feeling nearly mastered him! Instinct bade him run and,
+whipping the horse, flee at the top of speed anywhere beyond the charm
+of this unexpected apparition. And yet she came forward so brightly, and
+so frankly, and her first words were so reassuring that he was ashamed
+of the impulse which&mdash;he was yet to know&mdash;had all the worth of heavenly
+inspired suggestions.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Herr Student!&quot; she said sweetly, &quot;it is fated that I shall be of
+service to you. Do not go farther in this course. They lie in wait for
+you. Luckily, I know of a cross-country lane&mdash;if you will only let me
+accompany you to set you right, and help me to roll some stones and logs
+from the mouth. It saves time, and you will baffle your foes. Oh, I know
+all. The faithful Hedwig, whose clothes I have borrowed, is a daughter
+of a tenant on my father's estate. She means well, but she has no brains
+for these steps out of her even tenor, and she was glad to have me
+replace her in her mission. Help me up!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>There was no denying her anything. The horse had appeared to greet her
+with pleasure, though it was probably the clothes of Hedwig that he
+recognized with the whinny after a sonorous sniff.</p>
+
+<p>As she held out her hand, he offered his and, like a fawn clearing a
+hedge, she bounded up, just touched with a winged foot the iron step,
+and cleared the seat with a second leap. Crouching down within the
+hood, she began merrily but spoke with gravity before she had finished:</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Drive on after turning.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>He turned the horse and vehicle. At the same moment a shrill whistle
+sounded in the opposite direction.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;That's the gendarmes,&quot; she said. &quot;The watchman's horn in the old town;
+the military whistle without. They are keeping good guard for you&mdash;but
+we shall cheat them, I tell you again!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>She laughed that purely feminine laugh at the prospect of somebody being
+deceived.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Take the northern fork, although you would seem to be going very
+different to your aim. At the lane I spoke of, stop&mdash;but I shall be at
+your elbow to prompt you.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The drive was resumed in this singular way; there was something piquant
+in not seeing his companion, her presence manifested only by her sweet
+breath, the slight rustling of the glazed cloth which afforded her such
+scanty room, and the prattle which flowed from her lips.</p>
+
+<p>She was happy to serve him again; she had liked him from the first sight
+in the hall; they did not seem to be strangers; he was like she knew not
+whom, but she could swear the resemblance was perfect! She had been read
+such a lecture by her manager and the police sub-chief, but, pooh! what
+were such men but the knob on a post&mdash;the post remained and the knob was
+unscrewed for another to be put on every now and then. They had
+threatened but she was not a strolling player who feared the lock-up and
+the House of Correction. They would think twice before they sent a
+child of the Vieradlers into the Home of the Unrepentant Magdalens! and
+all this intermixed with snatches of song and flashes of original wit at
+the expense of the police and soldiers and the citizens.</p>
+
+<p>And the flight into Italy with the Marchioness famous for prot&eacute;g&eacute;s as
+other old ladies for keeping cats or parrots? It was true she had made
+her an offer and she had connived at the police being made to think she
+had accompanied the eccentric dame. But she had remained in Munich to
+help the man who was endeared to her.</p>
+
+<p>Not a word about Baboushka and a fear to break the spell kept Claudius
+quiet on that point.</p>
+
+<p>Eight minutes passed like one, when&mdash;&quot;Stop!&quot; she exclaimed, and was out
+beside him without a helping hand and upon the dusty road.</p>
+
+<p>The walls had a gap here, roughly choked up by a higgledy-piggledy heap
+of rubbish. Fraulein von Vieradlers had attacked it before her
+astonished companion, also alighting, came to her aid. There was
+witchery in the creature, for her delicate, ungloved hands, covered with
+rings, tugged at the roughly hewn tree-trunks and misshapen blocks of
+stone without a scratch and, as her frame offered no suggestion of
+strength, the swiftness with which they were moved, confirmed the idea
+of the supernatural. As soon as he recovered from his amazement, he
+aided her energetically, and in an incredibly short space the two
+cleared a passage for the horse to scramble over and the wheels to be
+lifted clean across. Without pausing, they replaced the beams and
+boulders, and made good the breach.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Excellent!&quot; ejaculated the vocalist, contemplating the work. &quot;But I am
+wrong to delay. We are not out of the vale of tribulation. Help me in
+and tan the horse's hide well! We must, without farther delay, reach the
+farmhouse whose red-tiled roof gleams under the lindens. Help me in, and
+lay on the whip!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>This drive, at redoubled speed, despite its being in broad daylight, had
+to the student the fascination of the gallop of the returned dead lover
+and Lenore in the ballad. Though never cruel before, he now spared the
+horse not a stroke or impatient shout, however imprudent the latter was.
+On the rutty, ill-kept lane the wheels bounded unevenly and the driver
+had hard work to keep his seat; but the girl, by a miracle of balancing,
+held her half-crouching, half-standing position in the <i>calash</i>, and
+only now and then, flung forward by a jolt, rested her hands on
+Claudius' shoulders. At this contact&mdash;at the sight of those roseate,
+dimpled hands&mdash;he was electrified and in the headlong rush he pictured
+himself as Phaeton, careering behind the glancing tails of the steeds of
+the solar chariot.</p>
+
+<p>Such a pace overtasked the poor mare. At any moment now her sudden
+collapse after a stumble might be expected. On the other hand, the
+farm-house, winning-post of the race, loomed up clearly, and, luckily,
+the road improved a little by becoming harder and descending gradually.
+On one side rose a willow coppice, in the trailing branches of which a
+musically rippling brook was running; on the other, the ruins of a barn,
+which a flood had demolished.</p>
+
+<p>On the knoll beyond, the haven stood, and Kaiserina smiled as she leaned
+her head forward so that her cheek was next his.</p>
+
+<p>Again she had saved him!</p>
+
+<p>No; not yet!</p>
+
+<p>From both sides of the road at the hollow, three horsemen came solemnly
+forth, two from the right, one from the ruins.</p>
+
+<p>The girl turned pale and shrank back. Claudius flung down the broken
+whip, and, taking the reins in his teeth, held a pistol in each hand. He
+had recognized in the most prominent rider Major von Sendlingen, and in
+an instant he comprehended that this was a trap and that his chivalric,
+Christian conduct was the most base of impudent tricks.</p>
+
+<p>Was Kaiserina also a betrayer? He did not believe that.</p>
+
+<p>Each horseman had a pistol as well as a sword drawn, and, besides, the
+two inferiors were armed with carbines. This had the air of an
+assassination, and, infuriated by the treachery, Claudius resolved to
+begin the attack. It mattered little whether Fraulein von Vieradlers was
+in the conspiracy or not. Once she had saved his life, and he was bound
+not to molest her now, so long as she remained neutral. She had cowered
+down, from fear or because her guilt oppressed her. Perhaps his contempt
+would punish her sufficiently.</p>
+
+<p>The old mare bore the unusual exertion bravely and charged down the
+incline against the odds like a war-stallion.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Take him alive!&quot; shouted the major, beating down the pistols with his
+sword flat, as a second thought changed his first intention.</p>
+
+<p>He had spied the young singer in the shadow of the hood, and he had no
+wish to injure her.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;That's not as you decide!&quot; retorted Claudius, and he fired both shots
+at the same time.</p>
+
+<p>But he had not allowed for the steep descent. One bullet stung the
+major in the thigh, the other so cruelly lacerated the horse of the
+gendarme on his right that it screamed, reared and fell sidewise with a
+crash into the brook. The man, although encumbered by his heavy boots,
+contrived to disengage himself and stood up, furious at being unhorsed.</p>
+
+<p>At the same moment, out of the reeds, much as though the disappeared
+horse had suffered a transformation, an old woman leaped up into the
+lane. Her grey hair was disheveled and her pelisse was shredded by the
+brambles. She ran to place herself before the horse in the chaise and
+the gendarmes, and screamed, with her eyes fastened on the girl in the
+vehicle:</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Hold! do not shoot! God is not willing!&quot; But the major alone obeyed the
+injunction; the others, in the saddle and dismounted, were wild with
+rage and pain. Their two firearms rang out as one, and the old woman had
+only time to cover the mark by drawing herself to her full height, with
+an effort unknown for thirty years. Both bullets entered her chest, for
+she fell under the horse's feet, as it stumbled and went down beside
+her.</p>
+
+<p>As the vehicle abruptly came to a stop, quivering in every portion,
+Claudius clung to the frame of the hood to save himself from being cast
+out. The girl was hurled against him, but she did not think of herself.
+She thrust into his hand a revolver and whispered rapidly:</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Quick! they are going to fire again!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>It was true; excepting, this time, the gendarmes had recourse to their
+carbines, the dismounted one having picked his up from the briars, and
+found the cap secure. At that short range, the student would be a dead
+man if he awaited the double discharge.</p>
+
+<p>Heated with the action, inhaling the acrid smell of gunpowder, the
+demon possessed him which at such moments hisses: &quot;Kill, kill, kill!&quot;
+into a man's ear. The angelic demon there had supplied him with the
+weapon, and he fired three shots as rapidly as the mechanism would work.</p>
+
+<p>The dismounted gendarme had come out on an unlucky day; a bullet in his
+neck laid him lifeless in the rushes beside the strangled horse; his
+comrade, pierced so that he bled internally, drew off to the roadside
+mechanically&mdash;the image of despair; nothing more heartrending than the
+anguish on his convulsed visage and the increasingly hopeless
+expression.</p>
+
+<p>Here was a double tragedy, but it was the major who, under the eyes of
+Fraulein von Vieradlers, was to furnish the comedy of the incident. His
+horse took the bit in its teeth and ran away with him along the bank of
+the brook, threatening at any moment to lose footing and roll the two in
+the water.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Victory!&quot; said the girl, with a joy-flushed cheek, alighting and
+displaying no more compassion for the soldiers slain in doing their duty
+than for the chaise horse&mdash;or the old woman beside its heaving carcass.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;She is dead,&quot; remarked Claudius. &quot;But what did she say? She spoke in
+Polish&mdash;I understand it&mdash;I caught the words, but they were not
+intelligible.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Were they not?&quot; continued the girl, not displeased.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;She said, 'my child!'&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Very well! I am her grandchild. That was not all, though&mdash;she
+affectionately recommended you to me, as my cousin.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Cousin? your cousin?&quot; repeated Claudius, without contradicting the
+speaker on his impression that Baboushka's face had not worn a soft
+expression, in his eyes.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;It would appear that you do not know yourself as Felix Clemenceau?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Clemenceau?&quot; echoed the student, remembering what he had heard in the
+music-hall.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes; your father was the famous sculptor.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Was his predilection for art a hereditary trait? the son of a celebrity?
+then his essays in design were unworthy of his name. Abashed, inclined
+to despair, having a glimpse of a tumultuous rabble shouting: &quot;At last
+he is here!&quot; before the ruddy guillotine on a raw morning, a pale, prim
+man between the executioner's aids, the young Clemenceau listened to the
+girl, who probably resembled the Lovely Iza, but looked at the dead
+woman at their feet.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes, we are cousins! that is why I took a fancy to you at the sight. I
+knew this time I loved for a good reason. The band of nature&mdash;the bond
+of blood&mdash;connected us! But this is not the place or time to pluck
+leaves, and compare them, from our genealogical tree. The major has
+succeeded in reining in his horse, but, who cares? the old farmhouse
+stood a siege in the Great Napoleon's time and could mock at him now.
+Leave all&mdash;all these cooling pieces of carrion, and my dear grandma!&quot;
+she sneered, &quot;and let us hasten to the house where I have friends.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Like a man in a dream, Claudius, or, better, Felix Clemenceau, since
+this was his true title, holding the half-emptied revolver by his side,
+automatically allowed the strange creature to lead him from the
+battlefield. He was oppressed by the magnitude of the ruin he left
+behind: the peaceful student to whom the pencil and the eraser were
+alone familiar had handled firearms like &quot;the professor&quot; in a shooting
+gallery. And then the assertion&mdash;or revelation&mdash;that he was of kin not
+only to the old witch, who had perished in shielding him unintentionally
+in saving her grandchild, but to the latter. Fair as a sylph but
+icy-hearted as a woman of five social seasons! But the son of the
+guillotined wife-murderer should not be fastidious about those relatives
+who deigned to recognize him.</p>
+
+<p>The farmhouse was a large stone and brick structure, moss-grown but firm
+as a castle; at its porch, three men had tranquilly awaited the result
+of the conflict; most of the episodes had been observed by them. Two
+were comfortably clothed like farmer and overseer, and showed a
+respectful bearing to the third. This was a man of about thirty years,
+but looking younger, tall, slender, elegant and proud. Not yet calm,
+Clemenceau vaguely recalled the refined, winning, though dissipated
+visage; this was the gentleman in the Harmonista who had enlightened him
+unawares on the antecedents of Fraulein von Vieradlers. He did not
+notice her companion but his stiffness disappeared as he bowed to her.
+Without asking for any explanation on the affray, he said to her:</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Can he&mdash;your companion&mdash;ride? The horses are under saddle. If not&mdash;&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Clemenceau replied in the affirmative to Fraulein von Vieradlers,
+instead of to the gentleman. He conceived an aversion to him on the
+spot, although his intention to include him in the pre-arranged flight
+was manifest. But he was the victim of circumstances and for the present
+he had to yield. Besides, the prospect held out was for him to continue
+beside the dazzling beauty, whose influence seemed more wide than her
+deceased ancestress.</p>
+
+<p>Like many bookworms, he had entertained a humiliating opinion of the
+sex that makes the world move round; he was beginning to doubt, and he
+would retract it before long.</p>
+
+<p>Kaiserina related the events briefly, while one of the farmers brought
+two magnificent saddle-horses round to the long, high side of the house,
+facing the northwest. Clemenceau mechanically mounted the bay, and the
+gentleman assisted the lady upon the black. Both animals were impatient
+to be gone, and when given the head, started off madly. This exciting
+pace roused the student from his lethargy, and when the steeds had
+settled down to a less frenzied gait, he asked what was his guide's
+intention.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;It is plain. You must be put across the border into France.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;France!&quot; it seemed to him, since the revelation of his birth in that
+country, that the name had a charm unknown heretofore. Yes, he ought to
+make a pilgrimage into that sunny land where his father had been a gem
+in its artistic crown.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;It is your native country and you will be safer there than in Italy or
+Austria. Our next stage will be the little railway station to which you
+may see that long double silver serpent, the metal tracks, stretching
+across the plain.&quot;</p>
+
+
+
+<br />
+<a name='CHAPTER_IX'></a><h2>CHAPTER IX.</h2>
+
+<h3>REPARATION.</h3>
+<br />
+
+<p>Fortunately for the fugitives, the poorly paid railway officials in
+these parts are the obsequious servants of those who liberally bribe.
+The station-master, though a very grand personage, indeed, in his
+uniform and metal-bound cap, became pliant as an East Indian waiter and
+accepted without question the explanation of the lady. It was she who
+was spokesman throughout. She said that she and her companion were
+play-actors and that their baggage was detained by a cruel manager of a
+Munich musical beer-hall; this was a wise admission as the man might
+have seen her at the Harmonista, or, at least, her photograph in the
+doorway. But they were compelled to reach Lucerne without delay or lose
+a profitable engagement, by the proceeds of which they could redeem
+their paraphernalia. While listening, the man dealt out the tickets,
+pocketed the gratuity which was handsomely added to a previous donation,
+and, without any surprise, agreed to let any one calling take away the
+horses; they certainly were above the means of strolling singers who had
+to flee from a town. Farther discussion, if he had sought it, was
+curtailed by the electric signal heralding the coming of a train. In
+eight minutes, the two were ensconced in a first-class compartment and
+hurried along toward the Land of Lakes.</p>
+
+<p>In the sumptuous coach, the girl unburdened herself, but, with rare art
+or imperfect knowledge of her origin, she was more explicit on the
+family of her cousin than on her own. However, it was his that had made
+a niche in art and scandalous story.</p>
+
+<p>As for Kaiserina, her mother was the eldest daughter of a Count
+Dobronowska, of a Polish branch of the Vieradlers, who had settled in
+Fuiland. The count had meddled with politics and the Czar had promptly
+confiscated his landed property. The loss and fear of Siberia had broken
+his heart. After his death, the widow passed the intervals of her grief
+in besieging persons of influence to obtain a restitution of the
+estate. Unfortunately, she had no son to fight the battle with the Czar,
+but two daughters were growing up with such a superabundance of charm
+that they promised to be no mean allies in the enterprise. But fortune
+did not altogether favor the widow; it is true that she interested a
+Russian of great wealth and political sway, but when the time came for
+his co-operation to be active, he played her a wicked trick. He
+attracted her elder daughter to him and married her. Not liking to have
+a mother-in-law in his mansion, he pensioned her off, with the proviso
+that her presence should never clash immediately with his own in any
+country. It is regrettable to add that Wanda, Madame Godaloff, agreed to
+this arrangement, and, indeed, having attained woman's goal, troubled
+herself not once about her parent who had schemed and plotted tirelessly
+for this end. The countess had brought her deer to a pretty market; but,
+unhappily, she gained little by the bargain compared with what she had
+dreamed.</p>
+
+<p>She had a brother-in-law who had acted very differently from her
+husband. Instead of playing the patriot&mdash;and the fool&mdash;he had submitted
+to the tyrant and won a lucrative post at St. Petersburg. He was afraid
+to injure himself by giving countenance to his brother's relict, who was
+always seeking an audience of the Emperor. It was strongly suspected
+that she intended, since Wanda was out of the lists, to throw the next
+daughter, Iza, at the head of a Grand-duke with whom the two girls had
+played when all three were children at Warsaw.</p>
+
+<p>The countess seemed to have educated the girl, as soon as her elder was
+out of the way, for a royal match. Like most Poles, Iza spoke several
+languages fluently, sang and played the harp and piano. She was growing
+lovelier than her sister because she was a purer blonde, and yet Wanda
+had been accounted a miracle. Remembering that, at a later period, a
+foreign adventuress almost inextricably ensnared one of the imperial
+family, the Countess Dobronowska's matrimonial project was not so
+insane. Some other pretender to the grand-ducal left or right hand
+thought it feasible, for everybody said that it was feminine jealousy
+that led to the countess and her &quot;little beauty&quot; being ordered out of
+the White Czar's realm. The pair, spurred on by the police of every
+capital, and all are in communication with St. Petersburg, at last
+rested in Paris. It was a favorable moment; the French government had
+offended the older powers by its presumption in chastising venerable
+Austria almost as severely as the Great Napoleon had done. The
+Dobronowskas were let alone in the imperial city on the Seine; but,
+unfortunately, the important state functionaries soon became as tired of
+the countess's plaints as their brothers on the Neva. Reduced to the
+shifts of the penniless aristocrats, the two lived like the shabby
+genteel. They made a desperate attempt to entrap their Grand-duke again.
+But the victim had warning and the pair were stopped at Warsaw. Here a
+beam of the sun, long withheld, glanced through the clouds and
+transiently warmed &quot;the marrying mamma.&quot; A distant relative of hers, one
+Lergins, was an attach&eacute; of the embassy and he fell in love with his
+&quot;cousin&quot; Iza, as the mother allowed the youth to call her. As he had
+splendid prospects and seemed to be quite another man as regarded
+maternal control of Wanda's husband, mamma dismissed her brilliant
+<i>ignis fatuus</i> and tried to have a clandestine marriage come off. But
+the young secretary of embassy was not of age and again she was forced
+to depart for Paris&mdash;that sink-hole for refugees of all sorts. His
+family put pressure on the officiale who in turn applied it to the
+luckless <i>intriguante</i>.</p>
+
+<p>Farewell, the future in which a semi-imperial coronet hand gleamed! even
+that where a cascade of gold coin inundated the new Danae. Wearied of
+this constant grasping at the unattainable Iza, who had something of a
+heart, chose for herself, much as her elder had done, with happiness at
+home as the object; one fine morning, married M. Pierre Clemenceau, a
+young but rising sculptor. He had on the previous visit of theirs to
+Paris, materially befriended them. It was only gratitude after all,
+although he, enamored like an artist of this unrivaled beauty, would
+have sacrificed fortune to possess her. Indeed, he sacrificed all&mdash;even
+his honor, for he suffered himself to be gulled by her wiles as
+profoundly as he was infatuated by her charms.</p>
+
+<p>At this point, as became a young woman telling of a relative's iniquity,
+Kaiserina glazed the facts and gave a perversion. It was later,
+therefore, that Felix Clemenceau learned in detail the whole mournful
+tale of a beautiful wanton's ingrained perfidy and a loving husband's
+blind confidence. The end was inevitably tragical. Lergins was decoyed
+by the countess to Paris, where she languished like a shark out of
+water. The sculptor's income did not come up to her dreams of luxury,
+any more than those she inspired in her daughter. She brought about a
+separation of the wedded pair and rejoiced when a fresh scandal
+necessitated a duel between the young Russian and the Frenchman.
+Unhappily for her revengeful ideas, it passed over harmlessly enough.</p>
+
+<p>Iza remained the talk and admiration of the gay capital, although women
+of superior physical attractions rendezvous there. Nothing blemished her
+appearance; no excesses, no indulgements, not even bearing a son had a
+blighting effect. Unfortunately for the dissevered artist, she had been
+his model for the most renowned of his works and her name was
+inseparably intertwined with his own.</p>
+
+<p>Although &quot;crowned&quot; as the favorite of a king who came in transparent
+incognito to Paris to visit her, though occupying princely quarters,
+outshining the fading La Mesard and the rising Julia Barucci in
+diamonds, Iza was still known as &quot;the Clemenceau Statue.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Her mother, as lost to shame, was the mistress of the wardrobe in this
+palace; she was spiteful as a witch, and began to resemble one in her
+prime, bloated, red with importance and self-indulgence, before the
+wrinkles came many and fast. One day, annoyed at the persistency with
+which a friend of Clemenceau's watched the queen of the disreputable in
+hopes to make her flagrancy a cause for legal annulment of the marriage,
+she denounced him as a traitor in an anonymous letter to the fretting
+husband, then in Rome. Her daughter agreed to make good the assertion
+that the friend had failed monstrously in his trust.</p>
+
+<p>Like Othello, Clemenceau swore that this demon of lasciviousness should
+betray no more men. The force of depravity should no farther flow to
+corrupt the finest and best. He entered the boudoir of the royal
+favorite and stabbed her to the heart. In the morning, he gave himself
+up to the police.</p>
+
+<p>The victim was so notorious that the Clemenceau trial was a nine days'
+wonder. His advocate was eloquent to a fault, but that inexplicable
+thing, the jury, found no extenuating circumstances in the act and
+brought in the verdict of murder. The good men were incapable of
+appreciating the right he claimed to stop the blighting career of
+Messalina&mdash;to divorce with steel where the state of the law, then meekly
+following the ecclesiastical ruling, forbade any sundering of the
+connubial tie except by death.</p>
+
+<p>He met his doom calmly and laid his head beneath the axe with a martyr's
+brow. Kaiserina acknowledged this.</p>
+
+<p>Felix Clemenceau understood everything now. The trustees to whom he owed
+his subsistence-money, M. Rollinet the imperial counsel, and M.
+Constantin Ritz, a famous sculptor's son, and the life-companion of
+Clemenceau, were characters in the momentous drama which Kaiserina
+recited, whom he knew by correspondence.</p>
+
+<p>The finger of fate, which had urged the artist to commit a homicide for
+morality's sake, had pointed out to his son the way which had to be
+followed over corpses of the young student's slaying.</p>
+
+<p>Brooding over the alteration in his future, he exchanged hardly a word
+with his cousin, during the prolonged journey, which they continued
+together, as though mutual reluctance to part bound them indissolubly.
+Logic said there should be a powerful repugnance between those whom the
+shadow of the guillotine's red arm clouded. But, spite of all, Felix
+felt that Kaiserina was, like himself, well within the circle of infamy.
+Her mother was the sister of the shameful Iza, and her husband's careful
+guard of her proved that he doubted her walking virtuously if her
+unscrupulous mother stood by her side. This old Megara&mdash;who sold her
+offspring to worse than death&mdash;was living&mdash;seemed eternal as evil
+itself. It were a pious act to save Kaiserina from her as his father had
+tried to do with Iza. He was pleased that she seemed inclined to cling
+to him as though wearied of the erratic life she seemed to have led
+after a flight from her mother's, and which she did not describe
+minutely. He was also grateful that, in her allusions to his father, she
+did not speak with the bitterness of a blood-avenger.</p>
+
+<p>They made the journey to Paris without any stoppage. He had to visit M.
+Ritz, for M. Rollinet was no longer there, having accepted a judgeship
+in Algeria. In the vehicle, carrying to a hotel where he purposed
+leaving her, Felix said, feelingly:</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I think I see why we were brought together. I am not to lead the life
+of an artist, lounging in galleries, sketching ruins and pretty girls,
+but one of expiation for my poor father's crime.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Perhaps. More surely,&quot; she replied with a smile which, on her peerless
+lips, seemed divine, &quot;<i>I</i> should make the faults of the Dobronowskas be
+forgotten.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>They had arrived at the same conclusion as the journey ended, but the
+means had not occurred yet to either.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Here we are,&quot; he exclaimed, as the carriage horse came to a stop.</p>
+
+<p>He alighted, entered the hotel and settled for the young lady's stay.
+Returning, he came to help her out.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;My door will never be closed to you,&quot; she said, remembering how, in her
+story, her notorious ancestors had playfully suggested in a letter
+announcing her renunciation of her scheming mother's toils and her
+return to marry Clemenceau, that he might leave his door on the jar for
+her at all instants. &quot;And yet, what will be the gain in our meeting
+again?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Everything for our souls, and materially! Here in France, where La
+Belle Iza and the executed Clemenceau point a moral, neither of us can
+find a mate in marriage easily. If blood stains me, shame is reflected
+on you. Let us efface both blood and shame by an united effort! Let our
+life in common force the world to look no farther than ourselves and see
+nothing of the disgrace beyond.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I do not care a fig for what people think or say,&quot; said the one-night
+<i>diva</i>, with a curl of the lip. &quot;And I do not understand you fully.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Wait till I see you again, when all shall be made clear. Meanwhile,
+cousin&mdash;since without you I should have lost my life, or, certainly my
+liberty&mdash;I am eternally bound to you. It is left to you to have the
+bonds solemnized in the church, here, in France&mdash;my country!&quot;</p>
+
+
+
+<br />
+<a name='CHAPTER_X'></a><h2>CHAPTER X.</h2>
+
+<h3>THE FOX IN THE FOLD.</h3>
+<br />
+
+<p>Among the secluded villas that dot with pretty colors the suburb of
+Montmorency, there is none more agreeable than the Villa Reine-Claude,
+which was in the hands of the notary who had managed the transmission of
+the maintenance money to young Clemenceau. At the hint from M. Ritz, who
+had a debt of honor to pay the son of his dead friend, the house was
+rented at a nominal sum. Here Felix, as he boldly described himself by
+right, though the name had a tinge of mockery, installed himself with
+his bride. He had a portfolio of architectural sketches soon completed
+and, thanks to the fellowship to which his name might exercise a spell,
+all the old artists who had known his father, helped him manfully.
+Luckily, there was something markedly novel in his work.</p>
+
+<p>His odd training helped him. He came from the Polish University into an
+unromantic society which, after its stirring up by the Great Revolution,
+was so levelled and amalgamated that everybody resembled his neighbor as
+well in manners and speech as in attire. Strong characters, heated
+passions, black vices, deep prejudices, grievous misfortunes, and even
+utterly ridiculous persons had disappeared. The country he had been
+reared in still thrilled with patriotism and meant something when it
+muttered threats to kill its tyrant&mdash;meant so much that the Czar did not
+pass through a Polish town until the police and military had &quot;ensured an
+enthusiastic reception.&quot; But in France, tyrants and love of country were
+mere words to draw applause from the country cousins in a popular
+theatre.</p>
+
+<p>Felix, though a youth, stood a head and shoulders above the level of the
+weaklings excluded as &quot;finished&quot; from these commonplace educational
+institutions&mdash;schools called colleges and colleges called universities,
+resulting necessarily from the proclamation of man's equality. He
+sickened at seeing the neutral-tinted lake of society, with
+&quot;shallow-swells,&quot; more painful to the right-minded than an ocean in a
+tempest.</p>
+
+<p>He soon became like the French, but not so his wife. She suffered the
+change of her unpronounceable name, being euphonized as &quot;C&eacute;sarine,&quot;
+smilingly, but life at home in a demure and tranquil suburb little
+suited the young meteor who had flashed across Germany. Felix saw with
+dismay that domestic bliss was not that which she enjoyed. For a while
+he hoped that she would content herself as his helpmate and the genius
+of the hearth when a mother.</p>
+
+<p>But maternity had nothing but thorns for her. She chafed under the
+burden and her joy was indecent when the little boy died. Until then he
+had believed that the path of duty was wide enough and lined
+sufficiently with flowers to gratify or at least pacify her.</p>
+
+<p>But C&eacute;sarine was, like her aunt, a born dissolvent of society's vital
+elements. Ruled by a strong hand, and removed from the pernicious
+influence of the vicious countess, her mother had never inculcated evil
+to her child; on the contrary, impressed by the lesson of Iza's career,
+she had perhaps been too Puritanic with C&eacute;sarine, whose flight from home
+at an early age, was like the spring of a deer through a gap in a fence.
+C&eacute;sarine, wherever placed, sapped morality, faith, labor and the family
+ties.</p>
+
+<p>In the new country she feared at first that she had but exchanged
+parental despotism for marital tyranny. But soon she perceived that
+nothing was changed that would affect her. On the contrary, France, in
+the last decade of the Empire, was more corrupt than Russia's chief
+towns and the dissoluteness, though not as coarse as at Munich, was more
+diffused. Here she was assured that she could gratify her insatiable
+appetite at any moment. She saw that the manners excused her; the laws
+guaranteed the unfaithful wife, and religion screened her; that the
+social atmosphere, despite slander and gossip, enveloped and preserved
+her; in short, it was clear that to a creature in whom wickedness
+developed like a plant in a hot-house, the freedom society accorded her
+was as delicious as that given by her husband in his trust and his
+devotion to art.</p>
+
+<p>It seemed to her that, after the death of their first-born, his silence
+signified some contempt for her; in fact, she had, stupidly frank for
+once, expressed relief at this escape from the cares of maternity. Did
+he suspect that she had, not with any repugnance, precipitated its
+death? She feared this passionate man who, by strength of will, made
+himself calm, alarmed her more than an angry one would have done. Moved
+by instinct, for she really felt that his sacrifice to her in marrying
+had condoned for his father's blow at her ancestress, she tried to
+return him harm for good. But it is not easy for a serpent to sting a
+rock.</p>
+
+<p>Recovered from the slight eclipse of beauty during her experience as a
+mother, she endeavored to make him once again her worshiper. But her
+tricks, her tears and her caresses seemed not to count as before when
+they fled from Von Sendlingen's vengeance. He remained so strictly the
+husband that she could perceive scarcely an atom of the lover. Then she
+vowed to torture him: he should no longer find a wife in her&mdash;not even a
+woman, still less a lovely companion; she would implant in him
+intolerable longing and guard that he might not gratify it&mdash;not even
+lull it on any side, while she would become a statue of marble to his
+most maddening advance. He should have no more leisure for study, but be
+thrilled with the incessant and implacable sensation which relaxes the
+muscles, pales the blood, poisons the marrow, obscures reason, weakens
+the will and eats away the soul.</p>
+
+<p>Unfortunately for her hideous project, it was in vain that she painted
+the lily of her cheeks and the carmine of her lips, studied useless arts
+of the toilet harder than a sage muses over nature's secrets to benefit
+mankind, and was the peerless darling of three years ago.</p>
+
+<p>He resisted her till she grew mad.</p>
+
+<p>The progression of vice is such that while she believed she was simply
+at the degree of passion, she contemplated another crime.</p>
+
+<p>She ruled the little household, for she had brought from Germany the
+girl Hedwig, who had been the tool of her grandmother; this silly and
+superstitious girl had gone once to the witch to have her fortune told
+and had never shaken off the bonds; these C&eacute;sarine took up and drove her
+by them. She had led to the entrance of the girl under her roof
+ingeniously; Felix was cajoled into believing that she came rather on
+the hint of Fraulein Daniels, the Rebecca, of whom he often had
+agreeable and soothing memories in his distress.</p>
+
+<p>Ah, she would not have interrupted his studies; she would have
+encouraged them; she would never have urged him to accumulate wealth to
+expend it in social diversions; while C&eacute;sarine fretted at her splendid
+voice going to waste in this solitude&mdash;the house in the suburbs where no
+company comes.</p>
+
+<p>She dreamed of holding a Liberty Hall, where her fancies might have
+unlicensed play and her freaks have free course. While gliding about the
+quiet house in a neat dress, she imagined herself in robes almost regal,
+with golden ornaments, diamonds and the pearls and turquoises which
+suited her fairness. What if the gems were set in impurities?</p>
+
+<p>Alas! perfect as a husband, denying her nothing which his limited means
+allowed, Felix had not once an inclination to tread beside her the
+ballroom floor, the reception hall marbles, and the flower-strewn path
+at the aristocratic charity bazaar. Yet he felt firmly assured that he
+was destined to a great fortune. He saw the gleam of it although he
+could not trace the beam to its source, too dazzling. But she had no
+faith in him, she did not understand his value, and from the time of his
+certainty that they were not the unit of two hearts to which happiness
+accrues and where it abides, he merely resigned himself to the
+irremediable grief. Having vainly tried to make of her a worthy wife,
+and seeing that motherhood had not saved her&mdash;earthly redemption though
+it is of her sex&mdash;he could only watch her and prevent her resuming that
+orbit which would no doubt end badly, as her race offered too many
+examples.</p>
+
+<p>On one occasion, fatigued with watching that she did not take a faulty
+step, he had written to Russia to see if she would find a harbor there,
+but the answer came from her father and sealed up that outlet. Her
+elopement had caused her mother fatal sorrow, and her father said
+plainly that he regarded her as dead. Though she came to his gates,
+begging her bread, he would bid his janitor drive her away. Her mother
+had been a good wife, but her grandmother had extorted a mint of money
+and, after all, nearly ruined him in the good graces of his Emperor out
+of spite, from her blackmail failing at last to remunerate her.</p>
+
+<p>Since in C&eacute;sarine, Felix found no intelligent and sympathetic companion,
+he took into intimacy a kind of apprentice whom he had literally picked
+up on the road. A slender lad of southern origin, whom a band of
+vagrants, making for the sea to embark to South America, had cast off to
+die in the ditch. Clemenceau gave him shelter, nursed him&mdash;for his wife
+would have nothing to do with a beggar&mdash;and to cover the hospitality and
+soothe the Italian's pride, paid him liberally to be his model. He was
+named Antonino and might have been a descendant of the Emperor from his
+lofty features, burning eye and fine sentiments. Healed, able to resume
+his journey and offered a loan to make it smooth, he effusively uttered
+a declaration of gratitude and devotion, and vowed to remain the slave
+of the man who had saved him from a miserable death.</p>
+
+<p>A good work rarely goes unrewarded. Antonino, who had never touched a
+piece of colored chalk to a black stone, soon revealed strong gift as a
+draftsman and served his new master with brightness and taste.</p>
+
+<p>Left lonely by his wife, each day more and more estranged, Felix loved
+to labor with the youth in the tasks to both congenial. That C&eacute;sarine
+should grow jealous would be natural, but it was pique that she felt
+toward Felix. In Antonino, she saw the possible instrument of her
+vengeance. His good looks, fervid temperament, youthful
+impressionability, all conspired in her favor as well as the innate
+artistic craving which had at the first sight lifted her on a pedestal
+as his ideal of the woman to be idolized.</p>
+
+<p>Nevertheless, the vagabond had a stronger spirit than she anticipated,
+and the emotion which she set down as timidity, and which protected him
+from the baseness of deceiving his benefactor, was due to honor. She
+flattered herself that she could pluck the fruit at any time, and, since
+this moneyless youth could not in the least appease her yearning for
+inordinate luxury, she cast about for another conquest.</p>
+
+<p>Clemenceau would not hear of his home being turned into the pandemonium
+of a country-house receiving all &quot;the society that amuses,&quot; and rigidly
+restricted his wife from visiting where she would meet the odd medley in
+the suburbs of Paris. Retired opera-singers, Bohemians who have made a
+fortune by chance, superseded politicians, officials who have perfected
+libeling into an art, and reformed female celebrities of the
+dancing-gardens and burlesque theatres. But, as society is constituted,
+it would have earned him the reputation of a tyrant if he had refused
+her receiving and returning the visits of the venerable Marchioness de
+Latour-Lagneau, to whom the Bishop always accorded an hour during his
+pastoral calls. This was a neighbor.</p>
+
+<p>In her old Louis XIV. mansion, conspicuous among the new structures, the
+old dame, in silvered hair which needed no powder, welcomed the &quot;best
+people&quot; in the neighborhood and a surprising number of visitors who &quot;ran
+down&quot; from the city. Considering her age, her activity in playing the
+hostess was remarkable. On the other hand, the &quot;at homes&quot; were most
+respectable, and the music remained &quot;classical;&quot; not an echo of
+Offenbach or Strauss; the conversation was restrained and decorous and
+the scandal delicately dressed to offend no ear.</p>
+
+<p>Not all were old who came to the ch&acirc;teau, and the foreigners were
+numerous to give variety to the gatherings; but the white neck-cloth and
+black coat suppressed gaiety in even the rising youth, who were destined
+for places under government or on boards of finance and commerce.</p>
+
+<p>It may be judged that an afternoon spent in such company was little
+change to Madame Clemenceau, and that the five o'clock tea, initiated
+from the English, was a kind of penitential drink. But she became a
+habitu&eacute;, and took a very natural liking to hear again the anecdotes
+indicating how matters moved in Germany and Russia, where her childhood
+and early girlhood had passed.</p>
+
+<p>One evening, she arrived late. She was exasperated: Antonino had imbibed
+his master's imperturbability and seemed to meet her advances with
+rebuking chilliness. A marked gravity governed them both of late; they
+shut themselves up for hours in their study, but instead of the silence
+becoming artists, noises of hammering and filing metal sounded, and the
+chimney belched black smoke of which the neighbors would have had reason
+to complain.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;A fresh craze!&quot; thought C&eacute;sarine, dismissing curiosity from her mind.</p>
+
+<p>Dull and decorous though the marchioness' salon was, it might be an
+ante-chamber to a more brilliant resort beyond, while the laboratory of
+science leads to no place where a pretty woman cares to be.</p>
+
+<p>The Marchioness had remembered her meeting with C&eacute;sarine at Munich and
+was polite enough to express her regret that her offer of a
+companionship had not been accepted. &quot;All her pets had married well,&quot;
+she observed, as much as to say that she would have found no difficulty
+in paving the lovely one with a superior to Clemenceau.</p>
+
+<p>Soon Madame Clemenceau had become the favorite at the ch&acirc;teau; and,
+tardy as she was, the servant hastened to usher her in to her reserved
+chair. It was placed in the row of honor in the large, lofty
+drawing-room, hung with tapestry and damask curtains, and filled with
+funereally garbed men and powdered old dowagers. The late comer was
+struck by their eyes being directed with unusual interest upon a
+vocalist. He stood before the kind of throne on which the marchioness
+conceitedly installed herself.</p>
+
+<p>He was singing in German, and he accompanied himself on a zither. He had
+an excellent baritone voice, and the ballad, simple and unfinished,
+became a tragic <i>scena</i> from his skill in repeating some exceptionally
+talented teacher's instructions.</p>
+
+<p>To C&eacute;sarine, the strains awakened dormant meditations; aspirations
+frozen in her placid home, began to melt; a curtain was gradually drawn
+aside to reveal a world where woman reigned over all. What she had heard
+from her grandmother of the magic splendor which Wanda had missed and
+Iza enjoyed, flashed up before her, and her heart warmed delightedly in
+the voluptuous intoxication of unspeakable bliss. On the wings of this
+melody, which, in truth, merely sought to picture the celestial dwelling
+of the elect, she was carried into one of those bijou palaces of the
+best part of the Queen City of the Universe, where the bedizened Imperia
+at the plate-glass window reviews an army of faultlessly-clad gentlemen
+filing before her, and sweetly calls out:</p>
+
+<p>&quot;This, gentlemen, is the spot where you can be amused!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Yes, C&eacute;sarine was intended to entertain men! She longed to be the
+central figure in the scene, however brief, of that apotheosis where
+Cupid is proclaimed superior to all the high interests of human
+conscience; this glittering stage sufficed for her, although it would
+have limited Felix's ideal of man's function.</p>
+
+<p>In a struggle between duty and passion, she expected passion to
+overcome, and she concurred beforehand with this troubadour who
+protested that the gentler sex really held the under one in its
+dependence.</p>
+
+<p>Radiant with pleasure and farther delighted to recognize a well-known
+face on the minstrel's shoulders, she hastened at the conclusion to give
+him her compliments. It was the young nobleman who had aided her flight
+with Clemenceau at Munich, and of whom she had not cherished a second
+thought! Better than all, while titled a baron in Germany, he held a
+viscount's rank in France, and his aunt, the marchioness, presented him
+as the last of the Terremondes.</p>
+
+<p>She had not expected to meet in this coterie a gentleman who patronized
+the singers of a beer-hall, but the frock does not make the monk, and
+Baron Gratian von Linden-Hohen-Linden, Viscount de Terremonde in France,
+was of another species than the frequenters of Latour ch&acirc;teau.</p>
+
+<p>From his income in both countries, he had the means to maintain what
+would have been ruinous establishments; he had the racing stud which no
+English peer would be ashamed of, a gallery of masterpieces acquired
+from living painters, an unrivaled hot-house of orchids, wolf-hounds and
+fox-hounds and other dogs, and the rumor went that the famous Caroline
+Birchoffstein, in consideration of his being a fellow-countryman, was
+more often seen in his box at the Grand Opera House than in her own.</p>
+
+<p>The imperial court, also, not averse to being on good terms with South
+Germany, since Prussia was supposed to be France's greatest opponent in
+case Luxembourg were clutched, petted the Franco-Teuton, and regretted
+that he was so pleasure-loving.</p>
+
+<p>To continue her thraldom over him, C&eacute;sarine left not a word unsaid or a
+glance undelivered. In this attack, she was met halfway, for, had she
+been less eager, she must have seen that the viscount-baron's joy at
+seeing her again was sincere.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You hesitate to ask what happened after your fortunate escape with that
+young student,&quot; he said, when they were allowed a few minutes together
+by the artful management of the hostess. &quot;I can tell you that I had to
+pass through a fiery ordeal and I hope you preserved a kindly memory of
+one who suffered tremendously for you. Major Von Sendlingen was not an
+undetached person whose quarrel could be kept among private ones. On the
+contrary, he moved the authorities like a chess-player does the pieces,
+and he moved them against me. At the first, they talked of nothing less
+than trying me for treason, since the projected arrest of the Polish
+conspirator and yourself&mdash;kinswoman of the Dobronowska inscribed in the
+black book of the Russian and Polish police&mdash;was foiled on my territory.
+The major affirmed that he had seen me not only looking on at the defeat
+of his posse, but holding my farmers in check not to hasten to their
+assistance. He alleged that I had lent racehorses to you and your
+accomplice, for your continued flight. This Polander&mdash;&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You can say Frenchman, now,&quot; returned Madame Clemenceau; &quot;he is one,
+and my cousin. The story is long and involved and will keep to another
+day. It is he I married.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Your husband!&quot; he exclaimed, and she nodded apologetically.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Then,&quot; sighed he, &quot;my dream ends here&mdash;on that day when we last met.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;A learned man has said, in a lecture here, that dreams can be repeated
+and continued, by an effort of the will. My advice to you is to try it.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Do not jest with me! You can see&mdash;you can be sure if you will but
+question&mdash;that I narrowly escaped the State's prison for helping you.
+Spite of all, I can love no other woman but you&mdash;&quot;</p>
+
+<p>She held up her closed fan and touched his lips with the feathery
+edging.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You must not talk so&mdash;at least&mdash;here,&quot; she said, with her glance in
+contradiction to her words. &quot;I am happy, or contented, strictly
+speaking, in my home, and as soon as my husband realizes one or two of
+the ideas over which he is musing, happiness must be mine. A success in
+art will drag him forth; he must go to Paris to be feasted in the salons
+and lionized in the conversaziones.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>And her eyes blazed as she figured herself presiding at an assemblage of
+artists and patrons.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Pardon me,&quot; said the viscount-baron. &quot;I am afraid I add to your worry.
+I see that you are pining for the sphere to which your grace and charms
+entice you. I will do anything you order; but yet, since I, too, am an
+exile, and for your sake, pray do not ask me not to see you and speak of
+love.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;It must be thus,&quot; she replied, with half-closed eyes, turning away
+abruptly, as if she feared her virtuous resolution were failing. &quot;Let
+our parting be forever!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Forever!&quot; he repeated, following her into the window alcove, although
+thirty pairs of eyes regarded them. &quot;You cannot mean that. At least, I
+deserve&mdash;have earned&mdash;your friendship by what I have undergone for you.
+Let me have a word of hope! Though divorce is not allowed in this
+country, death befalls any man, for while your statisticians figure out
+that the married live longest, they do not assert that they are
+immortal. Clemenceau dead, his widow may remarry. You say he is an
+enthusiast&mdash;one of those college-growths which run to seed without any
+fruit. I thought the contrary from the way he rode my horse and handled
+the pistols. But, being an enthusiast, how can you expect to do anything
+but vegetate? You will always be poor, for, if the man's ideas bore
+fruit, he would only sink the gains in fresh enterprises. These artists
+are always unthrifty, and they should wed their laundresses or their
+cooks. But I&mdash;though they have tied up my German revenue, and I have
+been practically banished&mdash;enjoy a tolerable return from my property in
+this Empire. I have been offered a very handsome present if I wholly
+transfer allegiance to the Napoleons. Would you not like to have the
+<i>entr&eacute;</i> to the Empress's coterie and shine among the acknowledged
+beauties? I give you my word that your peer is not among them, and the
+leader would be enchanted with you. Come, suppose a little fatal
+accident to Monsieur&mdash;may he not suck poison off his paint brush or cut
+an artery with his sculptor's chisel? And, after a sojourn at Bravitz,
+you might return to Paris a viscountess&mdash;a countess, perhaps, and rule
+in a pretty court of your own!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>For a woman who had said adieu! she had lingered still listening much
+too long. They continued the conversation, turned into this ominous
+channel, in the same low key.</p>
+
+<p>C&eacute;sarine returned home with the sentiment of loneliness which had
+oppressed her almost utterly removed. She did not love Gratian, but one
+need not be a prisoner to understand how admirable the jailer with the
+outer door-key may appear. She saw in him a precious friend and ally&mdash;a
+worshiper who would obey a hint like a fanatic. Cautiously, at the
+marchioness's, and more deeply than at Munich, she made inquiries upon
+his pecuniary standing and was rejoiced to learn that he had not
+deceived her in that respect. It was left to him to be a favorite in the
+court, which, not succeeding in weaning away the scions of the
+Legitimist nobility, greeted the foreign nobles cordially and sought to
+attach them to its standard in foresight of a European war. One thing
+was certain: Gratian had illimitable resources, and the sharp-witted,
+who had sharp tongues, did not hesitate to aver that he was one of those
+spoilt children of politics who are fed from State treasuries&mdash;not such
+a shallow-brain as he pretended. The new type of diplomatist was like
+him, the Morny's, not the effete Metternich's, gentlemen who settled
+affairs of the State in the boudoir not in the cabinet.</p>
+
+<p>Brave, gallant, dashing, craftier than his manner indicated, he was
+destined to play no inconsiderable part in the conflict impending; such
+an one might emerge from the smoke a lieutenant of an emperor and
+holding a large slice of territory which neither of the two contestants
+cared yet to rule.</p>
+
+<p>Compared with a sculptor who had produced nothing&mdash;an architect whose
+buildings had appeared only on paper&mdash;this young noble was to be run
+away with, if not to be run after.</p>
+
+<p>The marchioness favored their future and less public meetings, and her
+gardens were their scene. But while the relations of the treacherous
+wife with her cavalier became closer, a singular change took place in
+him. Instead of growing bolder, he seemed to hold aloof, and he fixed
+each new appointment at a longer interval. He was gloomy and absent,
+and she began to feel that her charm was weakening. She reproached him,
+and tried to find excuses for him. Everybody knew what he had lost at
+the races or over the baccarat-board; and she knew, according to a
+rhymed saying, that &quot;lucky at love is unlucky at gambling.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;It is not that,&quot; he answered slowly, with an anxious glance around in
+the green avenues of trimmed trees. &quot;I do not know why I should speak of
+politics to a woman; but you and I are as one: you should know the
+worst. I am not my own master, and they who rule me presume to dictate
+my course as regards my heart. Brain and sword are theirs, but I shall
+feel too ignoble a slave if I sacrifice my love for you to <i>la haute
+politique</i>.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Sacrifice your love! That would be odious&mdash;that must not be! Do you
+mean that they want you to marry? How cruel!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>He did not smile at the absurdity of her protest, it was so sincere.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Well, C&eacute;sarine, they are blind here, and deaf to the signs along their
+own frontier. The French rely on a Russian alliance, when already Herr
+von Bismarck, the Prussian ambassador at St. Petersburg, long ago
+secured its suspension. Besides, the Crimean War will always be
+remembered against Napoleon&mdash;it is so easy not to ally oneself with
+England, and, considering her proverbial ingratitude, so rarely
+profitable. I spoke of Bismarck! This man of a million, with deep, dark
+eyes, fixed and unreadable, with a cold, mocking mouth, iron will and
+mighty brain, is soon to be pitted against Napoleon, the shadow whom you
+have seen. I am no soothsayer, but I can tell which must go down in the
+charge, and never to hold up his head again. I am one of the flies on
+the common wheel who will be carried into the action and smashed,
+whoever is the victor. I am unwilling to perish thus, when I can find in
+love of you a paradise on earth wherever you consent to dwell with me.
+Listen: I am entrusted with a prodigious sum in cash by a political
+organization, the headquarters of which in France are here, at the old
+marchioness's&mdash;a veteran puller of the wires that move the European
+puppets. They have practically seized my German bands, and unless I
+retake them at the head of a column of victorious French, I may as well
+say good-bye to them. As for Terremonde, the revenue is falling every
+quarter. If it were not for this secret service, I should be bankrupt,
+for the Tuileries, perhaps, suspecting my good faith, pay me only in
+pretty words&mdash;<i>a la fran&ccedil;aise</i>. This bank which I hold tempts me sorely,
+C&eacute;sarine, but only if you will dip into it with me. Only once in a life
+does a man have his great opportunity. Mine is the present. A fortune&mdash;a
+beauty! Never will I have such an opportunity again to found a
+principality in Florida or the South Seas or South America&mdash;wherever we
+choose to come to a rest. Speak, C&eacute;sarine, are you with me? After a
+while, when the modern Attila has swept over France, perhaps we will
+like to come and view the ruins and fill our gallery with the
+art-treasures which the impoverished defeated ones will gladly sell.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;A large sum!&quot; repeated the woman, frowning as her thoughts
+concentrated.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Enormous! I have been changing it into sight-drafts, and we can put on
+our wings at a moment's notice.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;It belongs to a political organization, you say?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Have no qualms&mdash;it is a few drops out of a reptilian fund! No one can
+claim what was handed over to me without witnesses, and no receipt
+demanded. I make no secret: I am offering for your love the price of my
+honor. Only let us flee to a distance for a while. The money could not
+be claimed of me in a public court, but they might punish me with an
+assassin's bullet.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;And for me, for my happiness, you would do this? I cannot doubt you any
+longer, if ever I did. Enough, Gratian, I will go to the world's end
+with you!&quot;</p>
+
+
+
+<br />
+<a name='CHAPTER_XI'></a><h2>CHAPTER XI.</h2>
+
+<h3>A SPRAT AND THE WHALE.</h3>
+<br />
+
+<p>A few moments were enough for the two to enter the ch&acirc;teau again, where
+their absence had begun to arouse curiosity, though the guests were too
+well bred to make general remarks. With the cue that these &quot;slow,&quot; tame
+gatherings were but the cloak to more important conclaves, C&eacute;sarine
+studied them as never before. It was clear. Here and there were groups
+which did not waste a word on the accent of Mademoiselle Delaporte, the
+early history of Aim&eacute;e Dercl&eacute;e, or the latest episode in the stage and
+boudoir history of &quot;the Beauty who is also the Stupid Beast.&quot; For a
+certainty, conspiracy went on here at the gates of the capital; perhaps
+from the pretty belvedere, where the large telescope was mounted for
+lovers to see Venus, the sons of Mars ascertained where the batteries of
+siege guns should be planted to shell Parisian palaces and forts.</p>
+
+<p>Two of a trade never agree, says the wisdom of our ancestors, and from
+that time C&eacute;sarine detested Gratian. If he so easily betrayed his
+friends, countrymen and employers for her, what might he not do as
+regards her when she was older and her bloom vanished? Better not place
+herself under his thumb and be cast off, in some remote, barbarous
+region, when the caprice had worn out. But the money! What was this
+political league and its aims to her? For her limited education, that of
+a refined and expensive toy, she was ignorant of the laws and
+regulations governing even herself, and these laws were too subtly
+interwoven and inexorable for man alone to have formed them. She did not
+suspect the great reasons of the State in setting them in motion to
+accomplish collective ends and destinies, whether they wrought good or
+evil to individuals. Enough that they were necessary for a dynasty or a
+class; but in all cases, the rulers knew why they were made.</p>
+
+<p>Little by little, but without loss of time, her perspicacity penetrated
+the disguises, although not to the motives that impelled the plotters.
+She centered her thoughts on the old, white-locked pianist, who silently
+listened to all the parties and was tolerated even when the piano was
+closed; he was taciturn, always blandly smiling and bent in a servile
+bow. Nevertheless, this was the principal of the conspirators and even
+the viscount-baron treated him with some deference as representing a
+formidable power.</p>
+
+<p>One morning, C&eacute;sarine came over to the marchioness's and took advantage
+of the drawing-room being open to be aired, to open the piano and
+practice an aria which she had promised at the next soir&eacute;e. There was
+nothing but praise for her singing, and old, retired tenors and obese
+soprani had assured her that she had but to have one hearing in the
+Opera to be placed among the stars. The aged pianist had often listened
+to her vocalism with enraptured gaze, and she believed he, too, was her
+slave.</p>
+
+<p>He had now glided into the room and upon the piano stool, and, as if by
+magic divining her wish, silently opened the piece of music for which
+she had been hunting. For the first time their eyes met without any
+medium, for he had discarded the tinted spectacles he usually wore.
+These were not the worn orbs of a man who had pored over crabbed
+partitions for sixty years. They were eyes familiar to her.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Major Von Sendlingen!&quot; she exclaimed, in a kind of terror; for women,
+being judges of duplicity, are alarmed by any one successful in
+disguises.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Precisely, but do not be alarmed. You struck me in warfare, and I
+forgive your share in that paltry incident. I am your friend, now. By
+the way, as a proof of that assertion, let me tell you that the viscount
+is no more worthy of you than that ever-dreaming student. You think he
+adores you? <i>pfui!</i> only so far as you will aid the realization of his
+ambition. Besides, he is only an officer in our ranks; he is not
+unbridled, and at any moment he may be ordered away. Renounce this kind
+of love, my child, not durable and unendurable!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Was this the major preaching? He who had held with the hare and run with
+the hounds, that is, tried to win the ascending and the declining star!</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Tell me,&quot; he continued, seriously, &quot;tell me when you can control your
+heart, and it is I who will set you on that stage where you should have
+figured long since.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>She had turned pale and she bit her lip. Her dullness in not suspecting
+the identity of this spy, her lover, pained her acutely. She had thought
+to read the Sphynx, and it had its paw upon her. Her exasperation was so
+keen that she determined to be revenged on both the speaker and Gratian,
+whose inferiority to the major was manifest.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;They shall see how <i>I</i> can plot,&quot; she thought, &quot;and best of all, how I
+carry off the prize which I need to obtain a station of my own selection
+in society.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>One thing she saw clearly, that Von Sendlingen was out of her clutches.
+He still acknowledged her attractions, but he was obedient to a master
+more paramount. If only he had been capable of jealousy! But, no, he had
+alluded to the Viscount de Terremonde's flame with perfect indifference.
+Like Clemenceau, he would not have fought a duel for her choice.
+Nevertheless, her husband might have another burst of the homicidal
+instinct which his father showed in Paris, and he in Germany. While
+refusing a duel as illogical, he might fell Gratian after the model he
+had displayed for Major Von Sendlingen's profit in Munich.</p>
+
+<p>Perhaps, though, Clemenceau was no longer jealous.</p>
+
+<p>Hedwig had told her of letters addressed to Daniels which she had to
+mail, if Clemenceau was in correspondence with the old Jew, he would not
+have forgotten his daughter, the only woman of whom C&eacute;sarine harbored
+jealousy.</p>
+
+<p>But she could attain her end, profound, treacherous and bloody, like the
+dream of a frivolous woman going to extremes. The revelation of Von
+Sendlingen's presence enlightened her and filled the gap in her plan.</p>
+
+<p>Meanwhile, she redoubled her efforts to entrance Gratian, and the day of
+their flight had but to be fixed. On hearing from Madame Clemenceau
+that Von Sendlingen was the chief of surveillance at the coterie, the
+dread that he was his rival in the contest for C&eacute;sarine, filled his cup
+to overflowing with disgust. He had believed himself chief of the
+fraternity in France, and behold! another was set over him and probably
+reported that he neglected the business to pay court to a married woman.
+He felt that he was lost and that his only chance to secure the beloved
+one was to step outside the circle which he knew would be the vortex of
+a whirlpool once war was proclaimed.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You speak most timely,&quot; he answered gravely, when she said that she was
+ready; &quot;I have been notified to transfer the funds to another, in such
+terms as would better suit a clerk than a gentleman&mdash;a noble
+intelligence officer. That cursed major who learned the piano to be a
+means of torture to his fellow man! he has done it. He loves you no
+longer, and he is my enemy since I looked at him being run away with,
+like a raw recruit, on his first troop-horse. He will, believe me, be
+our destroyer unless we levant.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Nothing was easier. Since four days, Clemenceau had been invisible, even
+at meals. Closeted with his disciple Antonino, they worked out some more
+than ever preposterous conceptions into substance, in the studio where
+the uncompleted artistic models had been neglected. Hedwig was the false
+wife's bondwoman and would actively help in the removal of her trunks.
+The viscount had but to send a trusty man with a vehicle, and the lady
+could meet him at a station of the Outer Circle Railway and thence
+proceed to a main station for Havre or Marseilles, as they selected. The
+famous sight-drafts were safe on Gratian's person. With the simplicity
+of a child, C&eacute;sarine wished again and again to gloat over them; never
+could she be convinced that those flimsy pieces of paper stood for large
+sums of ready money and that bankers would pay simply on their
+presentation. It was reluctantly that she restored the wallet to his
+inner pocket, of which she buttoned the flap, bidding him be so very,
+very careful of what would be their subsistence in the mango groves.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Oh, how I love you,&quot; he said, bewildered and enthralled; &quot;I love you
+because you retain, after the finished graces of woman have come, the
+naive traits of the guileless girl. What a joy that I divined your
+excellences when you were so young and that I was favored by your
+regard, and now am gladdened by your trustful smiles.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I trust you so much that I could wish this money did not weigh on your
+bosom. I love you without it, and I shall love you as long as you live.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Seeming to be as exalted as he, she grasped both his hands and drew his
+face nearer and nearer hers to look him in the eyes.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I do not ask anything of you but to be good to me. Do not reproach me
+for leaving my lawful lord for you! If there is a fault in quitting him
+who neglects me, never cast it upon me. Let us go! anywhere, if but you
+are ever beside me, to protect, to support and cherish!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Her moist eyes were as eloquent as her lips, and to have doubted her, he
+must have doubted all evidence of his senses. And yet it was that same
+hand on which he had impressed a score of burning kisses that wrote
+these lines:</p>
+
+<p>&quot;The faithless one will take the train at Montmorency Station this night
+at nine.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>And she deposited it, as had been agreed between her and Major Von
+Sendlingen in a vase on the drawing-room mantel-shelf at the
+marchioness's, where the viscount conducted her before their last
+parting. It was one of those notes which burn in the hand, and so
+thought the major, for he took measures, by a communication which he had
+established, to send it to M. Clemenceau.</p>
+
+<p>Except on holidays and Sundays, when the Parisians muster in great force
+to promenade the still picturesque suburbs, the country roads are
+desolate after the return home of the clerks who have slaved at the desk
+in the city. One might believe oneself a hundred miles from a center of
+civilization.</p>
+
+<p>To the station, a little above the highway level, three paths lead. On
+the road itself the village cart which had taken Madame Clemenceau's
+baggage, leisurely jogged. The lady herself, instructed by her
+confederate Hedwig that there was no alarm to be apprehended from the
+studio, strolled along a more circuitous but pleasanter way. Her husband
+and his pupil were, as usual, shut up in &quot;the workshop.&quot; The studio had
+been changed for some new fancy of the crack-brained pair; they had
+packed aside the plans and models and had set up a lathe, a forge and a
+miniature foundry. To the clang of hammer and the squeak of file was
+added the detonation now and then of some explosive which did not emit
+the sharp sound or pungent smoke of gunpowder or the more modern
+substitutes' characteristic fumes.</p>
+
+<p>At each shock, C&eacute;sarine had trembled like the guilty. They had told her
+that she was born in St. Petersburg when her mother was startled by the
+blowing up of the street in front of their house by an infernal machine
+intended to obliterate the Czar; in the sledge in which he was supposed
+to be riding, a colonel of the <i>chevalier-gardes</i>, who resembled him,
+had been injured, but the incident was kept hushed up.</p>
+
+<p>One of the old servants whose age entitled his maunderings to respect
+among his superstitious fellows had, thereupon, prophesied that the
+new-born babe would end its life by violence.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;It is time I should quit the house,&quot; she muttered, drawing her veil
+over her eyes, of which the lids nervously trembled. &quot;I cannot hear
+those pop-guns without consternation.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>She hurried forth without a regret, and passed, as a hundred times
+before, the family vault in the cemetery, where her murdered infant
+reposed, without a farewell glance, although she might never see the
+place again.</p>
+
+<p>On coming within sight of the station, she perceived a solitary figure,
+that of a man, in a fashionable caped cloak, crossing the fields in the
+same direction as hers. It was probably the viscount going to it
+separately in order not to compromise her and give a clue to the true
+cause of her flight.</p>
+
+<p>Sometimes the unexpected comes to the help of the wicked. Incredible as
+it appeared, she received, on the eve of her departure, a telegram from
+Paris. At first she thought it a device of Viscount Gratian's to cover
+her elopement, but it was not possible for him to have imagined the
+appeal. It was from her uncle, who, traveling in France, and intending
+to pay her a visit since she was married honorably, was stricken with a
+malady. He awaited her at a hotel. Even Von Sendlingen could not have
+drawn up this message too simple not to be genuine and too precise in
+the genealogical allusions not to be a Russian's and a Dobronowska's.</p>
+
+<p>She regarded this cloak as the act of her &quot;fate&quot;&mdash;the evil person's
+providence. She handed the paper to Hedwig to be given to her husband as
+an explanation at a later hour.</p>
+
+<p>C&eacute;sarine was still watching him when she saw him disappear suddenly. It
+was in crossing an unnailed plank thrown across a drain-cutting. This
+must have turned or broken under his feet unexpectedly, for his fall was
+complete. In the ditch which received him, darkness ruled but it seemed
+to C&eacute;sarine that more shadows than one were engaged in deadly strife,
+standing deep in the mire. They wore the aspect of the demons dragging
+down a soul in an infernal bog.</p>
+
+<p>What increased the horror was the silence in which the tragedy was
+enacted; probably the unfortunate Gratian had been seized by the throat
+as soon as he dropped confused into the assassin's clutches.</p>
+
+<p>Halfway between this scene and the dismayed looker on, another shadow
+rose and appeared to take the direction to accost her instead of
+hurrying to the victim's succor. This made him resemble an accomplice,
+and, breaking the spell, C&eacute;sarine hurried on without the power to force
+a scream for help from her choking throat.</p>
+
+<p>At that moment, while a strong fascination kept her head turned toward
+the field, a long beam from the locomotive's head-light shot across it.
+It fell for an instant on the solitary form and though its arm made an
+upward movement to obscure its face, she believed that she recognized
+her husband.</p>
+
+<p>Clemenceau on her track! Clemenceau, in concord with the bravest who had
+smothered her gallant in the mud! she had scorned him too much! He was
+capable even of cowardly acts, of being revenged for this renewed
+disgrace upon his ill-fated house!</p>
+
+<p>This time her feet were unchained and she flew up the hill. She thought
+of nothing but to escape the double revenge of the husband she wronged,
+and Von Sendlingen whom she had cheated.</p>
+
+<p>She took her ticket mechanically and entered a coach marked for &quot;Ladies
+Only.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>They whisked toward Paris swiftly, before any sinister face looked in at
+the window, or she had time to reflect. In her pocket was the real case
+of the sight-drafts for which she had palmed a duplicate filled with cut
+paper, upon the unlucky viscount. She was rich enough to make a home
+wherever money reigns&mdash;a broad enough domain.</p>
+
+<p>The arrival of her relative and the summons to his sick-bed made her
+pause in her movements suddenly altered by the death of the viscount.
+She was almost happy in her foresight by which she had defrauded him and
+his associates. Now, the loss of him stood by itself; she was free to
+use the money as she pleased. She feared Von Sendlingen but little,
+since she would have a good start of him if he pursued.</p>
+
+<p>Should she keep on or see her uncle? Pity for him, a stranger, perhaps
+dying in a hotel, most inhospitable shelter to an invalid, did not enter
+her heart. She had seen her lover murdered without a spark of
+communication, and was now glad that he could never call her to account
+for the theft. But a vague expectation of benefiting by the pretense of
+affection&mdash;the desire to have some support in case of Von Sendlingen
+attacking&mdash;the excuse and cover her ministration at the sick-bed would
+afford, all these reasons united to guide her to the Hotel de l'Aigle
+aux deux Becs, in the rue Caumartin.</p>
+
+<p>Her uncle was no longer there. His stroke of paralysis had frightened
+the proprietor who suggested his removal to a private hospital, but M.
+Dobronowska had preferred to be attended to in the house, a little out
+of St. Denis, of an acquaintance. It was Mr. Lesperon's, the abode of a
+once noted poetess, whose husband had enjoyed Dobronowska's hospitality
+in Finland and who had tried to repay the obligation.</p>
+
+<p>C&eacute;sarine recalled the name; this lady had been a friend of her aunt's
+and she felt she would not be intruding. After playing the nurse, by
+which means she could ascertain whether she would be remembered
+generously in the patient's will, she could continue her flight or
+retrace her steps.</p>
+
+<p>Under cover of Hedwig, she could learn, secretly if she preferred it,
+all that occurred at Montmorency. She found her grand-uncle broken with
+age and serious attack; he was delighted by her beauty and to hear that
+she was so happy in her married life! Evidently he was rich, and she had
+not acted foolishly in going to see him.</p>
+
+<p>Madame Lesperon and her husband recalled her grandmother&mdash;whose death
+she did not describe&mdash;and her aunt, over whose fate they politely
+blurred the rather lurid tints. Madame Lesperon, as became a poetess,
+saw the loveliness of Clemenceau's idea of separation in marrying his
+cousin and expressed a wish to compliment him face-to-face. C&eacute;sarine was
+not so sure that he would come to town to escort her home, he was so
+engrossed in an important project.</p>
+
+<p>She let three days pass without writing a line, alleging that she had
+not the heart while her dear uncle was in danger and that her husband
+knew, of course, where she was piously engaged.</p>
+
+<p>The next morning, Madame Lesperon, a regular reader of the newspapers in
+expectation of the announcement of her poems having at last been
+commended by the Acad&eacute;mie, came up to the sick-room with the <i>Debats</i>.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Ah, sly puss,&quot; said she, with a smile, &quot;let me congratulate you. One
+can know now why you were so close about your husband's mysterious
+project. Rejoice, dear, for all France rejoices with you.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>C&eacute;sarine stared all her wonder. The newspapers trumpeting her husband's
+name and not in the satirical tone in which the people hail a disaster
+to a George Dandin.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;The privately appointed committee which has been for some weeks
+thoroughly investigating the marvelous invention&mdash;a revolution in
+truth&mdash;in gunnery, at the Villa Reine-Claude, Montmorency, have
+deposited a preliminary report at the Ministry of War. We are not at
+liberty to state more than the prodigious result. On a miniature scale,
+but which could be enlarged from millim&egrave;tres to miles without, we are
+assured, affecting the demonstration, it has been proved that the new
+gun will throw solid shot twelve miles and its special shell nearly
+fifteen. The model target was a row of pegs representing piles strongly
+driven into clay, a little apart, with the interstices filled with racks
+of stones. Two of the new-shaped projectiles dropped on this mark, left
+not enough wood to make a match and enough stone to strike a light upon
+it, while not a splinter of the missile could be found. Judge what would
+happen if they had fallen on a regiment or into a city. Thanks to the
+unremitting devotion of this son of France, his country can regard with
+complacency the monstrous preparations for unprovoked war which a rival
+realm is ostentatiously making.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The other journals repeated the paragraph in much the same language. The
+evening edition added that the happy inventor would not have to wait
+long for his reward. The Emperor, always a connoisseur in artillery, had
+sent him ten thousand francs from his private purse simply as a faint
+token of appreciation. &quot;Those familiar with what, in these rapid times,
+is the ancient history of Paris, may remember that a stain was attached
+to the name of Clemenceau. In his son, it will shine untarnished, and go
+down to posterity glorious with lustre.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;What a fool I have been,&quot; thought C&eacute;sarine. &quot;I fled with a silly fellow
+who had no more sense than to fall into a trap, for a paltry handful of
+drafts that may not be paid on presentation, and desert a husband who
+will be one of the millionaire-inventors of his country!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Reflecting in the night, she radically reversed her programme.</p>
+
+<p>Her uncle had recovered from the stroke but the physician warned him
+that the next would kill him. He was happy in the cares of the Lesperons
+and his grandniece, none of whom would be forgotten when the hour struck
+for him to leave his worldly goods. C&eacute;sarine could quit him in
+confidence of a handsome inheritance at not a distant day.</p>
+
+<p>Her flight and absence were commendable in the world's most censorious
+eyes. Only one thought perplexed her: was it her husband who had
+officiated at the execution of her gallant? If so, her lie would not
+hold. But in doubt a shameless sinner chooses to brazen it out.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I should be a confirmed imbecile to let this chance go and not resume
+my authorized position. Ah, his time, without infamy, I can preside at
+the board where the high officials will gladly sit&mdash;I shall have
+generals at my feet, perhaps a marshal! Yes, I will go home and brazen
+it out!&quot;</p>
+
+
+
+<br />
+<a name='CHAPTER_XII'></a><h2>CHAPTER XII.</h2>
+
+<h3>WHEN THE CAT'S AWAY.</h3>
+<br />
+
+<p>Ten days after the sudden departure of Madame Clemenceau from her
+residence, a little before daybreak, Hedwig came down through the house
+to draw up the blinds and open the windows. She carried a small
+night-lamp and was not more than half awake.</p>
+
+<p>It was the noise of the great invention which had turned the tranquil
+group of villas and cherry orchards into a rendezvous for the singular
+admixture of artilleries and scientific luminaries. The peaceful villa
+entertained a selection of them nightly and it is astonishing how
+heartily the military men ate and the professors drank, for the
+enthusiasm had turned all heads.</p>
+
+<p>Hedwig entered the fine old drawing-room where the symposium had been
+held. It was a capacious room, not unlike an English baronial hall, the
+doorways and windows were furnished with old Gobelin tapestry and the
+heavy furniture was of mahogany, imported when France drew generously on
+her colonies. The long table had been roughly cleared after supper by
+the summary process of bundling all the plates up in the cloth. On it
+had been replaced, for the final debate, drawings and models of the guns
+considered absolute after the novel Clemenceau Cannon. On a
+pedestal-pillar stood a large clock, representing, with figures at the
+base, the forge of Vulcan; his Cyclops had hammered off six strokes a
+little preceding the servant's entrance.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;A quarter past six,&quot; she said, yawning. &quot;It will soon be light.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>She drew the curtains and pulled the cord which caused the shade to roll
+itself up in each of the three tall windows, before returning to the
+table where she had left her now useless lamp. With a half-terrified
+look, she began to arrange the pretty little cannon, exquisitely modeled
+in nickel and bronze, and miniature shot, shell, chain-shot, etc., which
+she handled with a curiosity rather instinctive than studied. In the
+midst of her mechanically executed work, she was startled by a gentle
+rapping on the plate-glass of a window. The sight of a face in the grey
+morning glimmer startled her still more, but, luckily, she recognized
+it. After hesitation, she crossed the room in surprise and unbolted the
+two sashes, which opened like double doors.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Hedwig!&quot; said a woman's voice warily speaking, &quot;open to me!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The girl held the sashes widely apart, muttering:</p>
+
+<p>&quot;The mistress! why the mischief has she come back when we were getting
+on so nicely.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>But, letting the new-comer pass her, she tried to smoothe her face, and
+don the smile as stereotyped in servants as in ballet-dancers, while she
+continued the letting in of the daylight to gain time to recover her
+countenance.</p>
+
+<p>C&eacute;sarine threw off a cloak, trimmed with fur, and more suitable for a
+colder season, but it was a sable with a sprinkling of isolated white
+hairs most peculiar and a present from her granduncle. She tottered and
+seemed weak, for she had concluded that an affection of illness would
+aid her re-entrance. As Hedwig extinguished the lamp, she sank into an
+arm-chair. She curiously glanced around and inhaled with a questioning
+flutter of the nostrils the lasting odor of cigars and Burgundy, which
+the air retained. In this gloomy apartment where she had often sat
+alone, sure not to be disturbed, the suggestion of uproarious jollity
+hurt her dignity. A singular way to express sorrow and shame at the loss
+of a wife by calling in boon companions! This did not seem like Felix
+Clemenceau, sober and austere, thus to drown care in champagne.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Are you alone, girl?&quot; she inquired, looking round with a powerful
+impression that the house had unexpected inmates.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes. No one is up yet in the house,&quot; responded Hedwig, sharing her
+mistress' uneasiness, though from a less indefinite reason; &quot;at all
+events, nobody has come down yet. But how did you see that it was I who
+came in here before the shades were drawn up?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Well, I had made a little peep-hole to see what my husband and his
+fellow conspirator were about, in the time before they shut themselves
+up in their studio. But, if it is my turn to put questions,&quot; she went on
+with some offended dignity, &quot;how is it that the back door is bolted as
+well as barred and that I have had to sneak in like a malefactor?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;If you please, madame, it is the rule to be very careful about
+fastening up, since you went away.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Oh, on the principle of locking the stable-door when the steed&mdash;&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Oh! they fear the loss of something which, without offense, I may say,
+they esteem more highly than you.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Hedwig answered without even a little impertinence and the other did not
+resent what sounded discourteous.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Then they do not lock up to keep me out?&quot; she questioned.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;It might be a little bit that way, too.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;It is a new habit. Did the master suggest it?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Not the master altogether, madame, but his partner.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Eh! do you mean Antonino? Monsieur had already lifted him up to be his
+associate, his confidant, his friend, to the exclusion of his lawful
+friend and confidant, his wife&mdash;and now, does he make him his partner?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No, madame; though he has a good fat share in the enterprise. It is M.
+Daniels who found the funds for the new company in which the master is
+engaged, and he manages the house to leave the master all his time to go
+on inventing and entertaining the grand folks we have to dinner.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Mr. Daniels! not the old Jew who played that queer straight trumpet at
+Munich&mdash;&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes, the turkophone! Ah, he has no need to go about the music halls
+now&mdash;he is, if not rich, the man who leads rich men by the nose, to come
+and deposit their superfluous cash in our strong-box.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>And she pointed fondly to a large iron-clamped coffin which occupied the
+space between two of the windows. It was a novelty, for C&eacute;sarine did not
+recollect seeing it before. Continuing her survey, it seemed to her
+that she noticed a different arrangement of the ornaments than when she
+was queen here, and that the fresh flowers in the vases and two
+palmettoes in urns were placed with a taste the German maid had never
+shown.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Let me see! this Jewish Orpheus had a daughter&mdash;&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Exactly; she never leaves him. She has rooms within his just the same
+as at our house in Munich. It appears that Jew parents trust their
+pretty daughters no farther than they can see them. But I do not blame
+M. Daniels,&quot; went on Hedwig, enthusiastically, &quot;she is so lovely!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>C&eacute;sarine rose partly, supporting herself with her hands on the arms of
+the chair. Her eyes flashed like blue steel and her whole frame vibrated
+with kindled rage.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Do you mean to tell me, girl, that Mademoiselle Rebecca&mdash;as her name
+went, I think&mdash;is now the mistress of my house?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;In your absence,&quot; returned Hedwig, drawlingly, &quot;somebody had to
+preside, for neither the master, the old gentleman nor M. Antonino take
+the head of the dinner-table with the best grace. It is true that our
+guests are not very particular if the wine flows freely. I do not think
+the young lady likes the position, for I know the old, be-spectacled
+professors are as pestering with their attentions as the insolent
+officers. She would have been so delighted at the relief promised by
+your return that she would run to meet you and you would not have been
+repulsed at the door.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I daresay,&quot; replied Madame Clemenceau, frowning, and tapping the waxed
+wood floor impatiently with her foot. &quot;I did not care to announce my
+return home with a flourish of trumpets. I was not averse to taking the
+house by surprise, and seeing what a transformation has gone on since I
+went away. Besides, it is desirable, not to say necessary, that I should
+speak with you before seeing the others.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Hedwig pouted a little.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You ought to have written to me, madame, as we were agreed, I thought;
+I have been on tenderhooks because of your silence. I did not even guess
+where you were.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I did not wish it known for a while, and even then, it appears, I spoke
+too soon,&quot; said C&eacute;sarine gloomily.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You did not want me to know, madame?&quot; questioned the servant in
+surprise and with a trace of suspicion.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Not even you,&quot; and hanging her head, she sank into meditation, not
+pleasant, to judge by her hopeless expression.</p>
+
+<p>The servant, who had the phlegmatic brain of her people, was stupefied
+for a little time, then, recovering some vivacity, she inquired
+hesitatingly as though she was never at her ease with the subtle woman.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Is madame going away without more than a glance around?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Why do you talk such nonsense?&quot; queried her mistress, looking up
+abruptly.</p>
+
+<p>The girl intimated that the mysterious entrance portended secrecy to be
+preserved. And, again, the lady had come without baggage, even so much
+as in eloping from home. But Madame Clemenceau explained, with the most
+natural air in the world, that she had walked over from the railway
+station, where her impedimenta remained.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Walked half a mile?&quot; ejaculated Hedwig, who knew that the speaker had
+been vigorous enough at Munich, but, since her marriage, and living at
+Montmorency, she had assumed the popular air of a semi-invalid, &quot;So you
+are strong in health again?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes; but I have been very unwell,&quot; replied the lady, sinking back in
+the chair as she remembered the course she had intended to adopt. &quot;I was
+very nearly at death's door,&quot; she sighed. &quot;I really believed that I
+should nevermore see any of you, my poor husband and you others. Do you
+think that anything hut a severe ailment could excuse me for my strange
+silence&mdash;my apparently wicked absence?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Hedwig went on going through the form of dusting the huge metal-bound
+chest, which had attracted the mistress' eyes as a new article of
+furniture. Had her husband turned miser since Fortune had whirled on her
+wheel at his door as soon as she quitted it? It was not Hedwig's place,
+and it was not in her power to solve enigmas, so she answered nothing.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;My uncle was terribly afflicted,&quot; said the lady.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Your uncle?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Hedwig's incredulous tone implied that she had not believed in the
+authenticity of the telegram.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes; my granduncle. He was within an ace of dying, and the shock made
+me so bad, after nursing him toward recovery, it was I who stood in
+peril of death. My friends sent for a priest and I confessed.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The girl opened her eyes in wonder and a kind of derision, for she did
+not belong to the aristocratic creed.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Confessed?&quot; reiterated she; &quot;ah, yes; people confess when they are very
+bad. Was it a complete confession, madame?&quot; she saucily inquired.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Complete as all believers should make when on the brink of the grave,&quot;
+replied Madame Clemenceau, in her gravest tone to repress the tendency
+to frivolity, for she had not resented the incredulity as regarded
+herself.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I dare say,&quot; said Hedwig, who certainly had one of her lucid intervals,
+&quot;it is as when a body is traveling, one is in such a hurry that
+something is forgotten. You went away so sharply that you forgot to say
+good-bye to the master! if you spoke at all! Whatever did the
+father-confessor say?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;He gave me very good advice.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Which you are following, madame?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;When one not only has seen death smite another beside one but flit
+close by oneself, I assure you, girl, it forces one to reflect. Oh, how
+dreadful the nights are in the sick chamber, with a night-light dimly
+burning and the sufferer moaning and tossing! Then my turn came to
+occupy the patient's position, and it was frightful. Can you not see I
+am much altered&mdash;horrid, in fact?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Hedwig shook her head; without flattery, well as her mistress assumed
+the air of languor, her figure had not been affected by any event since
+the slaying of the Viscount Gratian, and her countenance was unmarred by
+any change except a trifling pallor.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes; after my uncle grew better, I was indisposed and should have died
+but for the cares of an old friend, Madame Lesperon the Female Bard. But
+you would not know this favorite of the Muses. You are not poetically
+inclined, Hedwig!&quot; she added, laughingly. Rising with animation, &quot;but
+that makes no matter! I am glad to see you home again. I thought of you,
+Hedwig, and I have bought you something pretty to wear on your days
+out&mdash;bought it in Paris, too.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Is that so?&quot; exclaimed the girl, much less absent and saucy in the curl
+of her lip; &quot;you are always kind.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes; they are in my new trunk, for which you had better send the
+gardener at once. He is not forgotten either. There is a set of jewelry,
+too, in the old Teutonic style. They say now in Paris that any idea of
+war between France and Prussia is absurd, and there is a revulsion in
+feeling&mdash;the vogue is all for German things. I am not sorry that I know
+how to dress in their style, and I have some genuine Rhenish jewelry,
+which become me very well.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I see that madame has indeed not altered,&quot; remarked Hedwig, plentifully
+adorned with smiles, as the sunshine streamed into the grave apartment.
+&quot;You have fresh projects of captivating the men!&quot; C&eacute;sarine smiled also,
+and nodded several times.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Here?&quot; cried the girl, in surprise.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Certainly here, since I understand you are receiving company in
+shoals.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;That is all over now, madame, and I am sorry, for the callers were very
+generous to me. It appears that the War Ministry do not approve of
+strangers running about Montmorency and into the abode of the great
+inventor of ordinances&mdash;&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Ordnance, child,&quot; corrected Madame Clemenceau.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;And the house is sealed up, as you found it, against all comers. We
+have nobody here for you to try graces upon except Mademoiselle
+Rebecca's papa&mdash;and he being a Jew, you must not go near him, fresh from
+the confessional.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Madame Clemenceau seemed to be musing.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I forgot&mdash;there's young M. Antonino,&quot; continued the servant.</p>
+
+<p>C&eacute;sarine made a contemptuous gesture, expressive of the conquest being
+too easy.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Such sallow youth are best left to platonic love, it's more proper,
+and to them, quite as entertaining.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Well, madame,&quot; said Hedwig, like a cheap Jack, holding up the last of
+his stock, &quot;they are the only men I can offer you; for, since we have
+been firing off guns and cannon, our neighbors have moved away right and
+left&mdash;we are so lonely. No servant would stay a week!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Those the only men?&quot; said the returned fugitive; &quot;Hedwig, this is not
+polite for your master.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Oh, madame, a husband never counts.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You are very much mistaken. He does <i>count</i>&mdash;his money, I suppose, if
+that is his cash-box.&quot; And, yielding to her girlish curiosity, she went
+over to the steel-plated chest and avariciously contemplated it,</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Not at all, madame. That is where they lock up the writings and
+drawings about the new gun!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Oh, what do they say?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Nothing a Christian can make head or tail of,&quot; returned the servant
+reservedly. &quot;They write now in a hand no honest folk ever used. An old
+man who ought to have known better&mdash;the Jew&mdash;he taught the master, and
+they call it siphon&mdash;&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Cipher, I suppose? It appears the newspapers are right!&quot; resumed the
+lady. &quot;He is a great man!&quot; and she clapped her hands.</p>
+
+<p>Hedwig regarded her puzzled, till her brow unwrinkling at last, she
+exclaimed:</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Upon my word, I believe you have fallen in love with master.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You might have said: I am still in love. That is why I return to his
+side.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;If you tell him that is the reason,&quot; said this speaker, who used much
+Teutonic frankness to her superiors, &quot;you will astonish him more than
+you did me by popping in this morning. He will not believe you.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Madame Clemenceau smiled as those women do who can warp men round to
+their way of thinking.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;But he will! Besides, if it is a difficult task, so much the
+better&mdash;when a deed is impossible, it tempts one.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Well, as far as I can see, madame, that is an odd idea for you to have
+had when far away from master.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Pish! did you never hear the saying that 'Absence makes the heart grow
+fonder?' Oh, girl, I had so much deep meditation as I stared at the dim
+night-light,&quot; and she shuddered and looked a little pale.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Well, madame, I should have rolled over and shut my eyes,&quot; said the
+matter-of-fact maid.</p>
+
+<p>There was more truth in the lady's speech than her hearer gave her
+credit for. She was no exception to the rule that the wives of great
+inventors almost never properly appreciate them. By the light of his
+success, breaking forth like the sun, she feared that the greatest error
+of her life had been made when she miscomprehended him. In her dreams as
+well as her insomnia, it was Clemenceau that she beheld, and not the
+gallants who had flashed across her uneven path, not even the viscount,
+whose spoil was her nest-egg. Alas! it was a mere atom to the solid
+ingot which her misunderstood husband's genius had ensured. She had
+perhaps lost the substance in snapping at the shadow.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Any way, I love my husband,&quot; she proceeded, moaning aloud, and resting
+her chin in the hollow of her hand&mdash;the elbow on the table, to which she
+had returned and where she was seated. &quot;I am sure now.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No doubt,&quot; said the servant, unconsciously holding the feather duster
+as a soldier holds his rifle; &quot;madame has heard about our great
+discoveries in artillery? They are revo&mdash;revolutionizing&mdash;oof! What a
+mouthful&mdash;the military world!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes; I read the newspaper accounts during my convalescence,&quot; replied
+Madame Clemenceau.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Then you fell in love with your husband because of his cannon,&quot; said
+Hedwig, laughing. &quot;I do not see what connection there is between them,
+and, in fact,&quot; reflecting a little and suddenly laughing more loudly, &quot;I
+hear that cannons produce breaches rather than re-union. Well, after
+all, if cannons do not further love, its a friend to glory and riches!
+The Emperor, some of our visitors said, is very fond of artillery, and
+he will give master immense contracts from the report of the examining
+committee being so favorable.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Really, Hedwig, you are becoming quite learned from the association
+with scientists. What long words you use!</p>
+
+<p>&quot;That's nothing,&quot; said the servant, complacently.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;There is no word difficult in French to a German. but I can tell you
+that, as we cannot live on air, and these promises do not bear present
+fruit, master has been forced to sell this house.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Eh! why is that? I like the place well enough.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You were not here to be consulted, madame, and, we wanted the money.
+Master does not wish to be obliged to M. Daniels and, besides, he, too,
+does not get in the cash for his company any too rapidly. Master ran
+into debt while making his guns and cannon, and we have been pinched for
+ready money.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I am glad to hear it!&quot; ejaculated C&eacute;sarine, without spitefulness, and
+with more sincerity than she had spoken previously.</p>
+
+<p>The girl stared without understanding.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I have money&mdash;cash&mdash;to help him, and it will be far more proper for
+him to be obliged to his wife than to strangers. Besides, I should not
+tax him with usurious interest,&quot; she said maliciously.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Money, madame,&quot; said the servant with her widely opened eyes still more
+distending.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I have two hundred thousand francs, that is, nearly as many marks,
+coming from my good uncle who is a little late in doing me a
+kindness&mdash;but my attention touched him. But do I not hear
+steps&mdash;somebody at last moving in the house?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Very likely,&quot; replied the servant tranquilly, &quot;but nobody will come in
+here, before master has breakfast. Since he stores his secrets in that
+chest, and no company drops in, this is a hermitage. Mademoiselle
+Rebecca is not one of the prying sort.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Madame Clemenceau, who had risen with more nervous anxiety than she
+cared to display to the servants, stood by her chair, looking toward the
+door.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Has he talked about me, sometimes?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Master? never&mdash;not before me, anyway, madame.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yet you gave him the telegram that explained all?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes, madame; but not until some time after your departure and when
+master had returned from a promenade alone. I know he was alone, because
+M. Antonino was racing about to show him some of his wonderful
+experiments.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Beyond a doubt, it was Clemenceau who had stood witness to the tragedy
+in the meadow. Hence his inattention to the Russian's despatch, which he
+naturally would disbelieve, and probably to her prolonged absence.</p>
+
+<p>It was humiliating that he had not searched for her.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;What! no allusion to my stay&mdash;no hint of my possible return?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;His silence has been perfect as the grave. Next morning after you left
+and did not return, master looked at the cover which I had from habit
+placed for you, and remarked: 'Oh, by the way, you will have another to
+lay to-morrow, as we shall have two guests for, I hope, a long time.' He
+meant the Danielses, madame. Their coming made it a little livelier for
+him and M. Antonino.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;It looks like a plot,&quot; murmured C&eacute;sarine, indignantly, as she pictured
+the happy reunions out of which she had been displaced in memory&mdash;not
+even her untouched plate left as memento! her chair taken by Rebecca
+Daniels!</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Mr. Daniels is like M. Antonino, too!&quot; continued Hedwig. &quot;Not only is
+he getting up the company for the master's inventions, but for the young
+gentleman's&mdash;he has made such a marvel of a rifle&mdash;they put a tin box
+into it, and lo! you can fire three hundred shots as quick as a wink! I
+walk in terror since I heard of it! and I touch things as if they would
+go off and make mince-meat of me in the desert to it.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Never mind that!&quot; cried Madame Clemenceau, testily.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Although the connection between piping at music halls and enchanting
+the bulls and bears of the Bourse is not clear to me, I can understand
+how M. Daniels, as a financial agent, should be lodging under our roof,
+but his daughter&mdash;&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;She is our housekeeper, and, to tell the plain truth, madame, we have
+lived nicely, although money was scarce, since she ruled the roost. Ah,
+these Jews are clever managers!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>C&eacute;sarine did not like the earnest tone of praise and hastened to say
+bluntly:</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I suppose, then, she threw the spell over him again which once before,
+at Munich, caused him, a tame bookworm, to fight for her like a
+king-maker?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Mademoiselle Rebecca! she act the fascinatress!&quot; exclaimed Hedwig, with
+a burst of indignation.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;What is there extraordinary, pray, in a husband, apparently deserted by
+his wife, paying attention to another handsome young woman?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Why, madame, you must forget that master is the most honorable
+gentleman as ever was, and that Mademoiselle Rebecca is a perfect lady!&quot;
+Then, perceiving that her enthusiasm on the latter head was not welcome
+to the hearer, Hedwig, added: &quot;but it does not matter. We are receiving
+no more company, lest the great secret leak out, and so we don't need a
+lady at the table. She is going away with her father, who is to open the
+Rifle Company's offices in Paris, and that's all!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;It is quite enough!&quot; remarked the other, frowning.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;What is the last word about him?&quot; inquired the servant, &quot;the
+viscount-baron, I mean.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;M. de Terremonde?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes; you haven't said a word about him.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Do you not know?&quot; began C&eacute;sarine, shuddering as the scene in the
+twilight arose before her on the background of the sombre side of the
+room.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;He was not likely to return hereabouts. Master might have tried the new
+rifle upon him,&quot; with a suppressed laugh.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Well, if you do not know, I need only say that I am perfectly ignorant
+of his whereabouts. I went to town without his escort, and I suppose&mdash;if
+he has disappeared,&quot; she concluded with emphasis, &quot;that he has gone on a
+journey of pleasure, or is dead.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Dead,&quot; uttered Hedwig, shuddering in her turn, &quot;in what a singular
+tone you say that word.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;What concern is it of mine?&quot; questioned Madame Clemenceau, pursing up
+her lips to conceal a little fluttering from the dread she felt at the
+effectual way in which her lover had been removed from mortal knowledge.
+&quot;I do not mind declaring that, if I am given any choice in the matter, I
+should prefer his taking the latter course.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Hedwig's teeth chattered so that the other looked hard at her till she
+faltered the explanation:</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Your way of saying things, madame, gives me cold shivers up and down
+the back&mdash;ugh! Why, that gentleman was over head and ears in love with
+you!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;That is why he probably went under so quickly, and could not keep his
+head above water!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I thought you liked him a goodish bit&mdash;&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I&mdash;oh!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>An explosion, very sharp and peculiarly splitting the air, resounded
+under the windows and caused C&eacute;sarine to clap her hands to her ears in
+terror.</p>
+
+
+
+<br />
+<a name='CHAPTER_XIII'></a><h2>CHAPTER XIII.</h2>
+
+<h3>THE REVOLUTION IN ARTILLERY.</h3>
+<br />
+
+<p>&quot;Oh, what is that?&quot; muttered C&eacute;sarine, with white lips.</p>
+
+<p>Hedwig laughed, but going to the window, calmly replied:</p>
+
+<p>&quot;It is only the master&mdash;no, it is M. Antonino, who is trying the rifle
+they invented. Isn't it funny, though&mdash;it does not use powder or
+anything of that sort&mdash;it does not shoot out fire, but only the bullet,
+and there's no smoke! I never heard of such a thing, and I call it
+magic!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;A gun without powder, and no fire or smoke,&quot; repeated Madame
+Clemenceau. &quot;It is, indeed, a marvel!&quot; and she approached the window in
+uncontrollable curiosity. &quot;Is he going to shoot again?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Well, he gets an appetite by popping at the sparrows before breakfast.
+He is not much of a marksman like master, who is dead on the center,
+every military officer says&mdash;but, in the morning, the birds' wings are
+heavy with dew, and he makes a very pretty bag now and then. What must
+the sparrows think to be killed and not smell any powder!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I wish you would tell him to go farther, or leave off!&quot; said C&eacute;sarine,
+looking out at the young man with the light rifle, fascinated but
+fearing.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;The obedience will be more prompt if you would tell him, madame,&quot;
+returned the maid, &quot;for M. Antonino would do anything for you. To think
+that there should really be something that frightens you!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;After my illness, I am afraid of everything.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Very well, I will stop him.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Opening the window, Hedwig called to the Italian by name, and said, on
+receiving his answer:</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Please not to shoot any more!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Why not?&quot; came the reply in the mellow voice of the Italian.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Come in and you'll learn.&quot; But she shut the window to intimate that he
+was to enter the house by the door as he had issued, and hastily
+returned to her mistress.</p>
+
+<p>The latter had tottered to the side-board, and seized a decanter, but,
+in the act of pouring out a glass of water, she paused suspiciously.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Is this good to drink?&quot; she warily inquired.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Of course, though you are quite right&mdash;they do juggle with a lot of
+queer acids and the like dangerous stuff here! They give me the warning
+sometimes after their <i>swim-posiums</i>, as they call the sociables, not to
+touch anything till they come down, for poisons are about. Ugh! But do
+not drink so much cold water so early in the morning&mdash;it is unhealthy.
+If it were only good beer, now, it would not matter! <i>Ach</i>, M&uuml;chen!&quot; and
+Hedwig vulgarly smacked her lips.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;After my illness I have been always thirsty, and, sometimes, I seem to
+have infernal fires in my bosom!&quot; sighed Madame Clemenceau, putting down
+the glass with a hand so hot that the crystal was clouded with steam.</p>
+
+<p>Her teeth chattered, as a sudden chill followed the flush, and Hedwig
+shrank back in alarm&mdash;the beautiful face became transformed into such a
+close likeness to a wolf's. &quot;You need not be scared any more, for he has
+come into the house. Here he is, too!&quot; and she sprang to the door, as
+well to open it to M. Antonino, as to screen her mistress until she
+cared to reveal her presence.</p>
+
+<p>Perhaps it was application to the work and not pining over the absence
+of C&eacute;sarine, but the Italian showed evidence of sleeplessness and his
+pallor had the unpleasant cast of the Southerners when out of spirits.</p>
+
+<p>His eyes were enfevered and his lips dry and cracked. He carried a
+handsome fowling-piece, which presented, at first glance, no feature of
+dissimilarity to the usual pattern except that trigger and hammer were
+absent, and the rim of the barrel was not blackened from the recent
+discharge.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;What did you stop me for when I had hardly more than begun my sport and
+practice?&quot; he inquired.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Put down that devil's own gun, sir monsieur,&quot; said Hedwig, &quot;if you
+please.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Why, what's the matter?&quot; said he, while obeying by standing the rifle
+in a corner. &quot;I thought you Germans were all daughters or sweethearts of
+soldiers.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Ay, and most of us women would make as good soldiers as they have here;
+but I was speaking because you gave a shock to madame.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Stepping aside, Antonino discovered Madame Clemenceau, who smiled
+softly.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Oh, madame!&quot; ejaculated Antonino, at the height of astonishment, not
+unmixed with gladness. &quot;I beg your pardon; I am very sorry&mdash;I mean
+glad&mdash;that is, I was not aware&mdash;if I had had any idea you were home&mdash;&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You could not have known,&quot; she answered in a gentle voice. &quot;I was too
+eager to get back, to delay to send a line. As for the noise, another
+time it might not matter, but I came here by an early morning train and
+I had no rest before I started. I am very fatigued and nervous, and the
+shot so sudden, surprised me. For a little while to come, I should like
+you to repeat your experiments with firearms at a distance from the
+house. Is&mdash;is that the new kind of rifle?&quot; she inquired, with the
+timidity of a child introduced to the new watchdog.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes, madame!&quot; and his eyes blazing with pride, he proceeded, as he
+crossed the room and returned with the firearm, &quot;it is altogether a new
+invention. Master is an innovator, indeed!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Do you object to showing it to me?&quot; continued C&eacute;sarine, pleased that
+the enthusiasm gave an excuse for her not entering into an explanation
+of her absence which, even if more plausible than that Hedwig had
+doubtingly received, would require all of Antonino's affectionate faith
+in her to win credence. &quot;I do not object. Even those experienced in the
+old weapons can inspect it and not learn much,&quot; he went on, with the
+same pride; &quot;but I thought it frightened you!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;It did&mdash;it does, but I ought to overcome such a ridiculous feeling! I,
+above all women, being a gun-inventor's wife! Is it loaded?&quot; she asked,
+while hesitatingly holding out her hand to take it.</p>
+
+<p>Hedwig had prudently backed over to the window which she held a little
+open to make a leap out for escape in case of accident. Her mistress
+took the rifle and turned it over and over; certainly, it resembled no
+gun she had ever handled before. Its simplicity daunted her and
+irritated her.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;It seems to have two barrels,&quot; she remarked, &quot;although one is closed as
+if not to be used. Is it double-barrelled?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;There are two barrels, or, more accurately speaking, a barrel for
+discharge of the projectile and a chamber for the explosive substance,
+which is the secret.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Then you load by the muzzle, like the old-fashioned guns?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Oh, no; there is no load, no cartridge, as you understand it; only the
+missiles, and they are inserted by the quantity in the breach.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;And there is no trigger or hammer!&quot; exclaimed C&eacute;sarine, not yet at the
+end of her wonder.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Obsolete contrivances, always catching in the clothes or in the
+brambles, and causing the death or maiming of many an excellent man. We
+have changed all that by doing away with appendages altogether. This
+disc, when pressed, allows so much of the explosive matter to enter the
+barrel and it expels the missile by repeated expansions.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;How very, very curious!&quot; exclaimed Madame Clemenceau, returning the
+piece to Antonino with the vexed air of one reluctantly giving up a
+puzzle to the solution of which a prize was attached. &quot;I should like you
+to make it clear to me&mdash;&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;The government forbids!&quot; said the Italian, smiling, and assuming a look
+of preternatural solemnity to make the lady smile and Hedwig laugh
+respectfully. &quot;And, then, the company we are getting up, lays a farther
+prohibition on us. However, you are in the arcana&mdash;you are one of the
+privileged, I suppose, and if M. Clemenceau does not expressly bar my
+lessons, you shall learn how to knock over sparrows for your cat.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You will instruct me?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Most gladly!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;That is nice of you, and I am so sorry at having interrupted your
+experiments.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Thanks; but we have long since gone beyond the experimental stage. I
+was only trying a new bullet that I fancy the shape of. I ask your
+pardon for having given you a fright.&quot; He took her hand and kissed it.
+She beckoned to Hedwig as soon as it was released, and smiled kindly on
+him as she left the room with her servant to dress befittingly to show
+herself to Mademoiselle Rebecca. Had it been only her husband to face,
+she might have been content to look dusty with travel as she had to
+Antonino.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;How you delight that poor gentleman,&quot; observed Hedwig, between pity
+and admiration. &quot;You would witch an angel.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I am only practicing to enchant my husband, you dull creature!&quot; said
+C&eacute;sarine merrily. &quot;He is a great man, and I have been proud of him from
+the first.&quot;</p>
+
+
+
+<br />
+<a name='CHAPTER_XIV'></a><h2>CHAPTER XIV.</h2>
+
+<h3>TRULY A MAN.</h3>
+<br />
+
+<p>Long after Madame Clemenceau had left the room, the Italian stood in the
+same position as he had taken after kissing her hand. The mild voice
+from the pallid but little changed beauty thrilled him as formerly, and
+went far towards making him as mad as he had been ten days before when
+she had dropped, like an extinguished star, out of that small system. In
+her absence, he had regained quiet and some coolness, and believed he
+had conquered the treasonable passion which threatened his benefactor
+with disgrace. Had she not disgraced him as it was; had she not run away
+with another lover?</p>
+
+<p>Clemenceau had not said one word to his associate about the telegram
+from Paris, which he seemed not to believe, or of the note beginning:
+&quot;The faithless one,&quot; by which Von Sendlingen had been warned of
+Gratian's absconding and which he instructed Hedwig to place where her
+master must see it. Hence, the view by Clemenceau of the stamping out of
+the Viscount-baron, for his accomplices had not let the chance pass when
+he stumbled into their ambush, in order to see if the Frenchman in
+jealous spite would assail him.</p>
+
+<p>Clemenceau had recognized his wife and he divined that the lonely man
+making for the same point was the villain, without understanding into
+what deathpit he had fallen.</p>
+
+<p>At the juncture of his being about hurrying after his wife, he heard the
+half-strangled wretch's outcry and the low appeal of humanity
+overpowering the hoarse summons of revenge in his bosom. But when he
+arrived at the broken footway bridge, all was over. A little farther, he
+fancied he saw a shadow in an osier bed, but when he waded to it, all
+was hushed. He called, but no sound responded. All seemed a
+vision&mdash;victim and assassins.</p>
+
+<p>And his wife was flying, by the train which had merely stopped to take
+her up. As every resident is known at these suburban stations, he
+refrained from an inquiry which would have made him a laughing-stock.</p>
+
+<p>Since C&eacute;sarine had returned, the conflict of duty and passion would be
+resumed and he felt sure that he had been defeated before. Reflecting
+profoundly, he could come to no other conclusion than that he ought to
+shun the dangerous traitress.</p>
+
+<p>As he lifted his head, less troubled after arriving at this resolution,
+he was not sorry to see that Clemenceau had silently entered the room.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Oh, is it you, my dear master?&quot; he exclaimed.</p>
+
+<p>It was not easy on that placid brow to read whether he knew of
+C&eacute;sarine's return or not.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Well, are you satisfied with your test this morning?&quot; inquired he.
+&quot;Have you succeeded with the bullets of the new shape?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I believe so,&quot; answered Antonino, &quot;for the modifications which you
+suggested, improved it in every point they dealt with. They go forth
+clean and the windage is much reduced.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Is the range improved?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;At fourteen hundred metres I put two elongated balls into an oak so
+deeply that I could not dig them out with my knife. They struck very
+closely to one another. It is a hundred metres greater distance.
+Inserting the bullets by the mass of twenty-five and firing the two took
+four seconds. I was less careful about marking where the others struck,
+and one that I discharged on my return near the house broke and went
+badly askew. With bullets made by regular moulders, such an accident
+should not happen.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Have you any left? Let me see.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Antonino took two bullets from his waistcoat pocket; they were unlike
+the ordinary globules, and resembled the long, pointed cylinders of
+modern guns. With a pair of pocket plyers, he broke one to exhibit the
+interior to Clemenceau; it was composed of two metals in curiously
+shaped segments and a chamber in one end contained a loose ball of
+another and heavier metal, on the principle of the quick-silver
+enhancing the force of the blow of the &quot;loaded&quot; executioner's sword. All
+had a novel aspect, but the chief inventor was familiar with the
+arrangement.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;By the cavity in it I have reduced the weight of three to two,&quot; went on
+Antonino. &quot;I am in hopes to put in fifty or sixty bullets at a time
+without making the arm too heavy, and that would suffice, considering
+that the replacement of the mass of projectiles requires no appreciable
+time, while the supply of explosive, liquefied air suffices for three
+hundred discharges. The repetition of the emissive force does not jar
+the gun, and the metal of our alloy does not show a strain although the
+gauge induces a pressure of fifty thousand pounds per square inch if it
+were accumulated.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;And the injection valve?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;It works as easily by pressure on the disc, which replaces the trigger,
+perfectly.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;That was your idea.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;After you put me on the track,&quot; returned the Italian, gratefully. &quot;Oh,
+I am still very ignorant in these matters.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Not more than I, a few months ago. I had not handled a firearm until&mdash;&quot;
+he checked himself and frowned; then, tranquilly resuming, he said:
+&quot;Labor, and you will reach the goal!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Antonino looked on silently as his instructor took the gun and inserted
+the bullet, but when he was going over to the open window, with the
+evident intention to fire off into the garden, he followed and laid his
+hand on his arm, saying animatedly:</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Do not fire!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Why not?&quot; returned Clemenceau, but without astonishment. &quot;We live in a
+desert since we have frightened our neighbors away. For two leagues
+around, nobody is about at this hour and everybody within our walls is
+accustomed to the noise of the gas exploding.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Not everybody,&quot; remonstrated Antonino. &quot;Madame Clemenceau has returned
+home and the sound frightens her because so strange.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;It is so. That's another matter,&quot; replied the inventor, putting the
+rifle down in the corner without haste.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Did you know it? Have you seen her?&quot; cried Antonino, struck by the
+remarkable unconcern of his master.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I knew of it by seeing her, yes, as I was coming down stairs a while
+since&mdash;she was going to her rooms from this one, with her maid.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;It's a lucky thing that Mademoiselle Daniels refused to occupy them!&quot;
+exclaimed Antonino. &quot;Why did you not speak to your wife?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Because I can have nothing to say to her and she would speak to me
+nothing but lies,&quot; said Clemenceau in so severe and convinced a tone
+that the young man remained silent, hurt at the judgment pronounced upon
+his idol by its own high-priest. &quot;What are you brooding over?&quot; he
+inquired, after an embarrassing pause.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;My dear master, I think that I ought to ask leave of absence since I
+have finished the work of designing the bullet most fit for the
+gas-rifle.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Do you ask leave of me, at your age, as of a schoolmaster?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The relations between the adopted son and the architect, who had
+mistaken his bent and become an innovator in artillery, had been
+affectionate, and on the younger man's side respectful. He had never
+taken any serious steps without asking his consent.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Well, where did you think of going?&quot; asked Clemenceau.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;To Paris.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;To show the rifle and projectile complete? No, we can test the latter
+at the new series of firing experiments before the Ordnance Committee.
+The Minister of War and the Emperor will not thank you for disturbing
+them for so little. It was the great gun they wanted. They are wedded to
+the Chassepot for the soldier's gun and, besides, the government musket
+factories are opposed to so great a novelty.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I need exercise&mdash;action&mdash;the open air,&quot; persisted the Italian.</p>
+
+<p>Clemenceau shook his head. Only the day before, the young man had called
+himself the happiest soul in the world and did not wish to quit
+tranquil Montmorency.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Well, after you have had your fling, would you hasten back?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I&mdash;I fear not, master,&quot; said he. &quot;I daresay if you and M. Daniels
+should approve, I might have a situation to travel for the Clemenceau
+Rifle Company, for some months, in England or America&mdash;and explain the
+value of your invention.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You wish to be my trumpeter, eh?&quot; said the Frenchman, sadly smiling.
+&quot;But what is to become of me during your absence and of M. Daniels?
+Remember that I have nobody to understand me, sympathize with me, become
+endeared to me, and aid me!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I, alone?&quot; repeated the Italian, affected by the melancholy tone common
+to the man of one idea who must, to concentrate his thoughts, set aside
+other ties of union with his race.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Do you doubt it?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Antonino felt no doubt. He would be the most to be deplored among men if
+he were not fond of Clemenceau after all that he had done for him. He
+was an orphan vagrant, next to a beggar, when he had been housed by him,
+kept, and highly educated. Then, too, with a frankness not common among
+born brothers, the Frenchman had associated him in all his labors for
+the revolution in the science of artillery&mdash;the greatest since Bacon
+discovered gunpowder. All that he was, he owed to the man before him.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Believe me, father,&quot; he said, earnestly, &quot;I esteem and venerate you!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;And yet you keep secrets from me!&quot; reproached Clemenceau.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I&mdash;I have no secrets.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I see you are too serious.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I am only sorrowful&mdash;sorrowful at quitting you.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Why should you do it, I repeat?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I am never merry&mdash;happiness is not my portion,&quot; faltered Antonino, not
+knowing what answer to make.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;That's nothing. Better now than later! At your age, unhappiness is
+easily borne&mdash;it is only what the sporting gentlemen call a preliminary
+canter. Wait till you come to the actual race!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I am not fit to dwell with others&mdash;with grave, earnest men; I am too
+nervous and impressionable.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Because you come of an excitable race, and your childhood was passed in
+too deep poverty. You will grow out of all that, gradually. Stay here;
+oh, keep with me, for I have need of you and you require a
+companion-soul, soothing like mine. The kind of disappointment you
+experience is not to be cured by change of place. You carry it with you,
+and distance increases and strengthens it, and whenever you meet the
+object again to whom was due the vexation you will perceive that you
+went on the journey for no good.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Antonino looked at the speaker as one regards the mind-reader who has
+answered to the point. Clemenceau fixed him with his serene, unvarying
+eyes, and continued, in an emotionless voice, like a statue, speaking:</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You are in love&mdash;and you love my wife.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Antonino started away and involuntarily lifted his hands in a position
+of defense. Averting his eyes and unclenching his fists, he muttered
+sullenly:</p>
+
+<p>&quot;What makes you suppose that?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I saw it was so.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>At the end of a silence more burdensome than any before the younger man
+found his voice and, as though tears interfered with his utterance,
+said pathetically, and indistinctly:</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Do you not acknowledge, master, now, that I must go; for when I am far
+away, perhaps you will forgive the ingrate!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Looking at the young man of two-and-twenty, Clemenceau knew by his own
+infatuation at the same tender age with the same woman, that he had
+nothing to forgive him for&mdash;little to reproach him. It was youth that
+was to blame, and it had loved. No matter who that Cytherean priestess
+was, he must have adored her whether sister, wife or daughter of dearest
+friend, teacher and paternal patron. But it was clear from the grief
+that had made the youth a melancholy man that he was honorable.</p>
+
+<p>Grief is never, when the outcome of remorse, a useless or evil feeling.
+It is a fair-fighting adversary which has only to be overcome to be a
+sure ally, always ready to defend and protect its victor. In his own
+terse language, that of a mathematician and mechanician who knew no
+words of double meaning.</p>
+
+<p>Clemenceau told the Italian this.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;With your youth and your grief, such a spirit as yours and such a
+friend as you have in me, Anto,&quot; he said, &quot;you possess the weapons of
+Achilles.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Antonino thought he was mocking at him and frowned.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You think I am sneering? Or merely laughing at you? Alas, it is a long
+while since I indulged in laughter. It was this woman, with whom you
+have fallen in love, who froze the laugh forever on my lips! she would
+have been the death of me if I had not overruled her and exterminated
+her within my breast. How I loved her! how I have suffered through
+her&mdash;enough to be our united portions of future pain&mdash;suffer you no
+more, therefore. You are too young, tender and credulous to try a fall
+with that creature. She must have divined long ago that you were
+enamored of her. She is not too clear-sighted in all things, but she
+sees such effects by intuition. It is very probable that she has
+returned to this house on your account, so suddenly. I could guess that
+she was on the eve of flight, but not that she would return. She always
+needs fresh sensations to make herself believe that she is alive, for
+she is more lifeless than those whom she robbed of life.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Antonino did not understand the allusion, for he had never felt less
+like dying than since C&eacute;sarine had been seen again.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I mean that she sends the chill of death into the soul, heart and brain
+of man, and it congeals the marrow in his bones!&quot; said Clemenceau,
+energetically. &quot;You may say that if she is a wicked woman and if,
+whatever her defense, her absence covers some evil step, I ought to
+separate from her. It is all the present state of the law allows. But
+while her absence would have prevented you, or another friend, from
+meeting her, still she would have borne my name. That name I am doubly
+bound to make honorable, for it was stained with blood&mdash;that of one of
+her ever-accursed race. My father won an illustrious name and, her
+ancestress, whom he married, was dragging it publically in the mud amid
+all the scandals of society, when he slew her on her couch of gilded
+infamy. Ashamed of this name&mdash;not because he was indicated under it, but
+because she had so vilified it&mdash;his greatest desire to the friends who
+visited him in the condemned cell, was to have me, his son, change it.
+They had me brought up at a distance under the name of Claudius
+Ruprecht. It might even have happened that another country than that of
+my birth would receive the glory which a heaven-sent idea is to bestow
+upon France. Now, I am more than ever determined that her venom shall
+not sully me. She may cause a little ridicule to arise, but that I can
+scorn. The laugh at Montmorency will not reach Paris, far less echo
+around the globe! For a long time I hoped to enlighten her and redeem
+her, but I have failed. But I am bound to enlighten you and save you, am
+I not? From the feeling you harbor can spring only an additional shame
+for C&eacute;sarine, and certain, perhaps irreparable woe for you. Stop, turn
+about and look the other way. A man of twenty, who may naturally live
+another three-score years and work during two of them, who would talk to
+you of that nonsense, love's sorrow? That was all very well once, when
+the world revolved slowly and there was little to be done by the people
+who blocked nobody's way. But these are busy times and things to be done
+cannot wait till you finish loving and wailing, or till you die of a
+broken heart without having done anything for your fellow men.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Bravo!&quot; exclaimed the sympathetical and easily aroused Italian,
+grasping the speaker by the hand and pressing it with revived energy.
+&quot;My excellent leader, you are right!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;And by and by,&quot; said the other, with an effort, as though he had to
+master inward commotion, &quot;when you win a prize from your own country and
+you look for household joys more agreeably to reward you, you may find
+one not far from here at this moment to be your wife. For, generally,
+the bane is near the antidote&mdash;the serpent is crushed under the heel
+next the beneficent plant which heals the bite.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Rebecca?&quot; questioned the young man in amazement. &quot;But if I can read her
+heart as you do mine, master, Rebecca Daniels loves you.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;She admires me and pities me, Antonino,&quot; replied Clemenceau, hastily,
+as if wishful to elude the question. &quot;She does not love me. Besides,
+that is of no consequence. I have no room for love again&mdash;always
+provided that I have once loved. Passion often has the honor of being
+confounded with the purer feeling, especially in the young. Did I love
+that monster&mdash;for she is a monster, Antonino&mdash;I might forgive, for love
+excuses everything&mdash;that is true love, but it is rare as virtue&mdash;common
+sense and all that is truth. To the altar of love, many are called, but
+few elected, and all are not fit.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I see you are not convinced, because the dog that bit me is so shapely,
+and graceful and wears so silky a coat! Such dogs are mad and their bite
+in the heart is fatal and agonizing unless one at once applies the white
+hot cautery. The seam remains&mdash;from time to time it aches&mdash;but the
+victim's life is saved that he may save, serve, gladden his fellow men.
+Would you rather I should weep, or force a smile, and appear happy for a
+period? In any case, since I have cured the injury and she is in my
+house again, I shall not retaliate on her. But if she threatens to
+become a public danger&mdash;if she bares her poisonous fangs to harm my
+friend&mdash;my son&mdash;another&mdash;let her beware!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Master,&quot; stammered Antonino, beginning to see the temptress in the new
+light, as Felix had often shown him other objects to which he had been
+blind, &quot;you may or may not judge her too harshly, but you certainly
+judge me too leniently. Better to let me go away, and far, or at least,
+since you began the revelation, make the evidence complete of your trust
+and esteem.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Clemenceau saw that the young man still believed in C&eacute;sarine, but he did
+not care to tell him all he knew of her. Had he been told that she had
+encouraged Gratian to flee with her and had abandoned him at the first
+danger, without lifting a finger to save him, or her voice to procure
+him succor, he might loathe and hate her; but Clemenceau meant to say
+nothing. Such revelations, and denunciations are permissible alone to
+wrath, revenge, or despair, in the man whose heart is still bleeding
+from the wound made in it so that his outburst is sealed by his blood.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No, Antonino, by my mouth no one shall ever know all that woman has
+done&mdash;or what victories I have won over myself&mdash;in severe wrestlings.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I see you have forgiven her,&quot; said the Italian, advancing the virtue in
+which he was deficient.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I have expunged her from my heart,&quot; answered Clemenceau firmly. &quot;She is
+a picture on only one page of my life-book, and I do not open it there.
+Knowing my secret, you are the last person to whom I shall speak of
+C&eacute;sarine's misdeeds. I wish your deliverance, like mine, to be owed to
+your will, but you are free and have been forewarned, so that you will
+have less effort to make than I. Let the scarlet woman go by and do not
+step across her path. Between two smiles, she will dishonor you or deal
+death to you! She slays like a dart of Satan. That is all you need know.
+But, as, indeed, you deserve a token of esteem and confidence from your
+frankness, affection and labors, I will give you one.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Having seated himself, he drew from an inner pocket a paper written in
+odd characters.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;The time of my giving you the proof of trust should make it more sacred
+and precious still. I have found the solution of the last problem over
+which we pored. You know that while we discovered the means of
+imprisoning the gas in a concentrated form of scarcely appreciable bulk,
+it was not always our obedient slave, we had the fear that sometimes it
+would not submit to being liberated by piecemeal but would now and then
+disrupt its containing chamber in impatience, and then the holder would
+certainly die, choked if the fragments of the gun had not fatally
+lacerated him. After many days and nights, I have found the simple means
+to render the gas innocuous except in the direction to which we direct
+its flow. I have written out the formula, in the minutest particulars
+and in the cipher which you and I alone understand. In the same way we
+two share the secret of this safe.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>He handed Antonino a peculiar key and he went to unlock the coffer which
+had aroused Madame Clemenceau's curiosity.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Lock it up with the other papers,&quot; concluded the inventor. &quot;I appoint
+you its keeper while I live&mdash;my heir and the carrier out of the work
+after my decease, should I die before having proved what I consign
+there. What matters it now if my material form disappears when my spirit
+lives on in thee! Well,&quot; he said, as Antonino returned, after closing
+and fastening the chest, &quot;do you need any farther proof of the
+confidence I have in you?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Antonino grasped his hand and wrung it fondly When both had recovered
+calmness, they went on speaking of their work, which might be considered
+past the stage when the projector is racked by misgivings. They went
+into the breakfast-room together, prepared to bear the singular meeting
+with the errant wife whose return was so unexpected. But she preferred
+not to take the step so soon, and, as Rebecca also kept away, warned by
+Hedwig, who might appear at the board, the three men took their meal
+together.</p>
+
+
+
+<br />
+<a name='CHAPTER_XV'></a><h2>CHAPTER XV.</h2>
+
+<h3>THE MAN OF MANY MASKS.</h3>
+<br />
+
+<p>From dawn a stranger had been wandering about Montmorency. Armed with a
+large sun-umbrella and a Guid-Joanne, his copiously oiled black
+side-whiskers glistening in the sun, showing large teeth in a friendly
+grin to wayfarers of all degrees, one did not need to hear his strong
+accent of the people of Marseilles to know that he was a son of the
+South. Probably having made a fortune in shipping, in oils or wines, he
+was utilizing his holiday by touring in the north of his country, forced
+to admire, but still pugnaciously asseverating that no garden equalled
+his city park and no main street his Cannebiere. He seemed to have no
+destination in particular; he stopped here and there at random, and used
+a large and powerful field-glass, slung by a patent leather strap over
+his brawny shoulders, to study the points in the wide landscape. Now and
+then he made notes in his guide-book, but with a good-humored
+listlessness which would have disarmed the most suspicious of military
+detectives. On descending the hillside, he did not scruple to stop to
+chat with a nurse maid or two out with the children, and to open his
+hand as freely to give the latter some silver as he had opened his heart
+to the girl&mdash;all with an easy, hearty laugh, and the oily accent of his
+fellow-countrymen.</p>
+
+<p>He exchanged the time of day with the clerks hurrying to the railroad
+station; he did not disdain to ask the roadmender, seated on a pile of
+stones, how his labor was getting on, and where he would work next week;
+he leaned on the gate to listen as if enrapt to the groom and gardener
+of a neighbor of Clemenceau's, regretting that the hubbub of cracking
+guns and other ominous explosions was driving their master from home.
+Then, rattling his loose silver, and whistling a fisher's song, which he
+must have picked up off the Hy&eacute;res, he paused before the gateway of the
+house which had become the Ogre's Cave of Montmorency, and read half
+aloud the placard nailed on a board to a tree and announcing that the
+property was in the open market.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;The Reine-Claude Villa, eh!&quot; muttered he to himself. &quot;The name pleases
+me! I must go in and see if it is worth the money. To say nothing,&quot; he
+added still more secretly, &quot;of the mistress having returned this
+morning. I wonder how she had the courage to walk along the road in the
+dawn, when she might have met the ghost of our poor Gratian von
+Linden-hohen-Linden!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>This acquaintance with the unpublished story of Madame Clemenceau rather
+contradicted the aspect and accent of a Marseillais, and, although the
+black whiskers did not remind one of Von Sendlingen when we saw him at
+Munich, than of his clear shaven, wrinkled face as the Marchioness de
+Letourlagneau pianist, it was not so with the burly figure, more robust
+than corpulent.</p>
+
+<p>He opened the gate without ringing and stepped inside on the gravel path
+winding up to the pretty but not lively house.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Attention,&quot; he muttered suddenly, in a military tone. &quot;Here is our own
+little spy in the camp&mdash;Hedwig. It will be as well she does not
+recognize me without my cue.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Running his large red hand over his whiskers, he jovially accosted the
+girl, after adjusting his formidable accoutrement field-glass,
+guide-book, case and heavy watch chain, adorned with a compass and a
+pedometer. She stood on the porch before the windows of the room into
+which her mistress had entered so early in the morning.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;What do you seek, monsieur?&quot; she challenged, after an unfavorable
+glance upon the stranger who had greatly offended her idea of dignity by
+not ringing and waiting at the portals to be officially admitted.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Pardon me, young lady,&quot; the man said, with the southern accent so
+strong that a flavor of garlic at once pervaded the air, &quot;but I did not
+think that your papa and mamma and the family were in the house, seeing
+that it is for sale.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Young lady? My papa? Let me tell you that I am the housemaid here and
+if you have intended to jest&mdash;&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Jest! purchasing a house, and rather large gardens, is no jest, not in
+the environs of Paris!&quot; returned the visitor. &quot;Is it you who are to show
+the property?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No. If you will wait, I will tell master,&quot; said Hedwig, not at all
+flattered by being pretendedly taken for &quot;the daughter of the house.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>She turned round, made the half-circuit of the house, and entered the
+breakfast-room where the three gentlemen were still in debate.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;A gentleman, to see the house, with a view to purchase, eh?&quot; said
+Clemenceau. &quot;Very well, I will go into the drawing-room and speak with
+him. Is your mistress having a nap?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No, monsieur.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Then, be so good as to tell her that somebody has come about the house,
+and as such inquirers are sure to be supplied by their wives with
+formidable lists of questions about domestic details, I should be
+obliged by her coming down to send the person away satisfied.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>He followed Hedwig on the way up through the house as far as the
+drawing-room door, where his path branched off. Entering, he threw open
+the double window-sashes and politely asked the gentleman to make use of
+this direct road, with an apology for suggesting it. But he had seen at
+a glance that this kind of happy-go-lucky tourist was not of the
+ceremonious strain.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;It is you, monsieur,&quot; began the latter, taking the seat pointed out to
+him and immediately swinging one leg, mounted on the other knee, with
+the utmost nonchalance, &quot;it is you who are the proprietor of this pretty
+place?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes; my name is Clemenceau, at your service.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Then, monsieur, I am&mdash;where the plague have I put my card-case&mdash;I am
+Guillaume Cantagnac, lately in business as a notary, but for the
+present, at the head of an enterprise for the purchase of landed
+estates, and their development by high culture for the ground and
+superior structures instead of their antiquated houses. I read in the
+<i>Moniteur des Ventes</i>, and on the placard at your gates, that you are
+willing to dispose of this residence and the land appertaining
+thereunto. I am not on business this morning, but taking a little
+pleasure-trip&mdash;no, not pleasure-trip&mdash;God forbid I should find any
+pleasure now! I mean a little tour for distraction after a great sorrow
+that has befallen me.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The stout man, though he could have felled a bull with a blow of his
+leg-of-mutton fist, seemed about to break down in tears. But, burying
+his empurpled nose in a large red handkerchief, he passed off his
+emotion in a potent blast which made the ornaments on the mantel-shelf
+quake, and resumed in an unsteady voice:</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I would have made a note and deferred to another day seeing the
+property you offer and learning its area, value, situation, advantages
+and defects&mdash;for there is always some flaw in a terrestrial paradise,
+ha, ha! But your hospitable gate was on the latch&mdash;such an inviting
+expression was on the face of a rather pretty servant girl on your
+porch&mdash;faith! I could not resist the temptation to make the acquaintance
+of the happy owner of this Eden! and lo! I am rewarded by the power to
+go home to Marseilles and tell my companion domino-players in the Caf&eacute;
+Dame de la Garde that I saw the renowned constructor of the new
+cannon&mdash;M. Felix Clemenceau, with whom the Emperor has spoken about the
+defense of our beloved country!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Clemenceau could only bow under this deluge of words.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;M. Clemenceau, will you honor me with the clasp of the hand?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The host allowed his hand to disappear from view in the enormous one
+presented, timidly.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Ah! in case of the universal European War, they are talking about,
+France will have need of such men as you!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The embarrassing situation for the modest inventor was altered for the
+better by the entrance of Antonino, who darted a keen glance upon the
+genial stranger.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;How do you do?&quot; cried the latter, nodding kindly. &quot;Your son, I suppose,
+M. Clemenceau?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;By adoption. I am hardly of the age to have a son as old as that!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I beg your pardon! I see now, that it is brain-work that has worn you
+out a little. But, bless you, that will all get smoothed out when you
+begin to enjoy the windfall of fortune! I dare say now you are selling
+out because the Emperor offers you a piece of one of his parks, wanting
+you to live near him. And I presume this bright young gentleman is of
+the same profession? Has he, too, invented a great gun?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;He is the author of several not inconsiderable inventions,&quot; replied
+Clemenceau for Antonino, who was not delighted with the stranger's ways,
+had gone to look out of the nearest window, although it necessitated his
+rudely turning his back on him.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Any cannon among them?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No, M. Cant&mdash;Cant&mdash;&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Cantagnac&mdash;&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Cantagnac; only a very notable bullet of novel shape.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;A bullet, dear me! a bullet! a novel bullet! what an age we are living
+in, to be sure! I applaud you, young man, and you must allow me to say
+to my companions in the Caf&eacute; de la Garde at Marseilles, that I shook the
+hand of the inventor of the new bullet!&quot; But as Antonino did not make a
+responsive movement, he had to add, unabashed: &quot;before I go, I mean!
+But allow me to say, gentlemen, that though I am only a commonplace
+notary, and a retired one, at that, ha, ha! a buyer of houses to
+modernize, and land to improve in cultivation; though lowly, and very
+ill-informed on the great questions which occupy you, yet I venture to
+assert that I take the greatest interest in your labors. I would give
+half&mdash;aye, three-quarters of my possessions toward your success. My life
+should be yours if it were useful in any way, although that would be a
+small gift, as it has no value in my own eyes. I had a son, M.
+Clemenceau&mdash;an only son, tall, dark, handsome and, though he took after
+me, bright&mdash;like this young gentleman of talent here!&quot; He flourished the
+voluminous red handkerchief again. &quot;In an evil hour, I let him go on a
+holiday excursion and he chose the Rhine. His boyish gallantry caused
+him to champion a waitress on a steamboat, whom a bullying German
+officer of the Landsturm had chucked under the chin. High words were
+exchanged&mdash;my boy challenged the giant, who did not understand our way
+among gentlemen of settling such matters&mdash;he knocked my hopeful one
+overboard&mdash;no, gentlemen, he was not drowned, but he never recovered
+from the mortification of being laughed at. He came home but to die&mdash;in
+the following year, poor, sensitive soul! His mother never held her head
+up again, and I&mdash;&quot; he blew his nose with a tremendous peal, &quot;I&mdash;I beg
+your pardon for forgetting my business, again.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Not at all!&quot; exclaimed Clemenceau, while Antonino, angry at having
+misjudged the bereaved parent, offered him the hand he had previously
+refused.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I thank you both,&quot; said M. Cantagnac, hastening to dry his tears which
+might have seemed of the crocodile sort when they had time to remember
+he had been a notary. &quot;This is not my usual bearing! Three years ago I
+was called the Merry One, for I was always laughing, but now&quot;&mdash;he gave a
+great gulp at a sob like a rosy-gilled salmon taking in a fly and
+abruptly said:</p>
+
+<p>&quot;So you want to sell your house, with all belongings? Which are&mdash;&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;About twelve acres, mostly young wood, but some rocky ground ornamental
+enough, which will never be productive. Do you mind getting the plan,
+Antonino? It is hanging up in my study.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Antonino went out, not sorry to be beyond earshot of the boisterous
+negotiator.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Young wood, eh?&quot; repeated the latter, &quot;humph! lots of stony ground!
+ahem! yet it is pretty and so near town. I wonder you sell it.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I want ready money,&quot; returned Clemenceau, bluntly.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;So we all do, ha, ha! But you surely could raise on it by mortgage.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I have tried that.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;The deuce you have! That's strange, when the Emperor said your
+discovery&mdash;&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;It is a gold mine, but like gold mines, it has plunged the discoverer
+into debt.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I dare say it would! and I suppose it is not so certain-sure as the
+newspapers assert&mdash;&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I beg your pardon, it is beyond all doubt,&quot; replied Clemenceau,
+sharply.</p>
+
+
+
+<br />
+<a name='CHAPTER_XVI'></a><h2>CHAPTER XVI.</h2>
+
+<h3>STRIKE NOT WOMAN, EVEN WITH ROSES.</h3>
+<br />
+
+<p>&quot;Stop a bit,&quot; said M. Cantagnac, pulling a newspaper out of his pocket.
+&quot;This is a journal I picked up in the cars. I always do that. There is
+sure to be some passenger to throw them down and so I never buy any
+myself when I am traveling, ha, ha! Well, in this very sheet, there is a
+long article about you. It is called 'The Ideal Cannon' and the writer
+declares that the experiment was a great hit, ha, ha! and he undertakes
+to explain the new system.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Clemenceau smiled contemptuously. He was not one of those to make a
+secret public property on which a nation's salvation might depend. In
+such momentous matters, he would have had arsenals, armories, navy yards
+and military museums labeled over the door:</p>
+
+<div class='poem'><div class='stanza'>
+<span>&quot;Speech is silver, silence is of gold;<br /></span>
+<span>Death unto him who dares the tale unfold!&quot;<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>&quot;Ah, he wouldn't know everything, of course. However, he makes out that
+you obtain the wonderful result by fixing essential oils in a special
+magazine and that you managed to project a solid shot to the prodigious
+distance of&mdash;of&mdash;&quot; he referred to the newspaper&mdash;&quot;fifteen miles by means
+of&mdash;of&mdash;I do not understand these jaw-breaking scientific terms. Is it
+not nitroglycerine?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I do not use them myself,&quot; remarked Clemenceau, dryly.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;But he adds&mdash;look here!&quot; continued the worthy Man from Marseilles,
+regretfully, &quot;that what you managed to perform with your model and
+material, specially prepared by yourself, could not be attained on the
+proper scale in a war campaign. He goes on to say that the scientific
+world await the explanation of the means to obtain such power as,
+heretofore, the pressure of liquefied gases has been but some five
+hundred pounds to the square inch, about a tenth of that of explosives
+now used. It is admitted, however, that there may be something in your
+increase of effectiveness by reiterated emissions&mdash;&quot; He began to
+stammer, as if he were speaking too glibly, but his auditor took no
+alarm. &quot;He continues that, up to this day, gases have failed as
+propelling powers from their instantaneous explosions.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;The writer is correct,&quot; said Clemenceau, a little warmed, &quot;or, rather,
+he had foundation for his criticism when he wrote. The powerful agent
+was not perfectly controllable at the period of my last official
+experiments, but that is not the case at present. This enormous, almost
+incalculable power is so perfectly under my thumb, monsieur, that not
+only is it manageable in the largest cannon, but it is suitable for a
+parlor pistol, which a child might play with.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Wonderful!&quot; ejaculated Cantagnac, with undoubted sincerity, for his
+eyes gleamed.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;In solving that last enigma, I found the power became more strong when
+curbed. Consequently, the gun that would before have carried fifteen
+miles, may send twenty, and the ball, if not explosible, might ricochet
+three.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Wonderful!&quot; cried the Marseillais again, who displayed very deep
+interest in the abstruse subject for a retired notary.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;The bullet, or shell, or ball&mdash;all the projectiles are perfected now!&quot;
+went on Clemenceau, triumphantly, &quot;and were I surrounded by a million of
+men, or had I an impregnable fortress before me, a battery of my cannon
+would finish the struggle in not more than four hours.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Why, this is a force of nature, not man's work,&quot; said Cantagnac,
+through his grating teeth, as though the admiration were extracted from
+him. &quot;I do not see how any army or any fort could resist such
+instruments.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No, monsieur, not one.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Would not all the other nations unite against your country?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;What would that matter, when, I repeat, the number of adversaries would
+not affect the question?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;What a dreadful thing! I beg your pardon, but I go to church and I have
+had 'Love one another!' dinned into my ears. What is to become of that
+precept, eh?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;It is what I should diffuse by my cannon,&quot; returned Clemenceau.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;By scattering the limbs of thousands of men, ha, ha!&quot; but his laugh
+sounded very hollow, indeed.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Not so; by destroying warfare,&quot; was the inventor's reply. &quot;War is
+impious, immoral and monstrous, and not the means employed in it. The
+more terrible they are, the sooner will come the millennium. On the day
+when men find that no human protection, no rank, no wealth, no
+influential connections, nothing can shield them from destruction by
+hundreds of thousands, not only on the battlefield, but in their houses,
+within the highest fortified ramparts, they will no longer risk their
+country, homes, families and bodies, for causes often insignificant or
+dishonest. At present, all reflecting men who believe that the divine
+law ought to rule the earth, should have but one thought and a single
+aim: to learn the truth, speak it and impress it by all possible means
+wherever it is not recognized. I am a man who has frittered away too
+much of his time on personal tastes and emotions, and I vow that I shall
+never let a day pass without meditating upon the destination whither all
+the world should move, and I mean to trample over any obstacle that
+rises before me. The time is one when men could carouse, amuse
+themselves, doze and trifle&mdash;or keep in a petty clique. The real society
+will be formed of those who toil and watch, believe and govern.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I see, monsieur, that you cherish a hearty hatred for the enemies of
+the student and the worker,&quot; said the ex-notary, not without an
+inexplicable bitterness, &quot;and that you seek the suppression of the
+swordsman.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You mistake&mdash;I hate nobody,&quot; loftily answered Clemenceau. &quot;If I thought
+that my country would use my discovery to wage an unjust war, I declare
+that I should annihilate the invention. But whatever rulers may intend,
+my country will never long carry on an unfair war and it is only to make
+right prevail that France should be furnished with irresistible power.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>While listening, Cantagnac had probably considered that raillery was not
+proper to treat such exaltation, for he changed his tone and noisily
+applauded the sentiments.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Capital, capital! that's what I call sensible talk! And do you believe
+that I would leave a man, a patriot, in temporary embarrassment when he
+has discovered the salvation of our country? Why, this house will become
+a sight for the world and his wife to flock unto! I am proud that I have
+stood within the walls and I shall tell the domino-players of the
+Caf&eacute;&mdash;but never mind that now! To business! Between ourselves, are you
+particularly fond of this house?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;It is my only French home, where I brought my bride, where my child was
+born&mdash;where the great child of my brain came forth&mdash;&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Enough! we can arrange this neatly. It is my element to smooth matters
+over. Something is in the air about a company to 'work' your minor
+inventions in firearms, eh? good! I engage, from my financial
+connections, to find you all funds required; I shall charge twenty-five
+per cent. on the profits, and never interfere with your scientific
+department, which I do not understand, anyway. There is no necessity of
+our seeing one another in the business, but I do want to put my shoulder
+to the wheel&mdash;<i>wheel</i> of Fortune, eh? ha, ha!&quot; and he rubbed his large
+hands gleefully till they fairly glowed.</p>
+
+<p>There was no resisting openness like this, and Clemenceau heartily
+thanked the volunteer &quot;backer,&quot; as is said in monetary circles.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;That's very kind; but the proposal has previously been made to me by an
+old friend, an Israelite who also has connections with the principal
+bankers. But these transactions take time, on a large scale and to
+embrace the world. Meanwhile, although he would readily and easily find
+me temporary accommodation, the pressure on me is not acute enough for
+me to accept a helping hand.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I understand: you would not be in difficulties if you were another kind
+of man. Let us say no more about it. As the company will be a public
+one, I suppose, I can take shares. About this mortgage over our heads,
+is some bank holding it?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Well, no; my wife has it, as part of the marriage portion, or rather
+my gift. I have sent for her to step down to discuss the matter with
+you.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Happy to see the lady,&quot; said Cantagnac, pulling out his whiskers and
+adjusting the points of his collar. &quot;We will discuss it, with an eye to
+your interests, monsieur.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>It was clear that M. Cantagnac had not enchanted Antonino, for he had
+taken care not to bring the plan of the house; it was brought, but by
+another hand. On seeing the lady, the Marseillais bowed with exaggerated
+politeness of the old school and stammered his compliments.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No, no;&quot; Clemenceau hastened to say, &quot;this is not the lady of the
+house, but a guest who, however, will show you the place.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>It was Rebecca Daniels. As always happens with the Jews, whose long,
+oval faces are not improved by mental trouble, she looked less
+captivating than when she had shone as the star of the Harmonista
+Music-hall; but, nevertheless, she was, for the refined eye, very
+alluring. She accepted the task imposed on her with a gentle smile,
+although it was evident that in her quick glance she had summed up the
+visitor's qualities without much favor for him.</p>
+
+<p>While Cantagnac was bowing again and fumbling confusedly with his hat,
+Rebecca laid the plan on the table and whispered to Clemenceau:</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Do you know that she is here again?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>He nodded, whereupon her features, which had been animated, fell back
+into habitual calm.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;She sends word by Hedwig, whom I intercepted, that she wants to see you
+before seeing this purchaser of the house. I need not urge you to keep
+calm?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Come this way, please, monsieur,&quot; said Rebecca, lightly, as if fully at
+ease, and she led Cantagnac out of the room.</p>
+
+<p>Left to himself, with the notification of the important interview
+overhanging him, the host pondered. He had at the first loved Rebecca,
+and it was strange to him now that he had let C&eacute;sarine outshine her. He
+had acted like an observer, who takes a comet for a planet shaken out of
+its course. Since he loved the Jewess with a holier flame than ever the
+Russian kindled, he perceived which was the true love. This is not an
+earthly fire, but a divine spirit; not a chance shock, but the union of
+two souls in unbroken harmony.</p>
+
+<p>It is possible that Von Sendlingen in transmitting to Clemenceau the
+notice by the butler's wife, that the Viscount Gratian was to aid her in
+flight, but which as plainly revealed the wife's flight, had expected
+the angered husband to execute justice on the betrayer. Human laws could
+have absolved him if he had slain the couple at sight, but Clemenceau,
+after the example of his father, had resolved not to transgress the
+divine mandate again, even in this cause. He would have separated the
+congenial spirits of cunning and deceit, but not by striking a blow, and
+the rebuke to C&eacute;sarine would have been so scathing she would never have
+had the impudence to see him again. Not by murder did he mean to
+liberate himself.</p>
+
+<p>On seeing that heaven had taken the parting of the gallant and the
+wanton into its hand, he had simply forbore to intervene. On the one
+hand, he let Gratian's mysterious and stealthy assassins stifle him and
+the other, C&eacute;sarine, run to the railroad station unhailed. The one
+deserved death as the other deserved oblivion.</p>
+
+<p>This woman was of the world and would be a clod when no longer
+living&mdash;her essence would remain to inspirit some other evil woman&mdash;the
+same malignity in a beautiful shape which appeared in Lais, Messalina,
+Lucrezia Borgia, the Medici, Ninon, Lecouvreur, Iza, not links of a
+chain, but the same gem, a little differently set.</p>
+
+<p>But Rebecca's was an ethereal spirit eternal. Thinking of her he could
+believe himself young and comely again and loving forever in another
+sphere. This was the being whom he would eternally adore, whether he or
+she were the first to quit the earth.</p>
+
+<p>Here lay the consolation. C&eacute;sarine, like all evil, was transient;
+Rebecca, like all good, everlasting.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Let her come,&quot; said he at last, lifting his head slowly and no longer
+troubled. &quot;She need not fear. I shall bear in mind the Oriental proverb
+Daniels quoted: 'Do not beat a woman, even with roses!'&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Hardly were the words formed in his mind than his wife appeared as
+though by that mind reading, frequent in married couples&mdash;she had waited
+for this assurance of her personal safety to be mentally formed.</p>
+
+<p>In the short time given her toilet, she had performed wonders. Perhaps,
+with a surprising effort of her will, she had snatched some rest, for
+her eyes wore the fresh, pellucid gleam after prolonged slumber. Her
+cheeks were smooth and by artifice, seemed to wear the virginal down.
+Easy and graceful as ever, she affected a slight constraint, which
+agreed with a pretence of avoiding his glances.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You must be astonished to see me!&quot; she exclaimed, for he did not say a
+word of greeting.</p>
+
+<p>No man could have looked less astonished, and, with the greatest
+evenness of tone, he answered:</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You ought to know that nothing you do astonishes me.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;But I remember&mdash;I wrote you a long letter explaining my absence and the
+necessity of my sudden departure&mdash;the despatch from my poor uncle's
+secretary&mdash;I ordered it to be given you&mdash;it explained my sudden
+departure&mdash;&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Hedwig gave me the paper,&quot; he said shortly.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;But my letter, saying I had nursed him to convalescence and had fallen
+ill myself? You had time to reply but you did not do so.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I received no letter,&quot; he said, like a speaking machine.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Dear, dear, how could that be!&quot; she muttered, tapping her foot on the
+head of the tiger-skin rug.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Perhaps it arises from your never writing me any,&quot; he said, but without
+bitterness.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Oh, I could swear&mdash;&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;It is of no consequence either way.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Since you did not reply, I came to you although it was at a great risk.
+I would not tell you that I was leaving a sickroom for fear it would
+fill you with too great pain or too great hope.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;How witty you are!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Would you not be happy if I died?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;If you were in a dying state, somebody might have written for
+you&mdash;Madame Lesperon or your uncle,&quot; speaking as if the persons were
+fabulous creatures.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Oh, my granduncle is well known at the Russian Embassy, and Madame and
+M. Lesperon remember your lamented father distinctly.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>He bit his lip as if he detested hearing his father spoken of by her.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Madame wanted to write to you&mdash;she expected you to come for me, like
+any other husband, but I knew you were not like other husbands, and
+would not come.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>She was sincere; women always speak out when boldness is an excuse.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You mistake,&quot; he interrupted, &quot;I would have come, under the belief that
+on your death bed, you would have confession to make or desires to
+express which a husband alone should hear.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;What do you suppose?&quot; cried C&eacute;sarine, trying to forget that the speaker
+must have seen the death of her lover&mdash;whether he connived at it or
+not&mdash;and her flight, whether he facilitated it or not.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I do not suppose anything, but I remember and I forsee.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Do you mean to say that you do not feel ill-will because I have come
+back?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Madame Clemenceau, this house is ours&mdash;as much yours as mine. That is
+why I asked you to come down here, for it is necessary to sell it.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Why am I charged with the business?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Because you have an interest in it. Half of all I own is yours.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;But you long ago repaid my share, and generously!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Not in the eyes of the law, and it pleases me that you should do this.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;But I do not need anything. My uncle was pleased at my nursing him back
+to health; his children have been unkind to him, and he has transferred
+to me some property in France, a handsome income! Grant to me a great
+pleasure&mdash;of which I am not worthy,&quot; she went on tearfully, &quot;but you
+will have the more merit, then! Let me lend you any sum of which you
+have need.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I thank you, but I have already refused a thousand times the amount
+from an unsullied hand!&quot; returned Clemenceau, emphatically.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;That Jewess'!&quot; she exclaimed, with a great change in her bearing.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Hush! strangers present!&quot; and in uttering this talismanic cue between
+married people, he pointed to the shadow on the curtains.</p>
+
+<p>Rebecca had concluded her pilotage of M. Cantagnac and it was he whom
+Clemenceau soon after presented to his wife.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Let me add, M. Cantagnac, that you must be my guest as long as you stay
+at Montmorency, for the hotels are conducted solely for the
+excursionists who come out of Paris and their accommodations would not
+please you. You are expected to sit down to dinner with us at one
+o'clock, country fashion and I will order a bedroom ready also.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Gracious heavens! you are really too good!&quot; exclaimed Cantagnac,
+lifting his hands almost devoutly.</p>
+
+
+
+<br />
+<a name='CHAPTER_XVII'></a><h2>CHAPTER XVII.</h2>
+
+<h3>DEMON AND ARCH-DEMON.</h3>
+<br />
+
+<p>After one sharp slighting look at the visitor, Madame Clemenceau had
+withdrawn her senses within herself, so to say, to come to a conclusion
+on the singular conduct of her husband. His cold scorn daunted her, and
+filled her with dread. Had not the Jewess been on the spot, whom she
+believed to be a rival once more, however high was her character and
+Hedwig's eulogy, she would have prudently fled again without fighting.
+She had the less reason to stay, as the house was to be sold, in a
+manner of speaking, from under her feet.</p>
+
+<p>Yet the Marseillais was worth more than a passing glance. When alone
+with the lady, whom he regarded steadfastly, a radical change took place
+in his carriage, and he who had been so easy and oily became stiff,
+stern and rigid. It was the attitude no longer of a secret agent,
+wearing the mien and mask of his profession, but of a military spy, who
+stands before a subordinate when disguise is superfluous.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Truly, she is more bewitching than when I first knew her,&quot; he muttered
+between his close teeth, as if he admired with awe and suppressed
+breath. &quot;What a pretty monster she is!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Feeling that his view was weighing upon her, Madame Clemenceau suddenly
+looked up. It seemed to her that something in the altered and insolent
+bearing was not unknown to her but the recollection was hazy, and the
+black whiskers perplexed.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Did you speak, monsieur?&quot; she said, to give herself countenance.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I spoke nothing,&quot; he replied still in the smooth accent which was not
+familiar to her. &quot;A man of business like myself, feels bound, if he has
+any natural turning that way, to become a physiognomist and
+thought-reader in order not to pay too dearly for bargains; I am happy
+to say that I rarely blunder.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Then you can read my disposition?&quot; exclaimed C&eacute;sarine mockingly.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I knew it before.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Indeed! then you would do me a great service, monsieur, if you would
+tell me how it strikes you, as an average man. For I assure you,&quot; she
+went on, taking a seat without pointing out one to him, &quot;that some days
+I do not understand myself, a most humiliating thing, though ancient
+wisdom acknowledged that the hardest thing is self-knowledge.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;If you authorize me to be outspoken, madame, I will enlighten you,&quot;
+returned Cantagnac.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Do not let me be in your way!&quot; impertinently.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;It is the most simple thing, for your entire character is described in
+these four words: venal, ferocious, frivolous and insubmissive!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>She sprang to her feet with quivering lips and flashing eyes, while he,
+like a statue, lowered upon its pedestal, calmly sank upon an arm-chair.
+Then, looking round and listening to make certain that they had no
+observers, he leaned both elbows on the table and fixed his sea-blue
+eyes on the startled lady.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Kaiserina!&quot; he said in a commanding voice, without the least softening
+with that southern suavity, &quot;for how much do you want to sell me
+secretly, your husband's invention?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The altered voice appeared not at all strange, but the words were so
+unexpected that she merely stared in bewilderment while he had even more
+deliberately to repeat them. Deeply frightened by this mystery which in
+vain she tried to solve, she forced a laugh.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Oh, it is no jest&mdash;I am one of the most serious of men,&quot; proceeded
+Cantagnac, &quot;as becomes one of the busiest.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>She looked at him like a fawn, which, having never seen a human being,
+is suddenly peered upon in the lair by the hunter.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You want to know who I am, speaking to you in this style? See my card
+on the table there&mdash;it says I am Cantagnac, the agent, modest but
+passing for rather subtle, of a private and limited company recently
+established with a cash capital fully paid up of several millions of
+<i>fredericks</i>&mdash;for, to tell the plain facts to you&mdash;the obtaining for its
+profit the ideas, inventions and discoveries of others. In short, we,
+who used to despise mental fruits, see that it is the most profitable of
+trades to work genius. As soon as we see, learn, or even scent that an
+important thing is being produced anywhere in the world, we hurry to the
+spot and by one means or another&mdash;money, cunning, persuasion, main
+force, if needs must, we make ourselves master of what we must have if
+we mean to be the world's rulers. With a European war impending, even a
+lady will see at once of what value an invention is, like M.
+Clemenceau's.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;In plain language, you are proposing to me an infamous deed!&quot; she
+exclaimed with scathing irony which failed to scare the other.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I am proposing a matter of business. Where are you going?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Straight to my husband&mdash;whose confidence you have imposed on by some
+deception&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Dear madame, do not do what you would eternally deplore,&quot; said
+Cantagnac quietly, and motioning with his broad hand for her to be
+seated again. &quot;I deceived your husband with a bit of character acting
+which you would, I think, have applauded, as you were once on the
+stage&mdash;the music hall stage, at least.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>She sat down, as if this allusion had stunned her.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;His secret is indispensable to my company and I was given instructions
+to try to obtain it, by surprise and for nothing, if possible. Without
+it, many another purchase of ours made at great expense, would become
+utterly useless. From an incomplete acquaintance with your husband, I
+feared I could do nothing with him; from a study of him here, at a later
+period, I doubted still more; and, having spoken with him, I am sure.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>A previous acquaintance with Clemenceau? It was a ray of light, but
+still C&eacute;sarine, who did not cease to stare at him, failed to identify
+him with a figure in her past. Was this only a new phase of a Proteus?</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Clemenceau is no longer the frank and enthusiastic student but a man of
+talent and feeling who has found his true course. In what concerns the
+revelation he has had from science, he is reserved and circumspect.
+Happily, man that is borne of woman, however great, if a simpleton and
+an idealist, almost always is the prey of the sex in one form or
+another. When they escape feminine influence, they are impregnable, and
+strong measures must be employed.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Strong measures,&quot; repeated C&eacute;sarine, shuddering at the icy, passionless
+tone like a lecturer's.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;They must be blotted off the book of life&mdash;and it is always painful to
+have to proceed to such extremities. It is frequent, very&mdash;and
+ninety-nine times in the hundred, we run up against the woman for whom a
+great magistrate advised the search whenever a crime is perpetrated.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;It would appear that you expect to induce me to commit that crime!&quot;
+sneered the woman, pale but rebellious.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;We have no need to induce you, dear madame, for we can constrain you.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Constrain me!&quot; repeated the woman savagely and tossing her head with
+pride. &quot;If you really knew my nature, you would not say that. You might
+tell me how?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Really know you? you shall judge for yourself. In your marriage
+certificate, you are described as of the Vieradlers, but your eagle is
+not the German one&mdash;it is the Polish. The women of your race are
+distinguished for beauty, when young, and freedom in love at all times.
+Your grandma has a volumnious chronicle of scandal all to herself, but
+her glory is thrown into the shade by the peculiar celebrity enjoyed
+rather briefly by her favorite daughter, La Belle Iza, that one of the
+Sirens of Paris who has, under the present Empire, lured the most men to
+wreck. This was your aunt. Her sister, your mother, quite as beautiful,
+was rescued at an early hour from her mother's manoevres to 'place' her,
+as she called it, and for this loss, the indignant old lady vowed a kind
+of unnatural vengeance, to be visited on the child of her who had
+offended her by remaining in the path of virtue. This child is the woman
+before me. Oh, it is useless to look at me like that!&quot; he grimly said,
+with the perplexed air of a man with no ear for music who listens to a
+music-box delighting others. &quot;Pure wasted labor! The old lady, who had
+fallen from her high estate where Iza had lifted her, and was ordered
+out of the capital for extorting hush-money upon her daughter's stock of
+love-letters, the old lady became a queen&mdash;a queen of the disreputable
+classes. In Munich, sleepy old town where superstitions linger and the
+women are as besotted with ignorance as the men with beer, she ruled the
+beggars and vagabonds. It was there that fate led you and you fell under
+her hand. She pretended to befriend you, for even so young, you promised
+to have power by your charms, renewing those she had never forgotten in
+her lost Iza. No one consulted the Almanack de Gotha when you were
+launched on an admiring society as one of the Vieradlers. You soon won
+a great reputation for freshness of wit and coquetry in all South
+Germany. In plain words, you could not see a man come into the
+drawing-room without wishing to make him fall in love with you. We want
+to monopolize genius&mdash;you to monopolize the love of man. You have the
+mania of loving, more common than it is suspected, especially by those
+who would have us believe that good society is a fold where snowy lambs
+are led about from the cradle to the butcher's shambles, by pastors
+carrying crooks decked with sky blue ribbons. The feeling is a craving
+in you&mdash;an involuntary and invincible instinct which was to have its
+inevitable end. You turned from a man who sincerely loved you to make a
+conquest of another whose heart was engaged.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Stop!&quot; interrupted C&eacute;sarine, triumphantly for she had detected genuine
+feeling the last tone used by the living enigma. &quot;I know you now! you
+are the man whom you say really loved me. Down with the masks! You
+are&mdash;&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Not so loud!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You are Major von Sendlingen!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Say 'Colonel' and you will be exact. Yes; I am the lover whom you cast
+off in favor of the student Ruprecht, as this Clemenceau was called when
+he pottered about Europe, sketching ruined doorways and broken windows
+and dreamed of architectural structures. A man whom destiny had chosen
+to be the greatest demolisher of the age! what sarcasm!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Well, you should be the last to complain! Was it like devotion to me
+that you should try to abduct La Belle Stamboulane in the public street?</p>
+
+<p>&quot;To remove her from your path! She was your rival in the music hall!
+Love her, love a Jewess? You do not understand men&mdash;you fancy they are
+put here for your pleasure, safeguard and redemption. An error! We are
+neither your joy or your punishment. Let that pass. You married the
+student Ruprecht who turned out to be your cousin Felix Clemenceau. For
+a time you played the part of the idolizing young wife admirably. You
+never reproached his father's head for the murder of your aunt and he
+said never a word about the old beggar-sovereign Baboushka. In your
+gladness at having stolen the man away from Fraulein Daniels, I believe
+you imagined that it was love you felt. Not a bit of it! Love is the sun
+of the soul&mdash;all light, heat, motion and creativeness! there are no more
+two loves than two suns. There may be two or many passions, but not two
+loves. If a man loved twice, it would not be love!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The hard man spoke so tenderly that his hearer dared not scoff.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;He ran through your witchery after a while, but he built his hopes upon
+maternity. You had a child but you connived at its death, if you did not
+deal the stroke.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>How accurately Sendlingen had measured this woman! Another would have
+cried out against him at this accusation&mdash;or burst into tears and so
+disarmed a less adamantine man. She did not blanch; she did not lift her
+hand to cover her unaltered features, but listened as idly as she would
+to the last plaint of the fool who might blown out his brains at her
+feet. The false Cantagnac pursued in his natural voice, rancid and
+imperious, rolling out the gutturals like a heavy wagon thundering over
+an old road.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;It follows, madame, that if you run to your husband at a faster gait
+than you took to run away with the Baron of Linden, to inform him of my
+proposition, I will tell him what you hear&mdash;I will accuse you of
+infanticide, of unfaithfulness&mdash;&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;He knows that!&quot; ejaculated the woman with irony and in defiance. &quot;Ask
+him, if you do not believe.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Impossible.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;He would not say a word to anybody, and I would not have confessed only
+I was driven to it.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;And he forgave you?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;All!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;He is very grand; and few men of my acquaintance would not at least
+have caned you smartly. However, it was not long after the 'removal' of
+your child, to put it mildly, that you threw yourself into the swim of
+distractions, such as were to be had hereabouts. The old marchioness'
+circle soon surrounded you; she was one of my company's instruments, and
+from that time we counted on you as a coadjutrix some day.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;On me!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Precisely! to whom should we look for aid and complicity in our
+concealed and wary work but to the embodiment of permanent and domestic
+corruption? You are merely an impulse&mdash;we are a policy, and you will be
+our bondwoman. Ah, we are merely men&mdash;not fools, scoundrels or gods like
+your husband, for only such would tolerate depravity like yours.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;He is like a god,&quot; said C&eacute;sarine, trembling, in a low, hushed voice.
+&quot;When he speaks, it seems to me that it is what people call conscience.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;How long is it since you acknowledged this superiority?&quot; sneered the
+sham Marseillais.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Too short a while, alas! some few minutes,&quot; sighed she.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Well, granting he is at least a demi-god, he is a power which we have
+an interest in destroying. Hercules became a nuisance to neglectful
+stable-keepers, and like conservative institutions. Let us have done
+with him. But, first, the final training of yourself. I repeat that the
+marchioness' house was the rendezvous at the gates of Paris, where we
+assembled our bearers of intelligence. Under cover of chit-chat and
+vocal-waltzes, we heard reports and issued orders. It was necessary to
+link you to us and we employed our foremost captivator, the dandy of two
+countries, the international Lothario, the Viscount-baron Gratian von
+Linden-hohen-Linden-<i>cum</i> de Terremonde. Luckily, too, he had been at
+the same period as myself, smitten with your vernal charms, and he
+entered upon his amorous mission with gusto. You believed him very
+wealthy, but let me tell you that the cash he really had under hand was
+our petty expense fund. Judge by that what a capital we control!&quot;
+exclaimed Von Sendlingen proudly. &quot;Our poor Gratian the double dealer,
+seemed not to be loved by the gods any more truly than by his goddess
+here present, for she let him, unassisted, be thrust down, on falling
+through a broken bridge, into the mire of a rivulet visible from your
+window. There he breathed his last. Fit death for a traitor! For our
+corporation, the untimely, unmanageable passion of this athletic fop
+might have had grave consequences, and for you. We did not find the
+money on his person only a pocketbook stuffed with rubbish, as if he
+were the victim of some gross deception. But, have no fear, Madame, we
+are not going to claim the sum from you, we prefer to let you regard it
+as a payment on account. We intend you no mischief, and we intended you
+none, then; we might have stopped your flight&mdash;that is, I might have
+done so, but I only threw myself across your path after you ran on, to
+stay your husband from pursuing you.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You were there?&quot; she stammered, more and more frightened at the
+vastness of the serpent which involved her with its coils, and which was
+so careless about the loss of its golden scales.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Enough! all is well that ends well! You will serve us?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;But I have repented!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Nonsense! you returned home because your husband was suddenly enriched
+above your dreams. Your repentance was simply a prompting of moral
+hygiene for you to take rest before a new and less unlucky flight. You
+had the instinctive warning that to the greatly successful inventor, the
+modern king or knowing man&mdash;for civilization has come round the circle
+to the point where savagery commenced and the wise man rules&mdash;to the
+wizard, power, riches, beauty, all gravitate. Your husband would be
+courted; duchesses would sue him to place their husbands or gallants on
+the board of his company&mdash;the dark-eyed charmer whom you ousted in the
+Munich music hall and whom you foresaw to be your eternal rival, might
+meet him again. With you beside him, she might be repulsed&mdash;with you
+distant, he would surrender at discretion. What a triumph for your
+self-conceit and banquet for your senses to make your husband love you
+even more than when he was the suitor! Look out! in battling with your
+husband you say you fight Conscience; with Mademoiselle Daniels, with
+whom I have had twenty minutes' pleasant conversation, enlightening him,
+you would conflict with Virtue. Tell your husband that the money you
+offered to help him, came out of our bank, and he will not forgive you
+or tolerate you this time. No, for his silence would no longer be
+loftiness of soul, but complicity of which I do not think him capable,&quot;
+he grudgingly said. &quot;He would hand you over to the police, and believe
+me, the Emperor Napoleon, having a mania on the subject of artillery,
+would personally instruct his <i>procureur</i> to draw up an indictment
+against you which would not miss fire. And were you to escape in France,
+we should have that abstracted money's worth from you elsewhere. Now,
+dear lady, for how much will you sell us the secret of M. Clemenceau?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The woman bowed her head, like one imprisoned in a sand drift, not to be
+crossed in any direction, but closing in and weighing down. She was in a
+pitfall, overpowered like Gratian had been, subjugated, soon to be put
+to the yoke and compelled to draw steadily the harrow of transcendental
+politics. Her caprices, faults, fancies, duplicities, wiles, caresses,
+impudence, conquests and delights were but straws out of which some
+great diplomatist would draw supplies for his cattle. It was humiliating
+to the superb creature, but logical. She gnashed her teeth, but she was
+sure that her cajolery&mdash;even her tears would be thrown away on this
+soldier-spy whom once she had jilted, and who at present surfeited
+himself with her defeat.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;It is a crime,&quot; she moaned, &quot;a dastardly crime that you require me to
+do.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Not your first! You robbed us for your own private ends&mdash;we want you to
+rob another for ours! you must not always be selfish.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>'But I had really repented&mdash;&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Pooh! you may repent of this fresh misdeed while you are about penance.
+I have no objections to you becoming a good wife! it will be a novel
+sensation, and of nothing are you more fond! Suppose you convince your
+husband that it is wicked to kill his fellow-men by the myriad&mdash;that
+love of woman is better than glory&mdash;decide him to go into a cottage by
+the Mediterranean with you, and&mdash;sell us the invention. We could put it
+to a righteous end; clear Africa of cannibals, that the merchants'
+stores, and farms to raise produce to fill them, should replace
+cane-huts. But I doubt you will succeed!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Never!&quot; she exclaimed, afraid that her hopelessness would injure her,
+for she would be the creditor of this remorseless combination without
+any prospect of repaying them. But all resistance was useless, she was
+convinced; she had to submit or she would be expunged from life. She who
+had fancied herself so powerful was but the lowly, abject subaltern at
+the beck of a preponderating power of which she understood no more the
+details than the aim and principle.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;There is always a second course,&quot; observed Von Sendlingen slowly. &quot;That
+weak, inexperienced, young Italian, who loves you passionately.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Antonino?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Antonino, yes; he carries the key to that coffer, and the key, too, of
+the private cipher in which the inventor records his discoveries.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Shrinking away aghast, her blanched countenance expressed her wonder at
+this preternatural knowledge. These master-spies knew everything, even
+under this roof, better than the wife! This grim giant carried on an
+abominable craft with thorough insight. That she could never emulate,
+for completeness was not her forte. Oh, had she but been a virtuous
+woman&mdash;an honorable wife, he had not dared assume to govern her! but
+when of a girl's age, she had acted like a woman; when a wife she had
+acted like the dissolute and unwived; when a mother, she had
+disembarrassed herself of the token of her glory of maternity. She was
+not fit to be anything but the instrument of such universal
+conspirators. She whom the viscount had playfully called &quot;Donna Juana!&quot;
+had met the Statue of the Commander at last, and once grasped, she would
+no more be free.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I shall report to our committee that we have made our agreement,&quot; he
+said calmly and then, as he proceeded toward the door with the jolly
+swagger of the Marseillais transforming his stalwart and rigid frame, he
+added in the southern bland tone, &quot;Delighted to see you again, dear
+Madame Clemenceau!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>She did not hear him, for she had sunk too deeply within the abyss. She
+regretted she had come back. It is true that the company which he
+represented so terrifyingly, might have pursued her and pestered her for
+their money, but she had the gifts that would arouse defenders for her
+in any quarter of the globe.</p>
+
+<p>Had she not one ally? certainly no friend! and yet, if Clemenceau would
+only help her a little, she might cope with the arch-intriguer. If,
+indeed, Felix did not save her, she would be lost. It was a dreadful
+game, but glorious to win it, and she would be another and worthy woman
+if she came out unwounded. In her distress, she would have had recourse
+to the Jew and have utilized Rebecca though her rival, too! Besides,
+there was Antonino, so passionate as to rush blindly, dagger in hand, on
+even a Von Sendlingen.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Come, come, cheer up,&quot; she said to herself, &quot;there is a chance or two
+yet. If only I could get over this crisis, I will reform and sincerely
+resolve not to do a single act for which to reproach myself!&quot;</p>
+
+
+
+<br />
+<a name='CHAPTER_XVIII'></a><h2>CHAPTER XVIII.</h2>
+
+<h3>A BITTER PARTING.</h3>
+<br />
+
+<p>With a somewhat less burdened mind, C&eacute;sarine was still pondering when
+she saw Antonino, who had opened the door but perceived her, about to
+withdraw without notifying her of his presence. It was the act of a
+devotee who feared to pray in the chapel, when the priestess stood by
+the saint's image.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Do not go,&quot; she exclaimed with vehemence. &quot;Come here after closing the
+door tightly, for I want you to enter into a little plot with me.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>She had regained her smiling visage and her sweet voice.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Would you do it?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;It depends upon who the object is,&quot; he said tremulously.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;It is against my husband,&quot; she replied with her smile more bright and
+her tone more merry.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I forewarn you, madame, that I should turn informer,&quot; he answered in
+the same light key, but forced.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;That would be very bad for him for I am conspiring for his benefit.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;In that case, madame, I am entirely your man.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Are you able to keep a secret?&quot; she asked with gravity.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I think so.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>They had withdrawn into the window recess, and could see the gardens, as
+they conversed. The light fell on her through the Valenciennes curtain
+and at her back was a sombre tapestry. Her late trial gave her an
+exhausted air which seemed the additional gloss with which melancholy
+makes a woman more fascinating in the sentimental eyes of youth.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I dare say you can keep your own,&quot; she pointedly said.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Not so well, I fear, as another's.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You must give me your word of honor that if my plot does not please
+you, nobody shall be told?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I give you my promise,&quot; he said freely, just as he would have given her
+anything she asked for.</p>
+
+<p>He had debated with his passion, uttered every reason of others and all
+he could devise, overwhelmed himself with good advice and created a
+Chinese Wall of obstacles, but he heard himself murmuring: &quot;I love her!&quot;
+The only way, he feared, to put an end to his wicked craze was to put an
+end to his life&mdash;an irreputable argument, but to be used moderately. She
+allowed him to quiver under her lingering gaze, and finally said:</p>
+
+<p>&quot;The fact is, I do not like the idea of M. Clemenceau selling this
+house. It would be a greater grief than he believes now. He has his
+dearest memories springing here. Besides, he could not work in peace in
+town. Fortunately, my uncle has provided me with the means to help him.
+I want to lend him the sum required, but I fear that he would accept
+nothing from me.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;He is a very proud man,&quot; observed the Italian, courteously, for, while
+he worshiped the speaker, he knew that she was not morally without
+blemishes.</p>
+
+<p>Not because her affection for him was a proof of that delinquency, for
+love overlooked that and gave it another name, but because he believed
+Clemenceau, and the woman, while no less alluring, was terrifying as
+well.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;It is an excess of very cruel justice!&quot; said she with a strange warmth.
+&quot;The greatest punishment on a wrongdoer is to refuse her, when
+repentant, the joy of doing a kindness. You need not pretend surprise,
+for I have done harm. I did not forsee what would be thought of my hasty
+conduct, and even if I were wicked; can you expect a woman to have the
+loftiness of genius like him, and the force for resisting temptation
+like you?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Like me!&quot; ejaculated Antonino, starting.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes; can you deny that you have had to wrestle and are wrestling now
+with yourself most strenuously?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>He averted his eyes and made no reply.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Child that you are,&quot; she resumed. &quot;You were right when you just now
+said that you could keep the secret of others better than your own. Can
+the eyes of an honest youth like you deceive those of a wayward woman
+like me? I thank you for the effort you have made&mdash;and the silence your
+lips have preserved. It matters not. I am glad that after doing the act
+of reparation proposed, I shall have the means to go away, literally,
+for good this time. It is time I went.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>He lifted his hand as if to detain her, but let it fall quickly.</p>
+
+<p>After all, if she departed forever without speaking out the secret of
+those two hearts, what harm would be done. Who had the right to prevent
+the susceptible Italian feeling the first impressions of the gentler sex
+and owing them to C&eacute;sarine? He could but be thankful that he saw only
+the prologue to &quot;the great dreadful tragedy of Woman.&quot; He might blame
+himself for cherishing the memory of the false wife, but he could not
+annul that early sensation. Was it her fault, brought to France at the
+sequel of a romantic adventure, if she met him, a castaway, and
+disturbed his youth and innocence? There had not seemed any evil
+intention in speech or behavior toward him, and he himself might be as
+proud as she was of the pure and respectful sentiment which should have
+contributed toward her amelioration. In this case, he&mdash;ignorant of the
+counter-attraction of the Viscount de Terremonde&mdash;imagined that she had
+struggled also against the pressure of nature and the sin was no more
+when she triumphed.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Well, listen to the secret which we can discuss,&quot; said she. &quot;I wish to
+be associated with you in a good action, which, I hope, will lead to
+many another, if it is the first. One of these days, when you learn the
+story of my life, you will see there was a little good in it to shine on
+the dark background. Are you not willing to help me increase it? In this
+case, that good and honorable man will profit.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Antonino listened spellbound, he could have been ordered up to their own
+terrible cannon's mouth by that resistless voice.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Let me live one day in your youth, illusions and unstained conscience,&quot;
+she implored. &quot;Well, here in this little pocketbook are letters of
+credit for two hundred thousand francs. It is all I have&mdash;take it.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;What am I to do with it?&quot; said Antonino.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Put it away somewhere out of my reach to retake it. I know myself and
+that, if I have a good thought one day, I might entertain the reverse on
+the next. If I broke into the money, I could not replace the sum
+extracted, and, another thing, I cannot make the use of it I intended.
+Leave me to win from my husband the acceptance of the help I wish to
+give him. It may take long, but until then, pray keep the money; that
+will not entangle you in any degree.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>What a strange woman! he thought. She does evil with the easy, graceful
+air of an almsgiver distributing charity, and she does good with the
+stealth of a criminal!</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I am a fair example of my sex,&quot; said she, divining what was in his
+mind, &quot;weak, ignorant, unfortunate: and stupid&mdash;and the proof is any
+harm I have done to others is nothing to that I have wrought to myself.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Antonino, taking the pocketbook&mdash;a dainty article in Russian
+leather&mdash;went to the oaken chest which he opened after what seemed some
+cabalistic manipulation, and the muttering of what seemed an &quot;Open
+Sesame!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Have you no safe yet, is that box strong and secure?&quot; she inquired in a
+tone of well assumed anxiety, as she hurriedly took three or four steps
+to bring her again beside him.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You need not be alarmed. That is a box of which we made the peculiar
+fastenings. It is too heavy to be carried off, and burglars will not
+tamper with it in impunity,&quot; said the Italian, smiling maliciously, as
+he put his hand on the lid to raise it.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I understand; it opens with a secret lock?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes; one I cannot tell you about.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I have no use for it,&quot; she said hastily, &quot;on the contrary, I wish the
+money to be where I cannot touch it.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Nobody will touch it there,&quot; returned the young man gravely. &quot;Stop! how
+will you get it if anything happens to me&mdash;if I should die?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;A young man like you die in a couple of days!&quot; laughed C&eacute;sarine.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;It may occur,&quot; he replied gloomily. &quot;Death has hovered over this house
+at any moment of some of our experiments with the most powerful essences
+of nature. And only this morning, when I was out to the post-office,
+they were talking of a hideous discovery&mdash;a young man's remains, found
+in a ditch in the Five Hectare Field.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;A&mdash;a young man?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;A foreigner, some said; but his clothes were in tatters, and the
+water-rats had disfigured him.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Poor fellow!&quot; said she, and quickly she added as if eager to change the
+subject: &quot;my name is on the letters of credit. In case of any mishap, I
+will plainly say so to my husband and he will return me my own
+property.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>That was sensible. He had no farther remonstrances to offer, and taking
+advantage of her glancing out into the garden, he closed the lid and
+fastened it so that she could not see how the trick was done. She was
+not vexed, for she saw that man is always weak and on the point of
+losing his Paradise. Antonino would betray as the price of love. She
+allowed him to go in to luncheon alone, wishing to inspect the
+mysterious casket; but, unluckily, she was interrupted by Hedwig, who
+rather officiously wanted to dust the room. Not for the first time,
+C&eacute;sarine, remembering the wide occult sway claimed by Colonel Von
+Sendlingen, suspected that the girl was not so much her ally as she
+wished. She had begun to watch her under the impression that she was in
+confederacy with Mademoiselle Daniels. She had perceived no signs of
+that, but she believed she intercepted an exchange of glances with the
+false Marseillais. They were of the same nationality and this fact
+caused C&eacute;sarine to be on her guard. Unless Hedwig repeated what had
+happened between Clemenceau and Antonino, how could the colonel know of
+their conversation?</p>
+
+<p>Hesitating to question her directly, disliking her from that moment, and
+feeling her heart shrink at her loneliness when such crushing odds were
+threatening her, she donned her &quot;company smile&quot; and went to the
+sitting-room bravely.</p>
+
+
+
+<br />
+<a name='CHAPTER_XIX'></a><h2>CHAPTER XIX.</h2>
+
+<h3>THE COMPACT.</h3>
+<br />
+
+<p>Luncheon was served and M. Cantagnac, seated comfortably, was trying the
+delicacies with rare conscientiousness about any escaping his
+harpoon-like fork. C&eacute;sarine did not give him a second look and neither
+he nor Clemenceau, with whom he was chatting on politics, more than
+glanced up at her. M. Daniels was more polite, for he warmly accepted a
+second cup of coffee as soon as she, without any attempt to displace
+Mademoiselle Daniels at the urn, took her place beside her.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Pray go on and attend to the liquors,&quot; she said kindly. &quot;I am so
+nervous that I am afraid I shall break something.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>She took a seat which placed her on the left of the old Jew. A little
+familiarity was only in keeping when two theatrical artists met.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;What is the matter with your daughter? she seems sad,&quot; she remarked
+with apparent interest.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;That is natural enough when we are going away from France, it may be
+forever.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Going away from here?&quot; inquired Madame Clemenceau.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes; this evening, but we did not like to go without bidding you
+good-bye. Now that we have seen you in good health, and thanked you for
+your hospitality, we can proceed on our mission without compunction.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;A mission&mdash;where?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I have succeeded in interesting capitalists in your husband's
+inventions. That is settled; and I have taken up again a holy
+undertaking which should hardly have been laid aside for a mere money
+matter. But there is nothing more sacred, after all, than friendship, I
+owe to your husband more than I have thus far repaid,&quot; and he bent a
+tender regard on his daughter, with its overflow upon Clemenceau one of
+gratitude.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Are you going far?&quot; asked C&eacute;sarine, keeping her eyes in play but little
+rewarded by her scrutiny of the sham Marseillais who devoured, like an
+old campaigner, never sure of the next meal, or of Rebecca who
+superintended the table in her stead with a serious unconcern.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Around the world,&quot; replied Daniels simply, &quot;straight on to the East.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Goodness! it is folly to take a young lady with you. Is it a scientific
+errand? No, you said holy. Religious?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Scientific of an exalted type.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Is science somewhat entertaining for young ladies?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Some think it so.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;She might not. Leave her with me. We are comrades of art, you know,&quot;
+smiling up cordially at Rebecca, as if they had been friends of
+childhood and had never parted any more than Venus' coupled loves.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Where?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;In our house,&quot; C&eacute;sarine replied, as though she were fully assured that
+the smiling man on the opposite side of the board would not obtain the
+property. &quot;I do not think we shall quit it.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;If she likes,&quot; answered Daniels, easily.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Rebecca!&quot; he gently called, &quot;Madame invites you to stay with her during
+my journey. M. Clemenceau is my dearest friend, and from the time of his
+wife consenting, do not constrain yourself into going if you would
+rather remain.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I thank you, madame,&quot; replied the Jewess, &quot;but I am going with my
+father, because we have never quitted one another, and I do not wish to
+leave him alone.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Dear child!&quot; exclaimed Daniels embracing her before he let her return
+to the head of the table. &quot;She will not listen to any suggestion of
+marriage. I know of a bright young gentleman who adores her&mdash;an
+Israelite like us, in a promising position. He will one day be a
+professor at the Natural History Museum. But she would not hear of him.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;It is not very amusing to live among birds, beasts and reptiles,&quot; said
+C&eacute;sarine.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Ha, ha! but then those are stuffed,&quot; exclaimed her opposite neighbor,
+showing that he was listening.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Very likely, she cherishes some little fancy in her heart,&quot; said Madame
+Clemenceau, thinking of both her husband and Antonino.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Possibly,&quot; said the Jew, complacently, for he knew that his daughter
+was very fair.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I believe I know the object,&quot; continued Madame Clemenceau.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I am rather astonished that she should have told you, and not me.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Oh, she has not told me anything, I guessed.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Daniels seemed relieved.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;And if you should like to hear the name,&quot; she began rapidly, but he
+stopped her with a dignified smile. &quot;What, you do not want to know what
+I have found before you, and so much concerns you!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;If she has not told me, it is because she does not want me to know,&quot; he
+observed placidly.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;But what if she tells him!&quot; persisted C&eacute;sarine.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;She would not let her lover know the state of her heart without
+informing her father; she would commence with me.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The wife smiled cynically at such unlimited trust and felt her hatred of
+Rebecca augment.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;There are not many fathers like you!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Nor many daughters like her,&quot; he retorted proudly. &quot;I am of the opinion
+that there is a mistake in the French mode of educating girls. The truth
+about everything should be told them, as is done to their brothers. The
+ignorance in which they are left often arises from their parents
+themselves not knowing the causes and end of things, or have no time, or
+have lost the right to speak of everything to their children from their
+own errors or passions. My wife was the best of women and I believe
+Rebecca takes after her. When she was of the age of comprehension, I
+began to explain the world to her simply and clearly. All of heaven's
+work is noble; no human soul&mdash;even a virgin's&mdash;has the right to be
+shocked by any feature of it. Rebecca aided me when I sought to make a
+livelihood by the profession of music, to which she had strong
+proclivities.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Clemenceau was listening in courtesy to this argument, and the false
+Marseillais did not lose a word&mdash;or a sip of his Kirschwasser.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Afterward, when my ideas changed, and I could make my way to fortune by
+a thoroughfare, less under the public eye, I associated her in my
+studies. She knows,&quot; proceeded Daniels, who had shaken off a spell of
+taciturnity which the stranger and Madame Clemenceau had inspired, and
+seemed unable to pause, &quot;she knows that nothing can be destroyed, and
+that all undergoes transformation, and cannot cease to exists with the
+exception of evil which diminishes as it goes on its way.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Cantagnac slowly absorbed another glass of the cherry cordial, which he
+had to pour out himself as Rebecca had retired to a corner where the
+host turned over the leaves of photographic album as a cover to their
+dialogue.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;If my daughter loves,&quot; continued Daniels, seeing at last that his theme
+was too abstruse for his single auditor, &quot;as you conjectured, dear
+madame, it is surely some honorable person worthy of that love; if she
+has not informed me it is because there is some obstacle, such as the
+man's not loving her or being bound to another woman. In any case, the
+obstacle must be insurmountable, or she would not go away with me into
+strange countries through great fatigue on a chimerical search.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Cantagnac had risen and, very courteously for his assumed character, had
+come round the table without going near his host and the Jewess, and
+entered into the other dialogue.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Did you say you were going far, monsieur?&quot; he inquired.</p>
+
+<p>Daniels nodded and opened his arms significantly to their utmost
+extent.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Leaving Europe with a scientific design? Ah! may one hear?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Perhaps it would not much interest you?&quot; returned the old man, who
+seemed to feel a revival of a prejudice against the visitor upon his
+coming nearer.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;The atmosphere of this house is so learned,&quot; replied, the smiling man
+unabashed by the sudden coolness, &quot;and, besides, more things interest me
+than people believe, eh, madame?&quot; directly appealing to the hostess, who
+had to nod.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You see I have a great deal of spare time since I retired from business
+and I am eager to increase my store, ha, ha!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Well, the idea which has tormented more than one of my race, has seized
+me,&quot; returned M. Daniels, &quot;I wish to fill up gaps in our traditional
+story and link our present and our future with our past. The question is
+of the Lost Tribes of Israel. I believe after some research, that I know
+the truth on the subject, and, more that I may be chosen to reconquer
+our country. The ideal one is not sufficient for us, and I am going to
+locate the real one and register the act of claiming it. Every man has
+his craze or his ideal, and mine may lead me from China to Great Salt
+Lake, or to the Sahara.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;What a pity,&quot; interjected Cantagnac merrily, &quot;that the Wandering Jew
+did not have your idea. It would have helped him work out his sentence
+to walk around the globe!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;He had no money to lend to monarchs sure to vanquish or to peoples
+astounded by having been overcome. But his five pence have fructified by
+dint of much patience, privation and economy. The Wandering Jew has
+realized the legend and ceases to tramp. He has reached the goal. What
+do you think about my pleasure tour?&quot; he suddenly inquired of
+Clemenceau, whose eye he caught. &quot;Child of Europe, happy son of Japhet.
+I am going to see old Shem and Ham. Have you a keepsake to send them or
+a promise to make?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Tell them,&quot; said the host, coming over to join the group, while
+Rebecca, during the continued resignation of Madame Clemenceau,
+superintended the servant's removal of the luncheon service, &quot;tell them
+that we are all hard at work here and that more than ever there's a
+chance of our becoming one family.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>On seeing Clemenceau approach his wife, the pretended Marseillais
+delicately withdrew to the corner of the sideboard where the cigar-stand
+tempted him. But he kept his eyes secretly on the two men who gave him
+more concern than the two women. He reflected that fate had managed
+things wisely for his plans, for if Clemenceau had married the
+incorruptible Jewess, he might have been more surely foiled. As for
+Daniels, the amateur apostle who hinted at a union of his people, he
+might be dangerous or useful. He determined to put a spy on his track,
+who might smear his face with ochre and stick an eagle's feather in his
+cap so that, if seen to shoot him in a New Mexican canon, that supposed
+lost Tribe of Israel which include the Apaches would gain the credit of
+the murder. While reflecting, his quick ear heard a light loot draw
+near; he did not look round, sure that it was his new recruit who crept
+up to him. It was, indeed, Madame Clemenceau, who put his half-emptied
+liquor glass upon the sideboard by him.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No heeltapi in our house, Monsieur!&quot; she exclaimed.</p>
+
+<p>Cantagnac tossed off the concentrated cordial with contempt; his head
+was not one to be affected by such potations.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Thank you! have you already opened the trenches?&quot; he asked in an
+undertone.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;By means of the Italian, yes. I have entered the stronghold.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;But he closed the door in your face!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No, no; I can open it at any time.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Excellent Kisschwasser, this of yours, madame!&quot; exclaimed Von
+Sendlingen, in his satisfaction speaking the word with a little too
+accurate a pronunciation to suit a native of the south of France.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Mark that man!&quot; whispered Rebecca to Clemenceau, whom she had rejoined
+as he stood by her father. &quot;Distrust him! his laugh is forced and false!
+I am sure that he wishes you evil!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Then stay here and shield the house!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No; I must go this evening. Ah, you men of brains laugh at us women for
+entertaining presentiments. But we do have them and we must utter them.
+Be on your guard!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;And must you go?&quot; went on Clemenceau to Daniels, as if he expected to
+find him less resolute than his daughter.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;More than ever!&quot; but, seeing how he had saddened him, he took his hand
+with much emotion and added: &quot;Rebecca will explain. I go away happy to
+think that the honest men outnumber the other sort and that when we all
+take hold of hands, we shall see that the scoundrels excluded from our
+ring will be scarcely worth disabling from farther injury.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>C&eacute;sarine, perceiving that her confederate was edging gradually toward
+the rifle which Antonino had been shooting with and which had been
+removed from the drawing-room, where the guest for a day had too many
+opportunities to be alone with it. To cover his inspection, she
+suggested that Rebecca should afford the company a final pleasure, a
+kind of swan's song, and went and opened the cottage-piano for her. The
+Jewess did not refuse the invitation and began Gounod's &quot;Medje&quot; in a
+voice which Von Sendlingen had room to admit had improved in tone and
+volumn, and would make her as worthy of the grand opera house as it had,
+five years before, of the Harmonista and its class. Daniels quietly left
+the room, loth to disturb Clemenceau, whom that voice enthralled and who
+became more and more deeply submerged in the thoughts it engendered. He
+suffered pain from the need to liberate his sorrows, confide his spirit
+and communicate his dreams. And was not this singer the very one created
+to comfort him and lull him to rest? Must he remain heroic and
+ridiculous in the indissoluble bond, and endure silently. On Antonino he
+rested his mind and on Rebecca, the daughter of the eternally
+persecuted, he longed to rest his soul.</p>
+
+<p>The greatness of this man and the purity of this gifted creature were so
+clearly made for one another that everybody divined and understood the
+unspoken, immaterial love.</p>
+
+<p>What an oversight to have let C&eacute;sarine abduct him when it was Rebecca to
+whom chance had shown that he ought to belong! If he had remained free
+till this second meeting, she would have been his wife, his companion
+his seventh day repose, and the mother of his earthly offspring instead
+of the immortal twins, genius and glory, which poorly consoled the
+childless husband! As it was, the powers constituted would not allow
+them to dwell near each other. She could only be the bride in the second
+life&mdash;for eternity. She loved him as few women had ever loved, because
+he was good, great and just&mdash;and because he was unhappy. No man existed
+in her eyes superior to him. Nothing but death would set him free from
+the woman who had not appreciated him properly. She had let pass the
+greatest bliss a woman can know on earth&mdash;the love of a true heart and
+the protection of a great intellect. If death struck them before the
+wife, Felix would behold Rebecca on the threshold of the unknown land
+where they would be united tor infinity. Her creed did not warrant such
+a hope&mdash;his said that in heaven there were no marriages, but her heart
+did not heed such sayings, and her feelings told her that thus things
+would come to pass.</p>
+
+<p>She had concluded the piece of music. She rose and, for the first time,
+gave C&eacute;sarine her hand.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Farewell!&quot; she said.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Why say it now?&quot; answered Madame Clemenceau, surprised. &quot;You are not
+going till to-morrow morning.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;To-night! I may not see you again, we have so many preparations to
+make.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Well, as you did not come here to see me, it is of no consequence.
+Farewell!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I am your servant, madame,&quot; said the Jewess, bowing.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Ah, Hagar!&quot; hissed she, &quot;unmasked.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Farewell, Sarah!&quot; retorted Rebecca, stung out of her equanimity by this
+sudden dart of the viper, but C&eacute;sarine said no more, and she proceeded
+steadily toward the door.</p>
+
+<p>Clemenceau had preceded her thither.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;What did she say?&quot; he inquired.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Nothing worth repeating. Beware of her as well as of that man!&quot; but she
+saw that he would not follow her glance and draw a serious inference
+from the way in which the wife and the unwelcome guest had drawn closely
+together. &quot;Fulfil your destiny,&quot; she continued solemnly. &quot;Work! remain
+firm, pure and great! Be useful to mankind. Above transient things, in
+the unalterable, I will await you. Do not keep me lonely too long,&quot; was
+wrung from her in a doleful sob.</p>
+
+<p>He could not speak, it was useless, for she knew already everything that
+he night say.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;At last!&quot; ejaculated Von Sendlingen in relief, when all had gone out,
+as he sprang on the rifle and feverishly fingered it. &quot;This is the rifle
+of their latest finish. What an odd arrangement! Where the deuce is the
+hammer&mdash;the trigger&mdash;and all that goes toward making up the good old
+rifle of our fathers? Oh, Science, Science! what liberties are taken in
+your name!&quot; he cried in drollery too bitter not to be intended to cover
+his vexation. &quot;Mind, this rifle is included in our contract?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Everything,&quot; she answered in a fever, looking toward the doorway, where
+her husband had disappeared with the Jewess. &quot;Be easy! The rifle, the
+cannon, the happiness, the honor and the lives of all here&mdash;myself as
+well! If there is anything more you long for, say so!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Talk sensibly!&quot; said he severely and gripping her wrist.</p>
+
+<p>Restored by the pressure, she drew a long breath and said in a low
+voice:</p>
+
+<p>&quot;One way or another, things will come to a head to-night. This Jewish
+intriguante and the old fox her father are going away by the railway at
+nine o'clock, and Felix will escort them. Antonino will be alone here,
+and I mean to make him my assistant as he has been my husband's.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Better trust nobody! it is risky, and, besides, with an accomplice, the
+reward becomes less by his share.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;How much is all? Will you pay five million marks?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;That's too much. Put it two millions&mdash;half when you hand over the
+cipher, half when we hold the working drawings and Antonino's
+ammunition.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Be it so,&quot; she answered after a brief pause, during which both
+listened. &quot;If Antonino will help me, so much the better for him. It
+would be delightful to see Italy with a native! Now go away. We must not
+be seen conversing together.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;If the young man turns restive?&quot; suggested the prudent spy.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Impossible! he is charmed. However, remember this: Return to-night
+after the party has gone to the station, secrete yourself in the grounds
+where you can watch the drawing-room windows. If one opens and I call,
+run up to aid me. If none open to you, hasten away. The danger with
+which I contend will be one which you could not overcome!&quot;</p>
+
+
+
+<br />
+<a name='CHAPTER_XX'></a><h2>CHAPTER XX.</h2>
+
+<h3>ON THE EVE.</h3>
+<br />
+
+<p>The evening was calm and clear over Montmorency, where there was even
+grandeur in the stillness. Nature&mdash;the discreet confident and
+inexhaustible counsellor, always ready to intermediate between God and
+man&mdash;nature was appeasing passion and misery in all bosoms but Felix
+Clemenceau's, as he strolled in the garden which he did not expect long
+to possess. Rebecca was going away and C&eacute;sarine had come, two sufficient
+reasons for him to detest the place. He had called upon the scene to
+give him advice on his course, and he hoped to understand clearly what
+it had commanded to him in the hour of grief tempered with faith. He had
+not the resources of others; he could not consult the shades of his
+parents; his mother's tomb was not one to be pointed out with pride, any
+more than his father's.</p>
+
+<p>It seemed to him that he was ordered to continue struggling till he
+vanquished; this he had always tried. Work and seek out! And yet his
+mind wavered and his resolve was unsettled. It was the ever dulcet voice
+of that Circe which sufficed to agitate and obscure his soul in spite of
+his having believed it was forever detached from her. But these
+umbrageous and odoriferous hills, knew how deeply he loved her, for he
+had spoken of his thraldom to them when he might not speak to her under
+pain of shame and debasement.</p>
+
+<p>Had he not undergone enough and pardoned as far as could be expected?
+But she had disdained condonation, mocked at it and trampled it under
+foot.</p>
+
+<p>Again she came to entangle him in her love. No; her wiles and witchery,
+for she was not a woman to love anyone or anything. Unable to love her
+own flesh and blood, she was an alien to humanity, as well as to love.
+To such a mother, he owed solely indifference.</p>
+
+<p>Such a woman was only a human form, less to him than the least of the
+patient, laborious animals useful to man.</p>
+
+<p>As the stars grew darkened by clouds above the impassible horizon, his
+reflections turned more gloomy and deadly. Was it impious for him to
+arrogate the right to substitute his justice for that supreme, and wield
+its dreadful sword? But he shrank from acting as his father had done,
+and mainly because he saw that, if ever the world knew that he loved
+Rebecca, it would say that he had slain his wife to clear the path to
+the altar for his second marriage.</p>
+
+<p>C&eacute;sarine had hinted of repentance, her return portended the same. The
+world would side with her. Yes; he would give her another chance. After
+the guests departed, he would let Antonino also go, he would resign
+himself to being coupled again with this chain-companion in the galleys
+of life!</p>
+
+<p>&quot;If it is true,&quot; he concluded, &quot;I will endeavor to lead her to the light
+and truth, although her soul is full of shadows and the divine spark is
+clogged with ashes. Oh, heaven, may she be filled with the temptation to
+do good and mayest thou receive her in thy endless mercifulness!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The squeaking of the gravel under a regular and heavy step induced him
+to look round, and a burly shape loomed up in the darkness between the
+plane trees. It was the so-called Cantagnac, who bowed, with his hat
+off.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I have been hunting for you everywhere,&quot; he said jovially. &quot;I want to
+say good-bye without company by, for it makes me timid, ha, ha! though
+you would not think it. Nice wholesome air, here! cool, decidedly cool,
+but wholesome. Doing a solitary smoke over a new invention?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No, monsieur, I was conversing.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Eh! but I do not see anybody!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I was conversing with Nature.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Oh, what the poet-fellows call musing, eh?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;A kind of prayer.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I see! well, his church is always open and you can go to service
+anytime, and day or night! and no collection-plate, ha, ha!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I make it a practice every day, if only briefly.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Quite right! quite! I am inclined that way myself, since I lost my wife
+and our boy. He said something about hoping to meet me one day up
+there!&quot; and he flourished his handkerchief about his eyes and toward the
+clouds. &quot;Blessed relief to pray and do you really get an answer now and
+then? in time, no doubt, for it's a great way off!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Do you not believe in heaven, M. Cantagnac?&quot; demanded Clemenceau,
+bluntly.</p>
+
+<p>In the twilight and loneliness, the question struck home, and the spy
+felt compelled to make some answer.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;My dear M. Clemenceau,&quot; he faltered, &quot;I never meddle with matters which
+do not teach me anything. One word has existed thousands of years, and
+yet full explanations on the highest secrets have been wholly refused,
+so that the finest intellects give up seeking them unless they want to
+go mad. So I think it my duty to abstain and not lose my time in studies
+useless and dangerous. It is not merely a matter of reasoning, but of
+prudence. Of course, every man is his own master. I grant that we
+certainly are subjected to a power above our wit and will. We are born
+without knowing how, and die without knowing why. Between birth and
+death, swarm struggles, passions, sorrows, maladies, miseries of all
+kinds; an unfair, uneven sharing of worldly goods, and scoundrels often
+happy and triumphant and honest people most often unhappy and
+erroneously judged. We are told that we should adore and praise this
+state of things; but I only hold such events as certainties that I can
+see and turn to my profitable use. Now you, M. Clemenceau, are a
+honorable man&mdash;a great man since you can carry on a conversation with
+Nature! Why not ask her a favor on account of your belief and your work?
+so that you will not have to doubt her some day more than I do. But let
+us talk of more substantial things. I have inspected the plan of the
+property and walked over the grounds. I have your agent's address, and
+in a week, I will write to him and make my offer. I dare say we shall
+come to an agreement. Let me thank you for your very kind welcome&mdash;I
+shall be off in ten minutes.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Absorbed in meditation, Clemenceau did not hold out his hand, and, with
+the idea upon him of the engagement with Madame Clemenceau, the spy did
+not remind him of the omission.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You need not walk over to the station, for M. Daniels and his daughter
+are going in my carriage. I will find you a place.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>This arrangement might have necessitated the false Marseillais going
+into the cars and getting out at the next station; so he excused himself
+on the plea that the walk would please him better.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;To tell you the truth, I am bound to take exercise or die of
+apoplexy&mdash;so my family doctor tells me. By the way, I have taken leave
+already of Madame Clemenceau. A Russian, you tell me? I never should
+have imagined it! Ah, one can see that you have converted her into a
+true French lady&mdash;lucky man! I can understand that you believe in lofty
+ideas beside a beautiful and talented woman like her! Lucky, lucky
+man!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>And he turned aside, calling out as he departed:</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I know my way! give my respects to your friends who are hunting for the
+Lost Tribes! ha, ha!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>This laugh, loud but not jolly as it was intended to appear, routed
+Clemenceau's solemn thoughts. It seemed, like Pan's, from a statue,
+which gleamed in a vista, still to reverberate when the inventor went
+back to the house. At the upper windows gleamed lights which moved to
+and fro, and shadows flitted across the openings; it was the usual
+bustle when guests are packing up, and the idea of the too quiet and
+lonely house, of the morrow saddens the observer.</p>
+
+<p>A woman's form darted across the lawn and made the master start. It came
+along easily, and he saw that it was one familiar with the grounds.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Hedwig!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>It was the servant who had run out to the stables to see that the horses
+were put to the carriage.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Stop a minute! we are in privacy here, and I want to have a word with
+you.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>The girl paused, intimidated and almost frightened; she lost color as
+she stood, agitatedly, shifting her weight from one foot to the other,
+and averting her eyes from the speaker. A thief caught in a felonious
+act would not have presented a more damning spectacle.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Not only are we breaking up the household, Hedwig, but the house is
+going to other hands. The mistress and I will live in a hotel at Paris
+for some time, on account of my changed business relations.
+Consequently, we must dispense with your services. Madame will, on grand
+occasions, have a professional hair dresser in, and so&mdash;in a word, I
+must ask you to please yourself about returning to your own country, or
+seeking another situation in this one. You can refer to Madame for a
+character; for, I believe, you have always served her faithfully. But
+you need not look to her for a present, too. Here is a couple of hundred
+franc notes by way of notice. I wish you well wherever you go.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>To the amazement of the speaker, instead of accepting the token of
+kindness, Hedwig suddenly put both hands behind her back, and stood
+confounded. Tears silently flowed down her cheeks; then, falling on her
+knees, she sobbed:</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Oh, master, I do not deserve this! Oh, master please forgive me! I am a
+very wicked girl!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;What are you about?&quot; he exclaimed, fearing that the unexpected boon had
+crazed her. &quot;Do get up!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No, no; not before master forgives me!&quot; moaned she.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Oh, yes, yes&mdash;anything!&quot; aiding her to rise.</p>
+
+<p>But she continued weeping, and with the fluency in the illiterate when
+they have long brooded over a speech to relieve their mind, she said:</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You don't know what goes on, master! but I am forced to tell you now,
+since you are so good. I have always been in madame's service since we
+came out of Germany. I was devoted to her, and I knew her when I was at
+the Persepolitan Hotel, but devotion when women are concerned, becomes
+complicity.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Madame never has cared for you, monsieur, for you and yours. She did
+not marry you for any liking, but because of spite. Not spite from your
+father having punished one of her precious family&mdash;they are all a bad
+lot&mdash;a witch's brood! faugh! but to Mademoiselle Daniels whom she feared
+would secure the prize. Madame carried on dreadful! When she went away
+last time, it is true she had a telegram from her uncle&mdash;but that was a
+happy accident. She was going to bolt anyway, and that came in so
+nicely! She was planning to elope with one of her conquests&mdash;the
+Viscount&mdash;&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I know!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You know? Well, you don't know that the dead man found in the ditch was
+the Viscount&mdash;&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I saw him killed!&quot; in the same measured tone.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Oh!&quot; She paused, but recovering, she continued, in a lower voice and
+looking furtively around: &quot;You cannot know that she came back with no
+good end. I believe it was to meet the gentleman who came in at the same
+time, a-pretending to buy the house&mdash;&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;M. Cantagnac!&quot; muttered the inventor, a tolerable flock of suspicions
+which that ingenious individual had unintentionally excited, rushing
+upon his brain.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;He's no Marseillais&mdash;he's a German, and he is a secret agent. He is&mdash;he
+is&mdash;well, I may make a clean breast of it&mdash;he is one you ought to have
+remembered, the major whom you cudgelled in Munich&mdash;&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Von Sendlingen!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes, and a colonel&mdash;I do not know but he is a general now; he has the
+manner and means of one!&quot; said Hedwig, shuddering. &quot;He knows all of
+madame's peccadilloes&mdash;ay, all her crimes&mdash;&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Crimes! be careful, girl!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Yes, crime, for she killed her little boy! Thank heaven, I had no hand
+in that&mdash;she would not trust me there, and that shows I am not so very
+bad a woman, don't it? She poisoned the little innocent as surely as we
+stand here under the eye of God!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Go on; go on,&quot; said Clemenceau, hoarsely.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;The colonel threatened to tell you these and other things unless she
+consented to sell him all your business secrets&mdash;and give him the model
+gun that goes off without any powder and caps.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Ah! she consented?&quot; growled the inventor, grinding his teeth and his
+eyes kindling.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Nobody can hold out against the colonel. He soon made me play the spy
+on everybody for his benefit. But this is not all!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Not all! what a sink of iniquity! Would she poison Mademoiselle
+Rebecca, too?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I do not doubt it! The old witch her grandmother must have taught her
+all the tricks of her trade. But I meant to say that she is setting her
+cap at poor, dear, young M. Antonino&mdash;&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I know that. Take your money! and live honestly.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No, monsieur,&quot; she replied with some dignity. &quot;And here is money that
+the colonel gave me. It burns me! I beg you to give it toward some good
+work, which you understand better than me. Will you not&mdash;and forgive
+me?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Have you anything more to say?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I have been peeping and listening, but they are all very cunning. I
+only gleaned that the colonel who has just gone out as if to the
+station, should return later and hang around to have the rifle and some
+papers delivered to him.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;By Antonino?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;If your wife can make him a cat's-paw; if not, she is capable of doing
+all herself&mdash;though, anyway, she is driven to it. But, monsieur, it
+burdened me and if you had not called me, I was coming to tell you of
+their schemes. I do not like your idea of killing people by hundreds,
+but it may be good to honest folks, beset by savages and such like, and
+it is not right of a servant to let a master be robbed by more than
+bandits and brigands.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I am grateful to you, girl.&quot; She seized his hand and covered it with
+grateful kisses. &quot;Keep your money and this I give you. Do good with your
+own hand, then it will bless both giver and receiver, as is written.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Monsieur, you are too good. Could I ask a favor&mdash;a proof that you do
+not think me altogether bad? Will you recommend me to Mademoiselle
+Daniels. The Jews do not object to Christian servants, and, besides,&quot;
+she said with simplicity, &quot;I am so poor a Christian.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You shall enter her service. You will continue, reformed under her
+charge. Go and pack up and hasten from this house&mdash;accursed as an eyrie
+of vultures!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I am glad you have the warning. Excuse me, but if you were to do like
+the colonel only pretend to go away and come back here to use your ears
+and eyes, you would see what happens.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>By the look that passed over her master's face, the girl, though no wise
+woman, perceived that she had mistaken. He was not the sort to act like
+a Von Sendlingen and hide himself to peep and listen. He would be no
+better than herself if he acted thus.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I have advised you to go away with the Daniels. I shall drive the party
+over in the carriage to the station and return as though I knew of
+nothing. There are times for men to act; times for God to have a clear
+field. Persevere in the right path, girl, and say no more to anybody not
+even Mademoiselle Daniels.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;But you will be seeing madame first?&quot; inquired the girl, fearing the
+collision to which she had contributed, but lighter of soul since she
+had flashed the danger-signal.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;M. Antonino first, and then your mistress,&quot; replied he in a stern tone
+which put an end to the dialogue.</p>
+
+
+
+<br />
+<a name='CHAPTER_XXI'></a><h2>CHAPTER XXI.</h2>
+
+<h3>THE LAST APPEAL.</h3>
+<br />
+
+<p>In the large room where C&eacute;sarine was to achieve her crowning act of
+treachery, she and her husband were closeted. On the latter's unruffled
+brow not even her feline gaze could read what a perfect acquaintance he
+possessed with all her past and her purposed moves.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Your maid tells me that you wished to speak to me,&quot; he said.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;It is necessary, on the eve of a change in our mode of life, so extreme
+as a home broken up in favor of a stay at a hotel.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I am listening to you,&quot; he said curtly.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;If I were to say to you that I love you, what would be your answer?&quot;
+she said, changing the subject and her tone entirely.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Nothing! I might wonder what new evil you intended to commit to my
+prejudice. Pure curiosity for you can do nothing more with me.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>She was convinced of that, and she thrilled with all the irritation of a
+woman who has lost her power of fascination over even one man.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Admitting that I cannot do you any harm,&quot; she said, &quot;others may and,
+perhaps a great deal. Would you believe that I love you at least if my
+pledge of love consisted in my aiding you to repel the harm and to
+triumph over your enemies at the risk of the greatest danger to myself?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>He shook his head resolutely.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;What other proof do you want?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>He intimated that he could do without any aid from her.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I am sincere, I swear it!&quot; she exclaimed.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;On what can you swear?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;It would appear that you, whom people rate as a saint, and so just, do
+not believe in repentance?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I do!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Then, I repent,&quot; said she, rolling her eyes like Magdalen in a Guido
+picture.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No; those repenting do not say so before they prove it&mdash;they give the
+evidence and do not boast.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;But what if I have no time to wait?&quot; she said piteously. &quot;What if it is
+necessary for my soul's sake and perhaps for yours, that I should tell
+you at once what I intended to exhibit gradually when I arrived? make
+the effort to believe me without delay, for one single minute may redeem
+my blackened life and save all to come. Is it so hard for you to listen
+to me, and to believe me?&quot; she wailed. &quot;It would only be renewing an old
+habit of yours, for you used to love me, and ardently, too! The first
+kiss you ever gave to a woman, and the only ones you ever received from
+a woman, are mine! you see I do not doubt you, though appearances were
+against you when I returned to this house. All your
+chastity&mdash;enthusiasm&mdash;energy, love and faith&mdash;all were poured into this
+bosom. Can these things be forgotten? No, no, never! I am sure that when
+a man like you loves a woman like me, her memory never leaves him.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You mistake!&quot; he said dryly.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;And you, if you think that those fops at the marchioness' were not
+tricked and fooled by me! even the cheat who induced me to leave my
+home&mdash;you see, I am frank&mdash;he was my dupe, and I saw all the time his
+inferiority to the husband whom I quitted. In that case, it was a
+fortune that tempted me, for you know how pressed we were! But when
+alone, sobered&mdash;horrified by the warning conveyed in the sudden death of
+that man, I valued you correctly, and saw that I loved you above all
+men. I was subjected to the power of goodness and loving which is
+enthroned in you. All of a sudden, as you fell in love, I adored you,
+and if only you could have been kept in ignorance of what I did, there
+would have been no wife more faithful, devoted, submissive and loving
+than your own C&eacute;sarine.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Did I not forgive you when I learned of your faults?&quot; he reproached
+her.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;True, you pardoned me,&quot; she answered, &quot;but loftily, as one at a
+distance, shaking me off and regaining possession of yourself. In short,
+ceasing to be a man. You led me to see that you would no longer believe
+me, because I had once told a lie. Your behavior was grand, noble and
+lofty, for any other man would have whipped me out of his house like a
+cur; and yet I ought not to have been treated so.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;How? like a daughter of the Vieradlers&mdash;though you are probably not
+one?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You should have abused me, trampled me under foot, even&mdash;but then
+forgiven me like an erring man. I am earthly&mdash;worldly&mdash;and I do not
+understand grand sentiments and half-forgiveness.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>There was some sense in her argument, but arguments would not have any
+effect on a character like his, which losing esteem once, was not to be
+deceived again. He had not required Hedwig's revelation about the web of
+treachery spun around him to be invulnerable to the pleading one. Her
+murder of her infant had ruined her irredeemably. Over it he had shed
+tears, though it was more in her image than his and, she had offered no
+one!</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Are we women more angelic than you men,&quot; she exclaimed the more
+feverishly, as she felt she was not gaining ground and that over the
+crumbling edge of which she vaguely hoped to climb, he would not stretch
+a hand in help. &quot;Are faults, errors and failures your privilege, as
+force is? Did I really care for any of those men? Do I even recall one
+of them? It was only in rage and spite against your coldness that I went
+over to the marchioness. I ran to these flirtations to forget, as I
+would have taken morphine to sleep. But I have not forgotten you, and I
+have not slept off my love for you, and this is the truth!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>He made an impatient gesture.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;In short, nobody could wile away my heart. All those men together would
+not equal such a one as you, whom I loved and longed for. I do not wish
+to live&mdash;I was really ill in Paris, though you will not believe a word
+of it, and will not trouble to learn that I speak the truth&mdash;so ill that
+I sat at death's door and the peeping in terrified me. In that black
+cavern there was no love-light, and I crave for love! Then I discovered
+that I could not live without you, and that I was right to forgive you
+so much, though you will not forgive me heartily a little. See how
+abject I am! You are the master, but do not abuse your power. If I have
+no soul&mdash;inspire me with one&mdash;animate the statue of white clay&mdash;or
+share with me your own. We are bound to each other by sacred ties, and
+the marriage law must have been made by those who forsaw that the
+noblest and most generous of men might be wedded to the most guilty of
+women, but that he would save her. Rescue me!&quot; she cried, sinking upon
+her knees.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I am ready; what do you want?&quot; he said in moved voice so that at last
+she began to hope.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Forget my faults and the wrong they have caused you. I want you to
+forgive me everything up to the present minute&mdash;proudly hurl the past
+into dead eternity and make all that ought not to have been like what
+never was. Lastly, I crave for our departure for a change of sun and air
+and sky, so that the woman I mean to become henceforward should never be
+reminded for a single instant of the wretch that I was. Oh, let us live
+no more but for each other&mdash;you entirely mine as I entirely your own!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Almost carried away by the eloquent outburst, Clemenceau had but one
+thought to cling to and hold him in the flood. His work of patriotism!</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Your work? well, there should be no work where love presides! after
+all,&quot; she continued, rising and venturing to slide her arms upon his
+shoulders, &quot;you only toiled because you believed I did not love you. You
+tried to become celebrated only because you were not happy. You were a
+student when I opened the book of love to you and the little I showed
+you to read gave you the yearning for more. Labor came after love. When
+I caused you pain, you looked for consolation and you owe your genius to
+me. Genius understands or divines everything, and knows what human
+weakness is. Ah, if you had been weak and I mighty, how gladly I would
+have pardoned you! Had you done any wrong&mdash;if you were wrung by remorse
+like most of us&mdash;what joy to make you forget it. But no, you are honor
+itself, and I lose all hope?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Poor creature!&quot; sighed he, but still like marble though her arms
+enfolded him and palpitate warm unlike serpents whose coils their curves
+resembled.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You pity me?&quot; she murmured coaxingly, although he did not thaw under
+her tightening clasp; &quot;then, you agree?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>He shook his head. As usual, when perversity defends, the pleading
+reached the judge too late. Her pressure became irksome, he thought of
+the devilfish tightening its rings till fatal, and, by an effort,
+irresistible while gentle, he disengaged himself from her arms. They
+dropped inert by her panting sides as if broken. But only for an instant
+her defeat overpowered her.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I see,&quot; she exclaimed, with a great change in her tone, &quot;there is no
+more room in the heart which I deserted! You have replaced me with that
+Rebecca!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;It is true I love her,&quot; her rejoined, &quot;but not as you suppose. Do not
+try to understand how, for you cannot understand. Heaven knows that I
+would have wished to associate you with me in the same love and the same
+glory, but it is impossible. Once we were ships in company, sailing side
+by side&mdash;I thought with the same sailing orders&mdash;but you stole away in
+the night and I have had to direct my course alone toward a sea
+eternally forbidden to you. Oh, if you only knew how far I am already
+from you! The being who speaks to me by your lips is not known to me&mdash;I
+see her not! I do not know who you are. The only bond between us is the
+chain the law imposes&mdash;let us carry it between us but each with the
+share apart.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;What is to become of me?&quot; cried C&eacute;sarine, forced to try her last
+weapon. &quot;You picked up a starving boy on the road and was kind to him. I
+am an outcast at your feet, hungry for love&mdash;succor me, no less kindly!
+I am a living creature, and I may be taught many things. Utilize me by
+your intelligence. Can I not be your pupil, your helper, your assistant?
+Do for me what Daniels has done for his daughter&mdash;initiate me into
+science, explain your labels to me and, associate me in your work.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Teach you what you would sell!&quot; he burst forth at the end of his
+endurance.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Can you believe that?&quot; she faltered, receding a step, turning white and
+trembling in the fear that he knew all.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Believe? I am certain that you are lying now as always!&quot; he thundered.
+&quot;It is impossible that your remorse should be sincere; it must mask some
+infamy. You have perpetrated faults which are unattended by remorse.
+Enough! If I am wrong, and you really do repent, it will not take a
+minute, but years for you to be believed, and it does not concern me.
+Apply to the Church, which alone can redeem and absolve such culprits as
+you.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Convinced that she had lost the battle and forgetting her cunning,
+Madame Clemenceau threw off the veil and showed herself the direct
+offspring of the infernal regions. Her voice sounded like the hiss of
+fiery serpents, and her frame quivered as if she stood in a current of
+consuming vapor. Her eyes, too, wore that painful expression of depth of
+agony as though her disappointment were excruciating. With his pardon,
+love, protection and fortune, she might have defied Von Sendlingen and
+his league, but, alone, she was a stormy petrel flapping its
+insignificant pinions in the face of the God of Storms. Felix refused to
+be cheated by her and she was lost. But the criminal hates to stand
+alone in the dock; she wished to be terribly avenged because he was so
+great and so implacable. She would show that she could be extreme, too;
+if she were not encouraged to love, she would hate.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Oh, you pitiless one, because you have right on your side and your
+conscience,&quot; she screamed; &quot;I will drag you down with me into curses and
+blasphemies, and others as well! whoever you hold dear shall perish with
+us!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;My father was threatened in the same way,&quot; retorted Clemenceau. &quot;He had
+not the patience I enjoy. Had he but waited a little, the viper would
+have died in her own venomous slime!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Then you will not kill me as your murderer did my aunt?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No! you have wrecked my happiness, my home, my private life, but I
+forgive you, and that is your punishment. You have cast your wicked,
+unholy lures about my adopted son, Antonino, but I overlook this because
+he will repulse you and, that will be an augmentation of your
+punishment. You threaten Rebecca Daniels, but such are protected by the
+great Giver of good and, that is again an augmentation of your
+punishment. No, I will not hurt you&mdash;I would not kill one to whom long
+life&mdash;as it was to your witch grandmother, embitters every fraction of
+time. Live! and, remember, if you are here when I return, that our paths
+diverge forever here and beyond the earth!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>She had sunk in a heap on the tiger-skin rug and her hair, loosened by
+accident or perhaps by design, streamed in a sheet of graven gold over
+her faultless shoulders. Through this shimmering net, her tears flowed,
+detached like strung diamonds scattered from the thread. But her weeping
+and her attitude were thrown away, for she heard his step as regular as
+a soldier's, leaving the room, crossing the vestibule and taking him out
+to where the carriage wheels ground the gravel. Von Sendlingen had gone;
+the Daniels were descending the stairs; even the servants gave no sign
+of life. Already the doomed house began to sound with those dull echoes
+when spectres promenade where human tenants have dwelt. Under ordinary
+conditions, her place was to speed the parting guests, but her farewell
+to Rebecca had expressed her sentiments, and she dared not risk another
+contest of wits with the Hebrew.</p>
+
+<p>She heard the horse's hoofs and the wheels beat the sand, and the click
+of the gate closing after the vehicle. The silence of death fell on the
+deserted house.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I am alone,&quot; she said, sitting up but not rising.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Now it will be everyone for himself and myself upon the side of evil,
+where they forced me to rank.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Hardly had she risen to her feet, very tremulous, and prepared to go to
+the mirror over the sideboard to re-arrange her hair, than she heard
+footsteps in the hall.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Hedwig!&quot; but listening more coolly, &quot;no, a man!&quot; she added, &quot;has Von
+Sendlingen the audacity to enter?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>A man opened the door, but stood petrified on the threshold.</p>
+
+
+
+<br />
+<a name='CHAPTER_XXII'></a><h2>CHAPTER XXII</h2>
+
+<h3>FELIX.</h3>
+<br />
+
+<p>It was Antonino.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Is this the keeper?&quot; thought C&eacute;sarine, laughing scornfully within
+herself. &quot;A pretty boy for the austere Clemenceau to trust! Do not
+excuse yourself,&quot; she called out. &quot;Close the door&mdash;it causes a draft!
+So, you told my husband that you loved me?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>Far from expecting this address, the Italian let several seconds pass
+before he faltered:</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Who told you so?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;He did! he never lacks frankness, I will say that for him. Well, you
+have destroyed my chances of securing a peaceful life. And yet I never
+did you any harm, did I?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I destroy you?&quot; repeated he, as she began to weep after a vain attempt
+to hide her eyes in her tresses.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;How is that?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Because I lost control of myself under his anger and his threats, and I
+confessed to him also that I was fond of you. We have a fellow feeling
+and selected the same confidant!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You love me?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;For what else did I come back to this gloomy house? What else would
+have induced me to stay? He drove me away before, and I never suspected
+that it was to clear the scene for Rebecca, fool&mdash;child that I was! And
+now he picked the quarrel with me about you in order to go off with the
+heathen! You men are so monopolizing! He wants to be let love the
+inky-eyed Jewess, but I must not say a kind word to you! Oh, what am I
+to do now?&quot; and in pretending to repair the disarray of her hair, down
+came a luxuriant tress. &quot;What does it matter which way I turn? All roads
+lead to the river or the railroad&mdash;a step into the cold water or repose
+on the track of the iron horse, and no one will then torment poor
+C&eacute;sarine!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You have some sinister plan,&quot; said Antonino, frightened by her manner.
+&quot;I will not let you go away alone.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Is it thus you guard your master's house?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Then wait till he returns and decide upon something.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;He will decide on separating us, that is sure. Do you think if he takes
+me, that you could go with us?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No! but if you meant to kill yourself, I should die after you.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Why not die together?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;I do not care.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Then you love me thoroughly?&quot; she exclaimed in delight.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Death would be repose, and this struggle is driving me frantic,&quot; said
+he, in a deep voice.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Well, we will die some day,&quot; she said with pretended fervor, &quot;but we
+are young and have time before us. Lovers do not willingly die! If you
+love me as I love you, you would, like me, find life all of a sudden
+wondrously bright! What a blessing that I have money for our enjoyment!&quot;
+clapping her hands like a child.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;In your fair Italy, we&mdash;&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Money,&quot; repeated he, raised by her magic into a region above such
+sordid ideas and falling quickly.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Of course! my bank orders! stay, they are in your box. Let us hasten
+away before he returns. Quick, take!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No;&quot; said Antonino. &quot;When he left the house in my charge he bade me
+touch nothing, and let nothing be touched until his return.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;He forsaw!&quot; muttered the faithless wife, gnawing one of the tresses
+furiously as she studied the Italian's emotion. &quot;Get me my money!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Wait until&mdash;&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;And with it those papers that describe your discoveries.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;What do you mean?&quot; he cried, coming to a halt, half-way toward the
+chest while she was undoing one of the windows of which she had drawn
+back the curtains. &quot;The papers&mdash;they are not mine, or yours.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;They will make the man I love rich and famous!&quot; she replied, with eyes
+that seemed to light up the room far more than the starlight entering.
+&quot;You know all about the work. With those plans in the language you also
+read, you can rise higher than he! He restricts his genius to his
+country&mdash;you&mdash;we will sell to the highest bidder!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Mercenary fiend! I comprehend all now!&quot; said the Italian.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;So much the better!&quot; she replied, coolly, having opened the window and
+descried a shadow standing guard in a narrow alley. &quot;We shall lose no
+time in explaining.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You mean to betray your country?&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Neither mine nor yours! our country is wherever love and gold are
+rulers.&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Wretch!&quot; cried he, taking a step toward her so threateningly that she
+retreated from the window to which his back was turned as he continued
+to face her.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Which is the meaner?&quot; she responded. &quot;I deceive a man who loaths me,
+scorns me and threatens me with the love of another! You deceive the man
+who shelters you and to whom you owe everything. I betray him who does
+me harm&mdash;you, him who did you good. We are on a level, unless you have
+surpassed me. This is love! Did you imagine that you can withdraw the
+foot that takes one step in this path? An error, for one must tread it
+to the end. The steps are passion, the fault, the vice and the crime.
+But I have need of you to save me. I am yours and your soul is mine!
+Take the spoil and follow me!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>In his surprise, Antonino did not remark a footstep, sounding harsh with
+gravel grinding the wood of the verandah, or a grim face at the open
+window.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You are right,&quot; he said. &quot;I am a scoundrel, but I am not going to be a
+villain. It is I who should commit suicide. Farewell! my death be on
+your head!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;You have spoken your doom!&quot; said she quickly, as she made a sign to Von
+Sendlingen in whose hand she saw naked steel abruptly gleam.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Who's there?&quot; began the Italian, but, before he could turn, the long
+stiletto, drawn out of a sword-cane, was passed through his slender
+body.</p>
+
+<p>He fell without a groan and his staring eyes, sublimely unconscious of
+his assassin and of the instigator of the crime, were riveted, on the
+ceiling.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;Confound it!&quot; said the colonel, &quot;this is not your husband!&quot;</p>
+
+<p>&quot;No, another conscientious fool!&quot; she said brutally. &quot;Waste no time on
+that boy. Before the man returns, let us seize our prise. Keep your
+hands off. This is no common chest. It opens with a combination lock and
+the word is 'R-e-b-e-c-c-a!'&quot;</p>
+
+<p>She quickly fingered the studs which opened the lock when properly
+played upon, and to the joy of Colonel Von Sendlingen, she could lift up
+the loosened lid. But for a temporary vexation, they saw in the dim
+light that a kind of steel grating still closed the discovered space.</p>
+
+<p>&quot;That will not detain me long,&quot; said the colonel, contemptuously, and
+relying upon his great strength as he forced his fingers between these
+bars, he secured a firm hold and began to draw the frame up toward him.
+&quot;You have done your part, madame, well, and I&mdash;&quot;</p>
+
+<p>At the same instant, the chest became a mass of the whitest flame which
+expanded monstrously and the whole house shook in a dreadful explosion.</p>
+
+<p>It was supernaturally that Clemenceau had been warned to stand aside and
+let the justice of heaven deal its stroke. No longer fear that C&eacute;sarine
+will work evil alone or directed by Von Sendlingen. At the last moment,
+all was put in order again by the execution by the soulless mechanism of
+the burglar defying-safe. The law of heaven shone forth in triumph and
+what was repentant in the errant soul was recalled to where goodness is
+omnipotent.</p>
+
+<p>The flame leaped over the three dead bodies and seized upon the
+furniture, spreading in all sides. The timbers of the villa were old and
+kiln-dried. The proprietor, returning from the station, had a dreadful
+beacon to guide him.</p>
+
+<p>All Montmorency turned out of doors to assist in extinguishing the
+conflagration. Not often does the quiet suburb treat itself to such
+spectacles, and when, to that sensation, was added that of three dead
+bodies dragged from the shattered drawing-room where every thing else
+was consumed, it may be believed that the night was memorable.</p>
+
+<p>The Daniels were telegraphed to at Paris, and they returned before
+midnight. They alone knew that the grief of Clemenceau was given to
+Antonino and not to his wife, but the lookers-on were deceived, and many
+a man, returning to his slippers and the evening journal, scolded his
+wife for having repeated baseless scandals about the proprietor of the
+Reine-Claude Villa living on cool terms with his unfortunate wife.</p>
+
+<p>The coroner of Montmorency did not display any broad perception of the
+tragedy, although the superfluity of eight inches of Sendlingen's steel
+in the side of a young man pronounced dead by asphyxia would have struck
+one of the laity. But the reporters of the Paris press were more
+perspicacious. They related that an envoy of a foreign union of
+unscrupulous capitalists had attempted to rob M. Clemenceau's residence
+of his inventions and France of a glory, but had been met by his
+dauntless wife and an assistant who had punished the brigand, although
+losing their own lives in defence of the patriotic trust. It was formed
+convenient to suppress all mention of the fact of the lady being Russian
+and the man Italian.</p>
+
+<p>But in his death, Von Sendlingen gained some revenge. The loss of
+Antonino the detailed plans delayed Clemenceau in his project. The War
+farther threw them back and it was only recently that his perfected
+cannon was formally accepted. In all his tribulations and
+disappointments, Daniels supported him, for he, too, was an idealist,
+and so truly his friend as to defer his own scheme until he should be at
+ease.</p>
+
+<p>After the fortuitous meeting of those men had come irresistible
+attraction and communion, moral, intellectual and
+scientific&mdash;friendship to the full meaning of the word.</p>
+
+<p>Poetic justice, as we call the fate least like what man deals out,
+decreed that the ch&acirc;teau of the Marchioness de Latour-lagneau should be
+dilapidated during the Prussian occupation of Montmorency. On its ruins
+rises the manufactury of he new rifle. On the side of the heart, too,
+the same justice rewarded Clemenceau, for he married Rebecca, and they
+were happy in having sons to bear his name worthily. C&eacute;sarine was
+forgotten, since, however great a conflagration may be&mdash;however far the
+flare may be cast on the sky&mdash;whatever the extent of damage&mdash;it must die
+out in time. Such is Passion, and the brighter its blaze the blacker the
+ruins it leaves after it&mdash;the deeper the misery&mdash;the wider the
+loneliness. It devours itself, with no revival like the Phoenix; but
+Love occupies the whole of life, however extended, and still has the
+strength and volumn to transport its worshipers to the realm of the
+happy.</p>
+
+<br>
+<br>
+<hr class="full" noshade>
+<p>***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE SON OF CLEMENCEAU***</p>
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+The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Son of Clemenceau, by Alexandre (fils)
+Dumas
+
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+
+
+
+Title: The Son of Clemenceau
+
+Author: Alexandre (fils) Dumas
+
+Release Date: October 1, 2004  [eBook #13572]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)
+
+
+***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE SON OF CLEMENCEAU***
+
+
+E-text prepared by Steven desJardins and Project Gutenberg Distributed
+Proofreaders
+
+
+
+THE SON OF CLEMENCEAU
+
+A Novel of Modern Love and Life
+
+A Sequel to _The Clemenceau Case_
+
+by
+
+ALEXANDER DUMAS (FILS)
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+STUDENT AND SOLDIER.
+
+
+The sunset-gun had been fired from the ramparts of the fortifications of
+Munich and the shadows were thickly descending on the famous old city of
+Southern Germany. The evening breeze in this truly March weather came
+chill over the plain of stones where Isar flowed darkly, and at the
+first puff of it, forcing him to wind his cloak round him, a lonely
+wanderer in the low quarter recognized why "the City of Monks" was also
+called "the Realm of Rheumatism."
+
+The new town, which he had not yet seen, might justify yet another of
+its nicknames, "the German Athens," but here were, in this southern and
+unfashionable suburb, only a few modern structures, and most of the
+quaint and rather picturesque dwellings, overhanging the stores, dated
+anterior to the filling up of the town moat in 1791.
+
+The stranger was clearly fond of antiquarian spectacles, for his eye,
+though too youthful to belong to a Dryasdust professor, and unshaded by
+the almost universal colored spectacles of the learned classes, gloated
+on the mansions, once inhabited by the wealthy burghers. They were
+irregular in plan and period of erection; the windows had ornamental
+frames of great depth, but some were blocked up, which gave the facades
+a sinister aspect; the walls had not only ornamental tablets in stucco,
+but, in a better light, would have shown rude fresco paintings not
+unworthy mediaeval Italian dwellings. Many of the fronts resembled the
+high poops of the castellated ships of three hundred years ago, and they
+cast a shadow on the muddy pavement. As they resembled ships, the slimy
+footway seemed the strand where they had been beached by the running out
+of the tide.
+
+As the darkness increased, the amateur of architecture became more
+solitary in the streets where the peasants in long black coats, their
+holiday wear, were hurrying to leave by the gates, and the storekeepers
+had renounced any hope of taking more money, in this ward, gloomy,
+neglected and remote from the mode, no display of goods was made after
+dark. But the man, finding novel effects in the obscurity, continued to
+gaze on the rickety houses and bestowed only a transient portion of his
+curiosity on the few wayfarers who stolidly trudged past him to cross a
+bridge of no importance a little beyond his post.
+
+One or two of the passengers, rather those of the gentler sex than the
+rude one, had, however, given attention to the figure which the flowing
+cloak did not wholly muffle. With his dark complexion and slender form,
+not much in keeping with the thickset and heavy-footed natives, and his
+glistening black eyes, he made the corner where he ensconced himself
+appear the nook where an Italian or Spanish gallant was waylaying a
+rival in love.
+
+Presently there was a change in the lighting of the scene, the gloom had
+become trying to his sight. Not only were two lamps lit on the small
+bridge, one at each end in the ornate iron scroll work, which Quintin
+Matsys would not have disavowed, but, overhead, the sky was reddened by
+the reflection of the thousands of gas jets in the north and west; the
+gay and spendthrift city was awakening to life and mirth while the
+working town was going to bed. This glimmer gave a fresh attraction to
+the architectural features, and still longer detained the spectator.
+
+"Superb!" he muttered, in excellent German, without local peculiarity,
+as if he had learned it from professors, but there was a slight trace of
+an accent not native. "It has even now the effect which Gustavus
+Adolphus termed: 'a gilded saddle on a lean jade!'" Then, shivering
+again, he added, struck as well by the now completely deserted state of
+the ways as by the cold wind: "How bleak and desolate! One could implore
+these carved wooden statues to come down and people the odd, interesting
+streets!"
+
+He was about to leave the spot, when, as though his wish was gratified,
+a strange sound was audible in the narrow and devious passages, between
+tottering houses, and those even more squalid in the rear, a commingling
+of shuffling and stamping feet, the smiting of heavy sticks on uneven
+stones and the dragging of wet rags.
+
+Struck with surprise, if not with apprehension, he shrank back into the
+over-jutting porch of an old residence, with sculptured armorial
+bearings of some family long ago abased in its pride. Here he peered,
+not without anxiety.
+
+By the exact programme carried out in cities by the divisions of its
+population, a new contingent were coming from their resting-places to
+substitute themselves for the honest toilers on the thoroughfares; each
+cellar and attic in the rookeries were exuding the horrible vermin
+which shun the wholesome light of day.
+
+The spruce trees, stuck in tubs of sand at a beer-house beyond the
+bridge, shuddered as though in disgust at this horde of Hans hastening
+to invade the district of hotels, supper-houses and gaming clubs, to beg
+or steal the means to survive yet another day.
+
+For ten or fifteen minutes the stranger watched the beggars stream
+individually out of the mazes and, to his horror, form like soldiers for
+a review, along the street before him, up to the end of the bridge at
+one extremity and far along at the other end of the line. Some certainly
+spied him, for these wretches could see as lucidly as the felines in the
+night--their day from society having reversed their conditions. But,
+though these whispered the warning to one another, and he was the object
+of scrutiny, no one left his place, and soon as their backs were turned
+to him, he had no immediate uneasiness as regarded an attack, or even a
+challenge upon his business there.
+
+Probably the good citizens were not ignorant that this meeting of the
+vagrants took place each evening, for not only were all store-doors
+closed hermetically, but the upper windows no longer emitted a
+scintillation of lamplight. The spy by accident concluded that he would
+raise his voice for help all in vain as far as the tradesmen were
+concerned. But he was brave, and he let increasing curiosity enchain him
+continuously.
+
+From time out of mind the sage in velvet has serenely contemplated
+Diogenes in his tub; not that our philosopher seemed the treasurer of an
+Alexander!
+
+Ranged at length in a long row, cripples, the blind, the young, the
+aged, it was a company of mendicants which eccentric painters would have
+given five years of life to have seen. Except for consumptive coughs,
+the misstep of a wooden leg of which the clumsy ferule slipped on a
+cobblestone, and the querulous whimper of a child, half-starved and
+imperfectly swaddled in a tattered shawl, on a flaccid bosom, the mob
+were silent in an expectation as intense as the lookers-on. The wind
+brought the whistle of the railway locomotives and the clanking of a
+steam-dredger in the river, like a giant toiling in massive chains.
+
+For this platoon of vice and misery, crime and disorder, laziness and
+rapine, the stranger confidently expected to see a commander appear
+whose flashing, fearless eye, and upright, powerful frame, would account
+for the awe in which all were held.
+
+What was his amazement, therefore, to perceive--while a tremor of
+emotion thrilled the line and announced the commander whom all
+awaited--a bent-up, scarcely human-shaped form, hardly to be
+acknowledged a woman's. It was enveloped in a heavily furred pelisse
+fitted for a man.
+
+This singular object appeared up the trap of a cellarway, much like the
+opening of a sewer, on the opposite side of the street. She proceeded to
+review the vagabonds and put questions and issue orders to each, which
+were received like mandates from Caesar by his legions. The voice was
+fine and shrill, the movements betokened vigor, but the whole impression
+was that the female captain-general of the beggars of Munich was far
+from young.
+
+In the obscurity, and keeping in the background as he did, it was not
+possible for the stranger to scan her features; besides, they were
+veiled by the long hair of a Polish hunter's cap, with earflaps and a
+drooping foxtail, worn as the pompon but half-loosened in time. The
+eyes that inspected the file of vagrants, shone with undiminished force,
+and when they fell on the burliest and most impudent, these became quiet
+and submissive. In a word, the cohort of beggary yielded utter
+subserviency to this remarkable leader.
+
+Questions and answers were uttered in a thieve's jargon which were
+sealed letters to the eavesdropper, but it seemed to him that they all
+addressed her as _Baboushka_! This struck him as more odd from its being
+a Slavonic title, meaning "grandmother." Was it possible that he had
+before him one of those prolific centenarians, truly a mother of the
+tribe, a gypsy queen to whom allegiance went undisputed and who rules
+the subterranean strata of society with fewer revolts against them than
+their sister rulers know, who sit on thrones in the fierce white light?
+
+In any case, he was given no leisure for deciding the question, for an
+active urchin had whispered a word of caution which led the feminine
+general to direct a piercing glance toward him, and hasten to conclude
+her arrangements. The line broke up into little groups, though most of
+the men went singly, and all tramped over the little foot-bridge, which
+swung under the unusual mass.
+
+Left alone, the vagrants' queen, placing her yellow and skinny hand on a
+weapon, perhaps, among her rags, resolutely moved toward the spy. He
+expected to be interrogated, for an attack was unlikely from a lone old
+woman; but he grasped his cane firmly.
+
+Luckily, a noise of steps at the other end of the street checked the
+hag; she thrust back out of sight what had momentarily gleamed like the
+steel of a knife or brass of a pistol-barrel; listened again and stared;
+then, muttering what was probably no prayer for the stranger's welfare,
+she crossed the street with amazing rapidity. The student, hearing a
+heavy military tread at the mouth of the street, expected to see her
+vanish down her burrow, but, to his astonishment, she proceeded toward
+the new-comer.
+
+"The Schutzmaun," muttered he, as there loomed into sight a decidedly
+soldier-like man in a long cloak, thrown back to show the scarlet
+lining, and dragging a clanking sabre.
+
+Relying on her good angel, apparently, the witch boldly passed him, and
+it seemed to the watcher that a sign of understanding was rapidly
+exchanged between them. Baboushka seemed to enjoin caution for the
+stranger hooked up his trailing sabre, wrapped his cloak around him and
+came on less noisily. Certainly the old hag did not beg of him, but
+hastened to leave the street.
+
+If the new-comer had been the night guardian coming on duty, the student
+might have lost any misgiving about the vagrants or their ruler; but he
+was not sure that in him was a friend.
+
+This was an officer, not a gendarme or military policeman. Cloak and
+uniform were dark blue and fine. He bore himself with the swagger of a
+personage of no inconsiderable rank, and also of some degree in the
+nobility. Tall, burly, overbearing, the stranger took a dislike to him
+from this one glance, and would have hesitated to appeal to him for
+assistance had he felt in danger.
+
+But the beggars had flocked into the rich quarter, and their
+chieftainess vanished. He allowed the military gentleman to pass, and
+was not sorry to see him cross the bridge with a steady, haughty step,
+which made his heel ring on each plank. But, on reaching the farther
+end, to the surprise of the watcher, his carriage immediately altered;
+his step became cautious and, like the other whom he had not noticed, he
+skulked in a doorway. He might have been thought a visitor there, but,
+at the next moment, his red whiskers reappeared between the turned-up
+collar of his mantle as he showed his head under the cornice of oak.
+
+For what motive had the officer and nobleman stooped to skulking and
+prying. One alone would amply exonerate the son of Mars--devotion to
+Venus. And the architectural student, not fearing to pass the soldier in
+his excusable ambush for a sweetheart, since his route over the bridge
+into the new city, and not wishful to spoil the lover's sport, since he
+was of the age to sympathize, prepared to leave his nook.
+
+But it was fated that continual impediments were to be thrown in his
+path on this eventful night. He had hardly taken two steps out of his
+covert, which kept him hidden from the officer but revealed him to any
+one approaching in the street, before a third individual of singular
+mien caught his view and transfixed him with a thrill so sharp, poignant
+and profound that a stroke of lightning would not have more dreadfully
+affected him.
+
+And yet, it was a woman--young by her step, light and quick as the
+antelope's, graceful by her movements, charming by her outlines which a
+poor, thin woolen wrapper imperfectly shrouded. She enchanted by the
+mere contour; it was her weird burden which appalled the watcher. In one
+hand, suspended horizontally, lengthwise parallel to her course, she
+held what seemed by shape and somber hue to be an infant's coffin.
+
+Her dark and brilliant eyes had descried him from the distance, but, in
+an instant recognizing that he was neither one of the usual nocturnal
+denizens nor another sort of whom she need entertain dread, she came on
+apace.
+
+Indeed, he was far from resembling the vagrants. He was clad without any
+attention to the toilette, after the manner of the German student, who
+likes to affront the Pharisee but without overmuch eccentricity. Under
+the voluminous cloak, warranted by the chilly wind, a tight-fitting
+tunic of dark green cloth, caught in by a broad buff leather belt with
+the clasp of a University, admirably defined the shapeliness of a slight
+but manly form. His hair, black as the raven's wing, was worn long and
+came curling down on his shoulders; his complexion was dark but clear.
+But the whole appearance was of a marvel in physical excellencies; a
+physiologist would have pointed to him as a model and result of the
+combination of all desirable traits in both his progenitors. His
+attitude, checked in the advance, denoted this perfection. The young
+woman, set at ease by her glances and that peace which true symmetry
+inspires, continued her way, averting her head with calculation, but he
+felt sure that she was not offended.
+
+He could laugh at the mistake he had made for, at this close encounter,
+he perceived that what in the tragic mood originated by the review of
+beggars in the shades of night, he had taken to be a child's casket, was
+a violin-case. The girl--she was perhaps but sixteen--had the artist's
+eye, black, fiery, deep and winning, while haughty for the vulgar
+worshiper; her hair was treated in a fantastic fashion as unlike that of
+the staid German maiden as its hue of black was the opposite of the
+traditional flaxen. Even in the feeble street-lamplight, she appeared,
+with her finely chiseled features of an Oriental type, handsome enough
+to melt an anchorite, and in the beholder a flood of passion gushed up
+and expanded his heart--devoid of such a mastering emotion before. He
+believed this was love! Perhaps it was love--real, true, indubitable
+love--but there is a mock-love with so much to advance in its favor that
+it has won many a battle where the genuine feeling has fought long in
+vain.
+
+Sharing some shock not unlike his own in extent and sharpness, the girl
+with the violin-case had paused just perceptibly in an unconscious
+attitude which kept in the lamplight her bust, tightly encased in a
+faded but elegant Genoa brocade jacket, with copper lace ornamentation,
+coming down upon a promising curve, clothed in a similarly theatrical
+skirt of flowered satin and China silk braid. On her wrists were
+bracelets and on her ungloved hands many rings, with stones rather too
+large to be taken for genuine on a woman promenading alone at such an
+hour. Conjoined with the musical instrument, the attire confirmed the
+student in his first impression after the tragic one, that this was a
+performer in one of the numerous dance-houses of the popular region,
+bordering the fashionable one.
+
+He almost regretted this conclusion, for the girl's forehead was so
+high, her eyes so lofty and her delicate mouth so impressed with a proud
+and energetical curl that no ambition would seem beyond the flight of
+one thus beautiful and high-spirited.
+
+Whatever the revolution she had exercised over him, he dared not avow
+it, such respect did she inspire, and on her recovering from her
+fleeting emotion, he let her resume her way without a word to detain
+her.
+
+She had not reached the first plank of the bridge before he suddenly
+remembered the officer, like himself, in ambush; and in the same manner
+as love--if that were love--had clutched his heart with the swiftness of
+an eagle seizing its quarry, another sentiment, as fierce and
+overpowering, jealousy, stung him to the quick.
+
+As he glanced--but he had not taken his eyes off her, not even to look
+if the military officer were still at his post--she had swept her
+worsted wrapper round to set her foot on the first board of the bridge;
+and he caught a glimpse, delightful and bewildering, of a foot, long but
+slim and delicately modeled, and of a faultless ankle, in a vermilion
+silk stocking and low-cut cordovan leather slipper--as theatrical as the
+rest of her attire. Something innately aesthetical in the student, which
+made him adore the exquisitely wrought, impelled him now to be the
+slave--the devotee--the worshiper of this masterpiece of Nature.
+
+Perhaps she stood in need of a defender?
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+SOLDIER'S SWORD AND WANDER-STAFF.
+
+
+The place was historically favored for adventures. In 1543, the riot of
+Knights and Knaves had begun here. On the bridge which preceded this
+structure, a band of young noblemen had taken possession of the passage
+more important then, as this now foul and noisome channel, into which
+the effluvia of the breweries and tanneries was discharged, was a strong
+and pellucid tributary of the Isar. They levied tribute on the
+burghers, kissing the comely women and not scrupling to cut the purses
+of the master-tradesmen; in this, imitating the mode of operation of
+their country cousins, the robber barons in the mountains to the south,
+or over the river in the opposite direction.
+
+But, as for the third or fourth time, the student was on the verge of
+quitting his haven, another interrupter arose. Pausing at the head of
+the bridge, prompted by natural caution or instinct, for the officer
+remained prudently invisible to her, the girl, with the violin-case,
+looked over her shoulder and beckoned to some one on the further side of
+the astonished student.
+
+The desert was becoming animated, indeed, as he had wished, for, in the
+hazy opening, a man appeared, carrying under one arm what seemed a
+musket or blunderbuss, while leaning the other hand on a staff which
+might be the one to rest the firearm on. He had a flat felt hat on, with
+wide shaggy margins, ornamented with a yellow cord in contrast with its
+inky dye, and a dingy, often mended old cavalry-soldier's russet cloak,
+covering him from a long, full grey beard to the feet, encased in
+patched shoes. The aspect of a Jew peddler in the pictures of the Dutch
+school, who had armed himself to defend his pack of thread and needles
+on the highway.
+
+But, as before, nearness dispelled the romantic conceit: the supposed
+gun resolved itself into a Turko-phone, or Oriental flute, while, on the
+other hand, the bright eye and well-shaped features, with the venerable
+impression suggested by the beard, lifted the wearer into a high place
+for reverence. Just as the girl was unrivaled for beauty, this man, a
+near relative, perhaps her father, would have few equals in the councils
+of his tribe.
+
+While not old, spite of the grey in his beard, illness had enfeebled
+him, for he needed the walking-staff. The brisk pace of his daughter had
+left him far behind and it cost him an effort to make up for the delay.
+But in parental love he found the force, and quite nimbly he passed the
+student without observing him in his haste to join his daughter.
+
+At the sight of him coming, she had not waited for his arm, but retaken
+her course. She was half way over the bridge when he began to ascend the
+gentle slope, and when he was arduously following with the summit well
+before him, the officer emerged abruptly from his covert. He must have
+been calculating on this moment and this separation to which Baboushka
+had no doubt contributed. She now loomed into view. Repulsed by the Jew
+in his detestation of beggars--for while the Christian accepts poverty
+as a misfortune to which resignation is one remedy, he regards it as an
+affliction to be violently removed--she hesitated to continue her
+annoyance. The bridge was so narrow that he had no difficulty, thanks to
+the length of his arms, in placing a hand on each rail, so that, as he
+bent his broad, smiling face forward between them, he effectively barred
+the way. With a tone which he intended to be winning and tender, but
+which nature had not allowed him to modulate very sweetly, he said:
+
+"Divine songstress of Freyer Brothers' Brewery Harmonista Cellars!" She
+stopped quickly and faced half round, so as to be in a better position
+for retreat if he made an advance toward her. "In the hall on
+Thursday--when you made the circuit with the cup for the collection
+after your delightful ballad--you refused me even a reply to my request
+for an interview. That was for the favor of a salute from those
+somewhat thin but honeyed lips! Now, there is nobody by and I mean to be
+rewarded for the bouquets I have nightly sent you!"
+
+"Father!" cried the Jewess, too frightened by the position of her
+assailant to flee.
+
+"Your father? Bah!" with a contemptuous glance at the old man
+approaching only too slowly. "I repeat, there is no one by! _That_ I
+arranged for."
+
+The speaker had red curly hair like his whiskers; his brow was not
+narrow but his eyebrows overhung; his face was flushed with animation
+and carnal desire--perhaps by potations, though his large lower jaw
+denoted ample animal courage. He was powerful enough in the long arms
+and strong hands to have mastered the girl and her father, but it was
+not the dread of his prowess physically which awed the daughter of the
+race still proscribed in this part of Germany.
+
+Frederick von Sendlingen, Baron of ancient creation, enjoyed a wide fame
+among the knot of noble carousers who strove to make one corner of
+Munich a pale reflection of the "fast" end of Paris and Vienna. A major
+in a crack heavy cavalry regiment, allowed for family reasons to remain
+in the garrison after it had been removed elsewhere, he enjoyed enviable
+esteem from his superiors and the hatred and dislike of all others.
+Though inclined to court after the manner of the pillager who has
+captured a city, his boisterous addresses pleased the wanton matrons
+and, more naturally, the facile Cythereans of the music halls and
+dance-houses.
+
+At an early hour, he had cast his handkerchief, like an irresistible
+sultan, at the chief attraction of the beer cellar, which he named--the
+so-called "La Belle Stamboulane," and baffled in all his less brutal
+modes of attack, he had recourse to one which better suited his custom.
+
+It looked as though he had lost time in not putting it into operation
+before, since the girl, around whom, taking one stride, he threw his
+arms, could not, by her feeble resistance, prevent him snatching a kiss.
+As for her father, casting down his turkophone, and raising his staff in
+both hands, his valorous approach went for little, as his blow would
+have been as likely to fall upon his daughter as the ruffian.
+
+While he was bewildered and his stick was raised in air, the latter,
+perceiving his danger, did not scruple to show his contempt for one of
+the despised race whom he likewise scorned for his weakness, by dealing
+him a kick in the leg with his heavy boot which, fairly delivered, would
+have broken an oaken post. Though avoiding its full force, the unhappy
+father was so painfully struck that he staggered back to the opposite
+rail of the bridge and, clapping both hands to the bruise on the shin,
+groaned while he strove in vain to overcome the paralyzing agony. From
+that moment he was compelled to remain as a stranger in action to the
+outrage.
+
+Still struggling, though with little hope, the girl saw the defeat of
+her natural champion with sympathetic anguish. Though he had not spied
+the student, she had regarded him with no faint opinion of his manliness
+for--repelling the kind of proud self-reliance of her race to have no
+recourse to strangers during persecution--she lifted her voice with a
+confidence which startled her rude adorer.
+
+"Help! help from this ruffian-gentleman!"
+
+"Silence, you fool," rejoined Sendlingen. "I tell you, the coast is
+clear--for I have arranged all that. It is simple strategy to secure
+one's flanks--"
+
+"Help!" repeated the songstress, redoubling her efforts--not to escape,
+which was out of the question, but to shield her mouth from contact with
+the red moustaches, hovering over it like the wings of a bloodstained
+bird of rapine.
+
+As this repetition of the appeal, steps clattered on the bridge, and the
+officer lifted his head. He may have expected Baboushka or one of her
+fraternity, and the tall, slender student, who had flung off his cloak
+to run more swiftly, gave him a surprise. The agile and intelligent girl
+took the opportunity with commendable speed, and glided out of the
+major's relaxing grasp like a wasp from under the spider's claws. She
+retreated as far as where her father tried to stand erect, and helping
+him up, led him prudently down the bridge slope so that they might
+continue their flight. It would have been the basest ingratitude to
+depart without seeing the result of the interference, and the two
+lingered, though it would have been wiser to let the two Christians bite
+and tear each other without witnesses of another creed, and with the
+witness of none.
+
+It was a free spectacle, but, if it had cost their week's salary at the
+casino, it would have been worth the money.
+
+As the major had empty hands after the loss of his prize, the student
+had the quixotic delicacy to make the offer in dumbshow to lay aside his
+cane and undertake to chastise the insulter of womanhood with the naked
+fist. But this is a weapon almost unknown in the sword-bearing class
+which Von Sendlingen adorned, and, infuriated by the civilian
+intervening at the culmination of his daring plan, to say nothing of
+the annoying thought that his failure would be no secret from the old
+hag, his accomplice, looking on at the extremity of the bridge, he
+yielded to the worst devil in his heart. He inclined to the most
+high-handed and hectoring measure. Whipping out his sabre with a rapid
+gesture, and merely muttering a discourteous and grudging: "Be on your
+guard!" he dealt a cut at the student which threatened to cleave him in
+two.
+
+The other was on the alert; he had suspected one capable of such an
+outrage, likewise capable of worse, and he parried the coward's blow so
+dexterously with his cane that it was the soldier who was thrown off his
+balance. A second blow, with the tremendous sweep of the stick held at
+arm's length, tested the metal of the blade to its utmost, and, as the
+wielder's hand was thoroughly palsied, drove it out of the opening
+fingers, and all heard it splash in the black and pestiferous waters
+under the bridge.
+
+Von Sendlingen would almost have preferred the blow falling on his head.
+An officer, whose reputation in fencing was no mean one, to be disarmed
+by a student who swung but his road-cane! This was not all: he had lost
+his sabre, and, noble though he was, he had to pass the vigorous
+inspection of his weapons like the humblest private soldier! The absence
+of the regimental sword might cause degradation, ruin militarily and
+socially! And all for a "music-hall squaller"--and a Jewess at that!
+
+He ground his teeth, and his eyes were filled with angry fire. His face
+bore a greater resemblance to a tiger's than a man's, and had not the
+victor in this first bout possessed a stout heart, he might have
+regretted that he had commenced so well, so terrible would be the
+retaliation.
+
+All the animal in the man being roused, he longed to throw himself on
+his antagonist to grasp his throat, but the successful use of the cudgel
+against the sword indicated that this was an adept at quarter-staff and
+a man with naked hands would have easily been beaten if pitted with him.
+Sendlingen, warily and rapidly surveying the limited field of combat,
+caught sight of the Jew's walking-staff and sprang for it with an outcry
+of savage glee and hope.
+
+On perceiving this move, in spite of the pain still crippling him, the
+old man started to retrace his steps to regain possession of his weapon,
+but he was soon distanced by the younger one.
+
+Armed with this staff, the officer, remembering his student days, when
+he, too, was an expert swinger of the cane, a Bavarian mountaineer's
+weapon with which duels to the death are not unseldom fought, he stood
+before the student.
+
+"Had you been a gentleman," began the major, with a sullen courtesy,
+extorted from him by the gallantry of his antagonist.
+
+"A stick to a dog!" retorted the latter, falling into the position of
+guard with an ease and accuracy which caused the other to begin his work
+by feints and attacks not followed up too rashly, in order to test him.
+
+This time, it was the stouter and more brutal man who played cautiously
+and the younger and more refined who was spurred into recklessness by
+the contiguity of the fair Helen--or, rather, Esther--who had caused the
+fray.
+
+The girl stood at the end of the bridge, opposite to Baboushka at hers,
+there making them simple lookers-on. The old Jew seemed eager to join
+in the struggle, but the staves were in continual swing, and he could
+not draw near without the risk of having a shoulder dislocated, or, at
+least, his knuckles severely rapped. In the gloom, his hovering about
+the involved pair would have led an opera-goer to have seen in him the
+demon who thus actively presides at the fatal duel of Faust and
+Valentine.
+
+But the conflict, whatever the major's wariness, could not be long
+protracted, for canes of this sort are tiring to the arm, unlike
+smallswords; he was still on the defensive when the student assailed him
+with a shower of blows which taxed all his skill and nerve, and the
+strength of the staff which he had borrowed from his foe. Well may one
+suspect "the gifts of an enemy!" as the student might have cited:
+"_Timeo danaos_," etc. At the very moment when the officer's head was
+most in peril, while he guarded it with the staff held horizontally in
+both hands separated widely for the critical juncture, it ominously
+cracked at the reception of a vigorous blow--it parted as though a steel
+blade had severed it, and the unresisted cane came down on his skull
+with crushing force.
+
+Out of the two cavities which the broken staff now presented, rattled
+several gold coins. At the sight, the old hag scrambled toward where the
+major had fallen senseless. The Jew, after picking up the broken pieces
+of wood, would have lingered to recover those of the precious metal
+though at cost of a scuffle with Baboushka. But his daughter rebuked him
+in their language with an indignant tone, which brought him to his
+senses in an instant. She seized him by the arm, and hurried him away at
+last.
+
+After a brief survey of the defeated man, wavering between the fear
+that he had killed him and the prompting to see to his hurts, if the
+case were not fatal, the student took to flight in the direction the
+beautiful girl had chosen. He well knew that this was a grave matter,
+and that he trod on burning ground. At twenty paces farther, he
+remembered his cloak, but on the bridge were now clustered several
+shadows vying with Baboushka in picking up the coin before raising the
+unfortunate Von Sendlingen.
+
+Not a light had appeared at the windows of the houses, not a window had
+opened for a night-capped head to be thurst forth, not a voice had
+echoed the Jewess's call for the watch. It was not to be doubted that
+Footbridge street had allowed more murderous outrages to occur without
+anyone running the risk of catching a cold or a slash of a sabre.
+
+"A cut-throat quarter, that is it," remarked the student, still too
+excited to feel the cold and want of his outer garment. "After all, one
+cannot travel from Berlin to Paris without getting some soot on the
+cheek and a cinder or two in the eye. In the same way it is not possible
+to see life and go through this world without being smeared with a
+little blood or smut."
+
+While talking to himself, he smoothed his dress and curled his dark and
+fine moustache, projecting horizontally and not drooping. He had walked
+so fast that he had overtaken the Jews, delayed as the girl was by her
+father's lameness, and having to carry the violin in its case which she
+had recovered and preciously guarded.
+
+"What an audacious bully that was," the student continued; "but even a
+good cat loses a mouse now and then."
+
+The pair seemed to expect him to join them, but as he was about to do
+so, at the mouth of a narrow and unlighted alley, he heard the measured
+tramp of feet indicating the patrol.
+
+Already the character of the streets and houses changed: there were
+vistas of those large buildings which give one the impression that
+Munich is planned on too generous a scale for its population. Only here
+and there was a roof or front suggestive of the Middle Ages, and they
+may have been in imitation; the others were stately and were classical,
+and the avenues became spacious.
+
+All at once, while the student was watching the semi-military constables
+approach, he heard an uproar toward the bridge. The major had been
+discovered by quite another sort of folk than the allies of Baboushka,
+and the alarm was given.
+
+To advance was to invite an arrest which would result in no pleasant
+investigation.
+
+He had tarried too long as it was. The watchman's
+horn--tute-horn--sounded at the bridge and the squad responded through
+their commander; whistles also shrilled, being police signals. The
+student was perceived. It was a critical moment. The next moment he
+would be challenged, and at the next, have a carbine or sabre levelled
+at his breast. He retired up the alley, precipitately, wondering where
+the persons whom he befriended had disappeared so quickly.
+
+A very faint light gleamed from deeply within, at the end of a crooked
+passage through a lantern-like projection at a corner. A number of iron
+hooks bristled over his head as if for carcasses at a butchers, although
+their innocent use was to hang beds on them to air. On a tarnished plate
+he deciphered "ARTISTES' ENTRANCE," and while perplexed, even as the
+gendarmes appeared at the mouth of this blind-alley, a long and taper
+hand was laid on his arm and a voice, very, very sweet, though in a mere
+murmur, said irresistibly:
+
+"Come! come in, or you will be lost!" He yielded, and was drawn into a
+corridor under the oriel window, where the air was pungent with the reek
+of beer, tobacco-smoke, orange-peel, cheese and caraway seeds.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+"THE JINGLE-JANGLE."
+
+
+The person to whom the shapely hand and musical voice belonged,
+conducted the student along the narrow passage to a turning where she
+halted, under a lamp with a reflector which threw them in that position
+into the shade. The passage was divided by the first lobby, and on the
+lamp was painted, back to back: "Men," "Ladies;" besides, a babble of
+feminine voices on the latter side betrayed, as the intruder suspected
+from the previous placard, that he had entered a place of entertainment
+by the stage-door, a Tingel-Tangel, or Jingle-Jangle, as we should say.
+
+It was the Jewess who was the Ariadne to this maze. Seen in the light,
+at close range, with the enchanting smile which a woman always finds for
+the man who has won her gratitude by supplementing her deficiency in
+strength and courage with his own, she was worthier love than ever. At
+this view, too, he was sure that, unlike too many of the _divas_ of
+these _spielungs_, or dens, she was not one of the stray creatures who
+sell pleasure to some and give it to others, and for themselves keep
+only shame--fatal ignominy, wealth at best very unsubstantial, and if,
+at last, winners, they laugh--one would rather see them weeping.
+
+"What's your name?" she inquired, quickly. "I am Rebecca Daniels, whom
+they call on the Bills 'La Belle Stamboulane'--though I have never been
+farther east than Prague," she added with a contemptuous smile. "That
+was my father, whose maltreatment you so promptly but I fear so severely
+chastised. But your name?" impatiently.
+
+"I am a student of Wilna University, traveling according to custom of
+the college, through Germany and to make the Italian Art Tour. I am
+Claudius Ruprecht."
+
+"Not noble?" she inquired, sadly, on hearing two Christian names and
+none of family, for her people treasure the pride of ancestry.
+
+"I am an orphan. I never knew my family. Perhaps, as I am of age, I
+shall soon be informed. But--"
+
+"Enough! time is getting on, and we cannot long stay in privacy
+here--the passage-way for the performers. This is Freyers' Hall, where I
+sing--where I was a player. But my father can speak to you in the public
+room and see to your safety--for I fear this night's affair will end
+ill. But do not you fear! neither my father nor I have the powerlessness
+which that noble ruffian seemed to think is ours. You, at least, shall
+be saved--even though you killed that brute."
+
+"I do not think that, unless his head is not so hard as his heart."
+
+She opened a narrow door in the dirty wall. It was brighter in the
+capacious place thus shown.
+
+"Go in and sit down anywhere. My father will be with you in a few
+minutes. We were so delayed that they feared we would not arrive for
+'our turn.' They were glad of the excuse--I fancy they were told it
+might occur--and they are trying to break our agreement. But never mind!
+that is but a bread-and-butter business for us. For you, it will be life
+and death, if that officer be slain."
+
+Claudius, the student, mechanically obeyed the gentle impulsion her hand
+imparted to him on the shoulder, and walked through the side-door. A
+number of benches were before him with corresponding narrow tables, and
+he sat down at one, and looked round.
+
+He found himself in a very long, rectangular hall, low in the ceiling in
+proportion to the length, once brightly decorated, but faded, smoked and
+tarnished. On the walls, in panels, between tinted pilasters of a
+pseudo-Grecian design, were views of the principal towns of Germany and
+Austria, the details obliterated in the upper part by smoke and in the
+lower by greasy heads and hands. Around the sides, a dais held benches
+and tables similar to those on the floor. At the far end was a bar for
+beer and other liquors less popular, and an entrance from a main street,
+screened and indirect, down steps at another level than the rear or
+stage door. Where Claudius sat was a small stage with footlights and
+curtain complete, and an orchestra for a miniature piano such as are
+used in yachts, and six musicians; the performers sat to face the
+audience respectfully in the good Old German style.
+
+The lighting was by means of clusters of gas-jets at intervals in the
+long ceiling and along the walls. The announcement of the items of
+attraction appearing on the stage was made by changeable sliding cards
+in framework at the sides of the stage; to the left the name of the
+_scena_ was exhibited, that of the artist on the other.
+
+When Claudius took his seat, the other places were almost all empty; but
+they soon began to fill up. The majority of the spectators seemed to be
+of the tradesman and workman class, with their wives and daughters, but
+the stranger, who had been so surreptitiously "passed in," was not blind
+to the presence of a more offensive element. There were faces as
+villainous as any under the immediate command of Grandmother
+"Baboushka;" and their dress was not much better. More than one dandy of
+the gutter nursed the head of a club called significantly the
+"lawbreaker's canes of crime," with a distant air of the fop sucking his
+clouded amber knob or silver shepherd's-crook. In more than one group
+were horse-copers, and their kin the market-gardeners' thieves and
+country wagoners' pests, who not only lighten the loads on the way to
+the city market on the road, but plunder the drivers after they receive
+their salesmoney by cheating at cards.
+
+The student, crowded in by this mixed throng, began to doubt the
+providential quality of the intervention saving him from an explanation
+to the police; it was very like leaping from the proverbial frying-pan
+into the fire.
+
+At this stage in his reflections, he felt that a person in the next seat
+had risen and he soon perceived that he had politely, or from a stronger
+reason, given up his place to another. This was the old Jew, but he
+would not have known him by his dress, it was so changed for the better;
+the fine profile, the venerable beard which an Arab Sheikh would have
+reverenced, and the sharp, intelligent eyes were unaltered.
+
+"Do you speak Latin?" inquired Daniels in that tongue.
+
+But Claudius, though reading the dead tongue fluently, pronounced it
+after the University manner, and felt that he could not sustain a
+dialogue with one who followed the Italian usage. He could speak
+Italian, however, for he had long studied it to be at home in the world
+of Art.
+
+"The officer was not killed," remarked the Jew, and before his new
+acquaintance could express his relief, he added gravely, "but he has
+been spirited away."
+
+"Then it's those vagabonds--"
+
+"Of whom that old _Tausend-Kunstlerin_ (witch of a thousand tricks) is
+in the position of parent? I guess as much. He said he had connived with
+her, one who is the actual though occult ruler of the filthy region. We
+have had to pay her blackmail regularly, like the other artists, for we
+are obliged to go home after midnight. Well, if he is in their hands, it
+is among congenial spirits. Tell me your name and as much of your
+affairs as you please to enlighten me with. I am bound to assist you as
+far as possible--though my debt to you will ever remain uncanceled. I am
+Daniel Daniels, of Odessa, Marseilles, and elsewhere, and an
+introduction to my correspondent nearest where you sojourn is not to be
+despised."
+
+Impressed with his tone, the young man related his life-story
+succinctly.
+
+He had a dreamy remembrance of a long journey, lastly in a sledge,
+buried in fur robes, his clearer later memories were of a happy home in
+Poland, in the country, where, though strangers, all were kind to the
+lonely orphan. There was a mystery about his parentage; his mother was
+probably a native as he acquired the language as easily as the art of
+eating, the peasants said. His father had been killed, he thought, on
+one of those riots which, in a small way, repeat the olden revolutions
+of Poland against the triumvirate of oppression, Austria, Prussia and
+Russia. But he had heard a tutor say, when he was not supposed in
+hearing, that he had perished by the executioner's steel.
+
+"A death honorable as under the bullets," said Claudius, but half
+doubtingly.
+
+As became a man who abhorred homicide in any shape, Daniels made no
+reply.
+
+"At the age of eighteen, while at the University, I was given a private
+tutor in art and architecture, to which I had a bent. He was a Frenchman
+and I acquired his elegant tongue with that well-known facility of us
+Poles in attaining proficiency in the Western ones. Armed with that and
+Italian--"
+
+"Which you speak with finish," interrupted the Jew.
+
+"I expect my Italian and French tour to be delightful. But I am not over
+the frontier yet, and hardly will be soon if my passport is commented
+upon by an authority cognizant of this night's adventure."
+
+"I regret to find that it was deliberately planned," resumed Daniels.
+"My daughter's virtue has raised more hostility under this roof than
+even her talent. The proprietor is a notorious rascal, but he is too
+useful to the profligate among the town officials to be reprimanded. The
+police, too, wink at his personal misdoings, because he is always their
+friend to deliver the criminals who make this haunt their rendezvous.
+All those painted women, as well as the waiter-girls, are spies and
+Dalilahs who betray the Samsons of crime to the police at any given
+moment. That would be neither here nor there, however, if my daughter
+and I were allowed to conclude our engagement--which, believe me, would
+never have been signed if we had guessed the character of the resort.
+Not only would they lodge me in prison for a pretended attempt to elude
+my contract, but they seek to throw my poor Rebecca into the arms of
+such reprobates as this Major the Baron. The hag whom you noticed is not
+unconcerned in the plot. It is a protege of hers--a lovely young girl,
+guileless in appearance as a cherub, whom they would substitute for my
+girl, if she had been detained to-night. In fact--"
+
+He paused. The orchestra had played and two or three vocalists had
+appeared and sang, without Claudius, absorbed in this conversation,
+noticing that the entertainment had commenced. A little fat man in a
+ruffled and embroidered shirt, buff waistcoat with crystal buttons, knee
+breeches and silk stockings of reproachless black, and steel buckled
+shoes, had come before the curtain, sticking one thumb in his waistband
+and the other in his vest armhole, to display a huge seal ring and a
+mammoth diamond hoop, respectively, as well as his idea of ease in
+company. He announced in a high flute-like voice that in consequence of
+indisposition, which a sworn medical affirmation confirmed--here he
+raised a laugh by sticking his tongue in his cheek--"La Belle
+Stamboulane" would not appear--might have to depart for Constantinople
+for convalescence, but that the bewitching Fraulein von Vieradlers--one
+of the few authentic _noble_ vocalists on the variety stage--following
+in the footsteps of certain princesses--would oblige, for the first time
+on any stage, with selections from her repertoire, etc.
+
+This was concerted, for the outburst of applause, started by the most
+sinister of aspect among the auditors, was vehement and so contagious
+that the _hussah_ was unanimous as the stage-manager retired.
+
+La Belle Stamboulane was already eclipsed! so evanescent is theatrical
+fame. Of all the audience, only one felt indignant, and that was the
+student Claudius, who had not heard her sing or wear stage costumes!
+
+"All is over," observed Daniels placidly. "I cannot cope with these
+rogues. I must go and join my daughter and get our dresses to our
+lodgings; thankful if we succeed so far. In about an hour, will you not
+call, when we will resume our conversation which I wish to have, and
+with practical gain to you. This is the card of our hotel. It is not
+aristocratic, but once there, you will be safe."
+
+He spoke with such tranquil assurance that Claudius had not a doubt. He
+took the card, read the address: "Hotel Persepolitan," so that if he
+lost the card, it might be in his mind, and nodded with a kind of
+gratefulness. The father of a beautiful woman is not like any other man
+in the world to a young man, who is not indifferent to her.
+
+Following the old Jew with his gaze to the narrow side-door leading to
+behind-the-scenes, Claudius thought that, in the brief period of its
+opening and closing, he spied the bright black orbs of the Jewess
+striving to catch a glimpse even so transient of him. It did not need
+this encouragement to make him resolve to respond to the invitation.
+
+An hour would soon pass, even in this tedious recreation. He felt also
+some resentment and curiosity to see the person whom the director of
+these Munich circeans considered in adequate succession to the peerless
+Stamboulane. The announcement had at least kindled the public: being
+plebeian, the promised aristocrat was already discussed. The family was
+existent, whether this variety vocalist was legitimately a daughter
+being another question. Vieradlers was a barony that had a right to fly
+its four eagles--as the name signifies--in the face of the double-headed
+king of the tribe. The baron was the latest of an old Bavarian line,
+famous in story. One of his ancestors was eagle-bearer to Caesar after
+the defeat of Hermann. The continuators had always been near the
+emperors. There might be a drop of imperial blood in the child who had
+so strangely degenerated as to prefer royalty on the stage to that of
+the court and country-house.
+
+"She may be good-looking," thought Claudius, "for I have noticed that
+where the men are uncomely the women are often the reverse. A Berlin
+professor has boldly likened the male Bavarian to the gorilla and the
+caricaturists have taken his cue. They are of the beer-barrel shape,
+coarse, rough, quarrelsome and quick to enter into a fight. It is the
+national dish of roast goose--a pugnacious bird--and bread of oatmeal
+that does it. They may well have one beauty of the sex among them. And
+the carnation on the cheeks of these waitresses is so remarkable that
+they find rouge superfluous. They are dull, and yet the twinkle in their
+eyes indicates cunning."
+
+Before him, the next seat was occupied by two gentlemen. They spoke in
+French, thinking no one would comprehend their conversation. They were
+discussing the ascending star, about which one had a deeper knowledge
+than the subjects of Baboushka.
+
+"She is the cause of the disgrace of the Grand-Chamberlain of a northern
+kingdom," said this well-informed man. "He has been obliged to send in
+his grand cross of the Royal Order and his rank in the Holy Empire,
+after what was almost a revolution in the palace. He is a man over
+sixty, who was in Russia on an important mission, when he met by chance
+this young girl, whose mother was married to a noble, although the elder
+sister of one of those beauties notorious for their depravity in Paris.
+Perhaps, though, she secured her husband before her sister won this
+dubious celebrity. At all events, she lived blamelessly, but _bad_ blood
+does not lie! This girl seems to aim at the reputation of her aunt, the
+celebrated Iza, whose portrait was painted, her figure copied in
+immortal marble, and her charms sung by French bards. At all events, she
+bewitched the old Count von Raackensee, who took her on a tour through
+our country and Austria. It was at Vienna that he, an old statesman and
+courtier, committed the folly of presenting her as his daughter! The
+truth came out--Austria and Prussia made remonstrances, and he was
+compelled to resign his office or this witch. He would not give her up
+and so he was punished."
+
+"Punished?"
+
+"Yes; he went on to live at Nice, where he had bought a villa in
+foresight for some such day of disgrace. The Circe was to follow him,
+but, instead of that, she has shaken off the golden links and
+condescends to stay a week in Munich to amuse us coarse swiggers of
+beer."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+THE STAR IS DEAD LONG LIVE THE STAR!
+
+
+By listening to others and observing them, man obtains the material for
+self-preservation. Evidently this star of the minor stage was a woman to
+be avoided; a rising light which might scar the sight and burn the
+fingers of too venturesome an admirer. Claudius had a premonition that
+he ought to go out and kill the few minutes in strolling the streets,
+before keeping the appointment, even at the risk of being questioned by
+the police. But he overcame the impulsion, and waited to face what might
+be a danger the more.
+
+All the hall, by instinct and from the stories circulating--perhaps
+circulated by the agents of the management--divined that no common
+attraction was to be presented. Besides, to displace La Belle
+Stamboulane worthily on the stage, that chosen arena where the female
+gladiator carries the day, a miracle of beauty, wit and skill was
+requisite. Elsewhere, ability, practice, art, artifice, many gifts and
+accomplishments may triumph, but the fifth element as indispensable as
+the others, air, water, fire and earth--it is _love_, which legitimately
+monopolizes the theatre for its exhibition and glorification. Men and
+women come to such places of amusement to hear love songs, see love
+scenes, and share in the fictitious joys and sorrows of love, which they
+long to enact in reality. Nothing is above love; nothing equals it. He
+reigns as a master in a temple, with woman as the high-priestess, and
+man the victim or the chosen reward.
+
+Preceding the novelty, a bass-singer roared a drinking-song, in which
+he likened human life to a brewer's house, in which some quenched their
+thirst quickly and departed; others stayed to quaff, jest, tell stories
+to cronies, before staggering out "full;" the oldest went to sleep
+there. Though rich-voiced and liked, this time he retired in silence,
+for the audience was tormented with impatience.
+
+The orchestra struck up a fashionable waltz, and, as the door, at the
+back of a drawing-room scene, was opened in both flaps by the liveried
+servants, a young lady entered, so fresh, delightful and easy that for a
+moment it seemed as if it were a member of the "highest life" who had
+blundered off the street into this strange world.
+
+From her glistening hair of gold to the tip of her white satin slippers,
+with preposterously high heels, this was the new incarnation of the
+woman who ends the Nineteenth Century. She was indisputably beautiful,
+and Claudius, who had thought that the Jewess was incomparable, feared
+that the apple would have to be halved, since neither could have borne
+it entire away. But the Jewess's loveliness exalted the beholder; this
+one's was of the strange, irritating sort, resisted with difficulty and
+alluring a man into those byways which end in the gaming hell, the
+saturnalian halls, and the suicide's grave. Love had never chosen a more
+appetizing form to be the pivot on which human folly--perhaps human
+genius--was to spin idly and uselessly, like a beetle on a pin in a
+naturalist's cabinet.
+
+Kaiserina von Vieradlers was the modern Venus, a creation of the modiste
+rather than of the sculptor; though hips and bosom were developed
+extravagantly, the long waist was absurdly small; but no token of ill
+health from the tight lacing appeared in the irreproachable shape, the
+well-turned arms and the countenance which was unmarred in a single
+lineament; the movements were not strictly ladylike, they were too
+unfettered in spite of the smooth gloves and the stylish unwrinkled ball
+dress, rather short in front to parade the slippers mentioned and silk
+stockings so nicely moulded to the trim ankle as to show the dimple. She
+was more fair in her eighteenth year--if she were so old--than a Danish
+baby in the cradle. The yellow hair had a clear golden tint not tawny,
+and the fineness was remarkable of the stray threads that serpentined
+out of the artistic braid and drooping ringlets. The blue eyes had a
+multitude of expressions and gleams; now hard as the blue diamond's ray,
+now soft as the lapis lazuli's glow of azure; the expression was at
+present one of longing, tender, cajoling and coaxing--like a gentle
+child's, never refused a thing for which it silently pleaded.
+
+The costume was a trifle exaggerated, as is allowable on the minor
+stage, but what was that in our topsy-turvy age, when the disreputable
+woman in a mixed ball is conspicuous among her spotless sisters by the
+quiet correctness of her toilet?
+
+Kaiserina came down to the flaring footlights, after a little
+trepidation, which the inexorable demon of stage-fright exacted from
+her, with the swing and confident step of one sure that--while man may
+be unjust, cruel and oppressive to her sex off the stage--here she would
+reign and finally triumph. She bowed her head, but it was to acknowledge
+her gracious acceptance of the tribute of applause; she moistened her
+fiery-coal lips with a serpent's active tongue; she surveyed her
+dominion with eyes that assumed a passing emerald tint. There was a
+depth to those apparently superficial glances. It seemed to Claudius
+that one had singled him out, and he fancied, as his eyes became
+fastened on this vision of concentrated worldly bliss, that it was for
+him that she stretched her plump neck, waved her arms in long gloves,
+undulated her waist and murmured--though to others she was but repeating
+her song during the orchestral prelude:
+
+"You talk of plunging into the strife; you are ready to endure
+privations, you would study and toil till you vanquish. Nonsense; you
+had far better repose, recruit after the humdrum, exhaustive life of
+college; enjoy life a little. Hear a love-song, not a professor's
+lecture--see a dance of the ballet, not the procession of the deans and
+proctors; come to me for I am immediate sensation--the pleasure for all
+times--eternal intoxication--certain oblivion--the ideal bliss of the
+Hindoo! I am the grandest proof of Life--I am Love embodied!"
+
+What did she sing to the strains of the voluptuous-waltz made vocal? The
+words mattered not; in Esquimaux they would have been as intelligible
+from the intonation with which she imbued every note, and the restricted
+but perfectly comprehensible gestures with which she emphasized the
+phrases of double meaning--one for the literary censors who had "passed"
+this corruption, the other for even the more obtuse of the common herd.
+
+The rival whom, without having seen her, she had dethroned, was
+obliterated. It was not a transfer of allegiance--it was Semiramis;
+trampling an overthrown empress among the charred ruins of her palace,
+acclaimed without one dissentient shout, in her stead, and as the
+initial of a new line of sovereigns. She enchanted, interested and
+amused, while Rebecca had awed, ravished and strove apparently in vain
+to lift to a level where the elite alone soar without dread of a fall.
+
+A witty cardinal has said that if a fly were seen in the drinking-cup by
+an Italian, a Frenchman and a German, respectively, the first would send
+it away, the second fish out the insect before he drank, while the
+German would gulp liquor and fly, without demur.
+
+The good audience of Freyers' Harmonista swallowed the so-called
+Fraulein von Vieradlers, flies and all! Claudius saw no more clearly
+than they; not only was the girl an unsurpassable idol, but to its very
+feet it was pure gold and immaculate ivory. An insane idea seized him
+not only to win her--a hundred around him shared that desire--but to
+keep her spotless, as he thought her, whatever the gossips had said.
+After all, slander had no opening to attack one whose youth was
+manifest; who owed no complexion to the wax-mask, the bismuth powder,
+and the carmine; whose hair was real and fine and of a shade which no
+dye could imitate; and whose movements, though in a society dance far
+removed from the wild whirl of the monads seen on this same stage, had
+the freedom of the bacchantes.
+
+After all, the unworthiness of the object no more changes the quality of
+love than that of the glass alters the banquet of wine.
+
+Oh, to withdraw her from this turbulent career, for which surely she was
+not inextricably destined, and let her be the bright but flawless
+ornament of a happy home and a choice circle--if not the lady of
+fashion, in case the student realized one of his fantastic dreams of
+aimless ambition. The quiet learner felt an immense flame usurp the
+place of his blood; he seemed gifted with the powers of the athletic
+Duke of Munich, Christopher the Leaper, whose statue adorned the
+proscenium, and like him, clearing the orchestra with a bound of twelve
+feet, he would have grasped the girl wasting her graces of voice and
+person on these boors, and carried her off to a more congenial sphere.
+
+Obliged to repeat her song and the dance which filled the gap between
+two verses, the charmer held the spectators in a spell even more firm
+than that she had first imposed.
+
+No one was conscious at the first that down the central aisle had come a
+little party odd enough in its components and awe-inspiring in what
+might be called its rear-guard to break even enchantment more potent.
+
+An old woman, wearing over sordid garments an old furred Polish pelisse,
+was the guide--the herald, so to say, to a gentleman in gold spectacles
+and a black suit and silk hat, an inspector of police, a sergeant of the
+watch, while behind this formidable official nucleus marched a serried
+body of civil and of military police. After them all, wringing his fat
+hands, trotted the proprietor, with a terrified expression too great not
+to be assumed. Waiters completed the retinue, wearing faces much whiter
+than the napkins slung on their arms.
+
+As the orchestra faced the audience, they perceived this inroad before
+the latter and, as by a signal, ceased playing. The startled dancer, for
+all her aristocratic self-command, stopped immediately for explanation,
+and, riveting her glances on the female head of the intruders, whom she
+recognized--that was clear--stood stupor-stricken.
+
+Claudius, following her hint, turned to the center and had no difficulty
+in recognizing in the woman arrayed in the Polish pelisse, the chief of
+the beggars, Baboushka. He recalled the remark of the Jew, that she
+befriended this debutante, and he was averse to believing it. That
+delicious creature and this hideous one in ties of communion!
+ridiculous, monstrous!
+
+Spite of his concern for himself, Claudius noticed that twenty or thirty
+of the spectators, apparently perplexed at the rare conjunction of their
+leader and the authorities in friendly communication, would not wait for
+the elucidation but began to make a rush for the outlets.
+
+The voice of the town inspector, rotund and sonorous, froze them with
+terror, although not personal.
+
+"Gentlemen--(the ladies were apparently here only on sufferance, and the
+stage-performer was of no consideration in the authorities'
+eyes)--Gentlemen, a murder has been committed and we seek the culprit
+here in your midst!"
+
+"Murder!" and the audience rose to their feet like one man.
+
+"Stand up here," said the functionary, pointing to a place on a bench
+which a timid spectator had vacated, and pushing Baboushka roughly, "and
+point out the man who has made away with the honorable Major von
+Sendlingen."
+
+"Major von Sendlingen!" repeated the audience, shocked, as the officer
+had been seen but the night previously among them in lusty life, and
+death is a spectre most terrible in a saloon of mirth and carousal.
+
+After that general exclamation, a silence ensued; one that meant
+acquiescence in the proceedings of the police.
+
+"I must have killed him," thought the student. "This is a black
+prospect! I had better have quitted the hall and profited by the
+invitation of refuge which Herr Daniels offered me."
+
+For the moment, he could take no part, though he could not doubt that
+Baboushka would denounce him--a stranger, and the principal in the duel
+with canes. His cloak would help toward the identification and unless
+the hag's crew had abstracted it, it would be forthcoming, he doubted
+not.
+
+Indeed, elevated on her perch, able to see the faces of all around her,
+the hag's aged but brilliant eyes rapidly scanned those nearest her in
+wider and wider circles. All at once they became fixed upon Claudius,
+and by instinct, the neighbors fell away from him so that he was
+isolated. She extended her arm with an unnatural vigor, and in a voice
+also unexpectedly strong with malice, cried:
+
+"That is he! there you have the slayer of poor Major von Sendlingen!"
+
+At that very moment, a shrill, ear-splitting whistle sounded; and the
+gas-jets all over the hall went out too simultaneously for the act not
+to be that of a hand at the inlet from the street-main. Claudius heard
+the soldiers and policemen buffeting the people to scramble over the
+benches toward him. He had but a single road to a possible escape: by
+the little door in the wall through which Rebecca Daniels had ushered
+him into the auditorium. He stooped as he turned, to elude any
+outstretched hands, drove himself like a wedge through the compacted
+mass of frightened spectators and, spite of the gloom, the deeper
+because of the glare preceding it, he reached the egress. The
+uninitiated would never have suspected its existence, for the actors and
+staff of the establishment alone had the right and knowledge to use it.
+
+"Lights, lights!" the functionaries were shouting.
+
+By the time matches were struck and lanterns brought into the scene of
+confusion, Claudius had opened the panel, leaped through and closed it.
+He did not dally in the passage, but hastened to follow the walled-in
+road as well as he might by which he had penetrated the theatrical
+region.
+
+At the dividing-line, where the path parted to the men's and to the
+ladies' dressing-rooms, he perceived a ghostly figure in the obscurity
+which also prevailed here from the general extinction of the illuminant.
+He was about shrinking back and fleeing in another direction when eyes
+blazed in the dark like a cat's, and the sweet, unmistakable voice of
+the singer, who had enthralled him, ejaculated:
+
+"As God lives, it is you!"
+
+"Suppose it is I!" he returned, impatiently. "Stand aside, or--"
+
+"You must not pass here!" she returned, laying her hands on his lifted
+arm.
+
+"Must not? We shall see about that!" and he repulsed her violently.
+
+"No, no; you are too hasty! I mean that would be a fatal course. Here,
+here!" seizing him again and dragging him with her. "You were right to
+kill that ruffian! to cane him to death--like the Russian grand-dukes,
+he was not born to die by the sword. To abduct one woman while paying
+court to another, the traitor! But, never heed that! He is punished, and
+you must be saved. Here is an outlet: pursue the passage to the end and
+leave the town!"
+
+"But I--"
+
+"How can you repay me? Bah! repay me in the other world--below, with a
+drop of cold water when I parch!" And with a dulcet yet demoniacal
+laugh, the singular creature pushed him into a lightless lobby, slammed
+a door and seemed to run away, singing the refrain of the waltz which
+was to haunt him forever-more.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+UNDER MUNICH.
+
+
+After an instant's reflection in the impenetrable shades, Claudius
+concluded to follow the advice of the variety theatre's prima donna.
+While a stranger to the City of Breweries, he knew that its
+predestination toward thirst was due to its being the site of an ancient
+rock-salt mine. In other cities, subterraneans were melodramatic; here,
+a labyrinth under the surface and at the level of the dancing and
+drinking cellars was so natural that a child of Munich, dropped into a
+well, would have no misgivings as to his worming his way up into the
+outer air.
+
+At the worst, when pressed by hunger, he could no doubt make an appeal
+to the mounted patrol by night or the foot-passengers by day, whom he
+would hear overhead, and be released from this living burial at the cost
+of the imprisonment and trial which he had temporarily evaded.
+
+Remembering that he had a box of cigar-lights, and regretting again the
+want of the cloak so useful in these damp passages, he lighted a match
+and began his flight by the sole opening that he spied. An odor of
+sausages, cheese and coarse tobacco was here and there strong, and he
+correctly divined that at these points, fugitives, probably from the
+same enemy as he fled, had recently made halts. Once assured that he was
+in a kind of thoroughfare, though one for the nefarious, he felt bolder
+and more hopeful about reaching a desirable goal.
+
+He did not pause to think, as he continued, choosing, where there was a
+bifurcation, the most trampled corridor, hewn originally by the miners'
+pick. But he had much on his mind for future elaboration. Heretofore no
+man could have lived a less eventful life, passed among books, globes,
+drawing tools and lecture notes. In a few hours the change was great.
+The quiet student, with no aspirations but the completion of his
+wandering-year in Italian picture-galleries, had become a fugitive from
+justice, and on the hands, groping in a lugubrious earthen alley, were
+the stains of a fellow-creature's blood. Then, too, the singular
+friendships he had formed, the old Jew and his daughter, who were
+awaiting him--and this still more remarkable creature who had glanced
+across his path, like the divinities from above in antique poems, to
+point out the safe retreat.
+
+But too long a time elapsed without his finding such an evidence of his
+security as he had too confidently expected. He might have mistaken the
+true line, for while at any point of divergence there were marks in the
+earth, where traces of saline flows still glistened, and even stones and
+bits of stick placed in cavities in the manner of the gypsy clues
+familiar to social outcasts, he could not interpret them; for once, his
+university education proved faulty.
+
+A new alarm arose from the presence of swarms of rats; larger and more
+hideous than their fellows of which one catches a fleeting view in
+houses and in the streets, they seemed to be less afraid of the lord of
+creation than fables teach. They scuttled off in front of him, it is
+true, but he began to think that they followed him when he went by. One
+ray of comfort came in the two beliefs that his flashing matches
+frightened them, and that, for certain portions of the way,
+well-regulated droves of the vermin had districts assigned them; those
+that ventured in chase of him too far were beaten back by those on whose
+grounds they rashly trespassed.
+
+This latter consolation was lost almost at the same time as the other:
+his stock of fuses ran out, while with the last flash he feared that he
+saw a larger mass than ever before in his track. The rats had united to
+overwhelm him.
+
+Seized with panic, spite of his philosophy, dropping the all but empty
+wax-light case in his haste, he dashed madly forward, groping to save
+his head and shoulders from contact with the capacious gallery sides,
+but unable to take a step with any certainty how it would end.
+Fortunately, he had strayed back into an often-traveled path, and while
+the scamper of the rats died away at the close of his frantic race, he
+heard a sound but little above his level revealing the presence of man.
+It was not a cheerful sound; being the tolling of a bell such as is
+swung when a dead body is entering a cemetery, is carried to the chapel
+before interment.
+
+Nevertheless, fellow beings would be near and he had only to find the
+opening by which this burial-ground could be reached. He remembered that
+the old cemetery had been immensely extended, if the guide-books were to
+be credited, and, while he had no clear idea of the direction he had
+rambled, he might have reached the town of twenty thousand dead. The
+idea was gruesome of having to call for the aid of a grave-digger, but
+he felt that he could not much longer support this journey in the
+underworld without the bodily support of food or the mental one of human
+fellowship.
+
+Silence most oppressive had followed the patter of the myriad of rats'
+feet, and it checked his efforts. They were brought to a termination
+just when he looked forward with joy to a grey light dimly indicating
+some aperture on the other side of which shone the day. The ground
+seemed to give way under him, and he was hurled senseless into the pit
+which he had not suspected.
+
+When he returned to consciousness, the bell had ceased to toll; the
+silence was once more heavy. But the pangs of hunger--remorseless master
+over the young--spurred him into rising.
+
+He was thankful that he had not been attacked in his helplessness by the
+vermin, and he muttered a prayer in his first stride toward where he
+recalled the feeble light. The rats' compact column had figured in his
+dreams, and while they were led by the fair waltz-singer and dancer in
+order to devour him, unable to resist, the benignant fairy, for once
+dark--contrary to all precedent--wore the appearance of Rebecca.
+
+He could not see the light; but a current of warm air stealing steadily
+into the underground indicated the orifice. It was a welcome draft, for
+it differed in many features from the noisome, dank and earthy
+exhalations to which he had luckily become accustomed in his indefinite
+sojourn.
+
+His surmise was correct. Through a grating of iron bars, straight at the
+side and semi-circular at the top, set in massive masonry of some
+building, in the foundation of which he crouched, he saw, in the
+vagueness of clouded starlight, the domain of the dead.
+
+On being assured of this, the panic, mastering him before, resumed its
+sway; it gave him a giant's strength to escape the fancied, grisly
+pursuers, and he moved the whole series of bars far enough away to
+enable him to crawl through the gap.
+
+He stood, exhausted, panting, glad of the relief from the waking
+nightmare which the darkness encouraged. His weakness could be accounted
+for, as his wandering had lasted long; the syncope could not be brief
+since nearly thirty hours must have transpired from his rush out of the
+variety music-hall.
+
+Before him, for at his back stood the chapel for services, stretched out
+the vast cemetery. Some of the cracked, dilapidated tombs dated back to
+1600; others marked the addition in 1788 to the original God's-acre. All
+was hushed; it was difficult to imagine a phantom where neglect seemed
+to rule. It was not in this olden part that descendants of the departed
+flocked on All Saints' Day to decorate the mausoleums with evergreens,
+plaster images and artificial immortelle garlands. Except for a
+screeching-sparrow, which his first steps dislodged, not a sign of life
+appeared in this town around which the living city slept as quietly.
+
+His eyes clearing, he believed he descried the gateway and, sure that so
+large a _campo santo_ would have a warder in hourly attendance, he made
+his way, deviating as the tombs compelled, toward the entrance. To his
+surprise, all was still there, and though a lamp burned in the little
+stone lodge, it was certainly untenanted. The gate was ajar; there was
+no fear of the tenants flitting out bodily for a night's excursion.
+
+Claudius was dying for refreshment and he was not fastidious about
+intruding. A man who has traversed the underlying catacombs need not be
+delicate about taking a nip of spirits or a hunch of bread. Both were in
+a cupboard in the little domicile, supplied with a porter's chair so
+ample as to be the watcher's bed, and a stove where a fire merrily
+burned, crackling with billets of pine wood.
+
+The disappearance was the more strange, as on a framed placard, at the
+base of which was a row of brazen knobs, there was a formal injunction
+for the gatewarder never to go away without his place being taken by
+another "from sunset to sunrise and an hour after!"
+
+Claudius knew what those knobs and the instructions portended in this
+adjunct to the charnel house. The public mortuary was at the other end
+of the wires from those bells; the custom was to attach them to the dead
+so that, if their slumbers were not that knowing no waking and they
+stirred even so little as a finger, the electric transmitter which they
+agitated would sound the appeal.
+
+And now the watcher, on whom perhaps depended the duration of a worthier
+life than his, had paltered with his trust, while drinking at the
+beer-house or chattering with a sweetheart, the bell might ring
+unheeded, and the unhappy creature, falling with the last tremor of
+vitality, to obtain a desperate succor, would become indeed the corpse
+like which he had been laid out in the morgue.
+
+Claudius smiled grimly and sadly. On what flimsy bases the best plant of
+wise men too often rest! The latest power of nature had been harnessed
+to do man service in his utmost extremity; science had perfected its
+instruments, but one link in the chain was fallible man. The bell would
+tinkle--the watcher would be laughing out of earshot--and the life would
+sink back into Lethe after swimming to the shore!
+
+The student sighed as he ate the piece of bread broken off a small loaf
+and drank from the bottle out of which the faithless turnkey hobnobbed
+with the sexton, the undertaker's men and the hearse-coachman.
+
+If the bell should ring, with him alone to hear, ought he hasten out by
+the gate providentially open, and leave for the care of heaven alone the
+unknown wretch who would have summoned his brother-Christians most
+uselessly? The resuscitated man would not be "of his parish," since he
+was a wanderer from afar. Let the natives bury their own dead!
+
+At this instant, when philosophy pointed out to the student the unbarred
+portals, the bell in the midst of the row rang clearly if not very
+loudly. It sounded in his ear like the last trump. Could he doubt that
+this appeal was to him exclusively? The removal of the custodian, his
+own miraculous escape--all pointed to this conclusion.
+
+But might he not run out and, if he saw the traitorous warder on his
+road, repeat to him the alarm? Not much time would be lost, for the gong
+still vibrated, and his personal safety ranked above his neighbor's in
+such a crisis.
+
+But Claudius' hesitation had been that of physical weakness; confronted
+in this way with the problem of fraternity, he did not waver any longer.
+On the threshold of safety, he turned straight back into the jaws of
+destruction. He had not emerged from that darkness and depth of earth,
+to descend into a lower profundity and a denser darkness of the soul.
+
+He glanced at the brazen monitor: its surface still shivered, though his
+senses were not fine enough to hear the faint sound. But there was no
+delusion; the dead in the morgue had signaled to the world on whose
+verge it was balanced.
+
+It cost the student no pang now to retrace the steps he had painfully
+counted, to reach the building, out of the cellars of which he had so
+gladly climbed. On thus facing it, he knew by a window being lighted
+that his goal was there.
+
+He had found fresh energy in his mission, rather than the scanty
+refreshment, and in three minutes was at the door. Heavy with iron
+banding the oak, it was not made for the hand of the dying to move it,
+but Claudius dragged it open with violence. He sprang inside with the
+vivacity of a bridegroom invading the nuptial chamber, although here was
+no agreeable sight.
+
+A long plain hall, of grey stone, the seams defined with black cement;
+all the windows high up, small and grated; only the one door, never
+locked. Two rows of slate beds, three of which only were occupied; two
+men and a boy, nude save a waistcloth; over their heads--sluggishly
+swayed by the air the new-comer had carelessly admitted--their clothes
+were hung like shapeless shadows. They had been dredged up in the Isar's
+mud, found at a corner, dragged from under a cartwheel. No one
+identifying them, they were deposited here; their fate? dissection for
+the benefit of science, and interment of the detached portions in the
+pauper's hell.
+
+Which had rung the bell?
+
+Claudius investigated the three: the boy had been crushed by the
+sludge-basket of the steam-dredge; not a spark of life was left there,
+his companion was green and horrible; he, too, had passed the bourne.
+
+But on the other row, alone, a robust man with disfigured face, and red
+whiskers, looked like a fresh cut alabaster statue. Cold had blanched
+him; but a faint steam arose from his armpits, in the sepulchral light
+of a green-shaded gas-jet. There heat remained to prove that the great
+furnace in the frame had not ceased to be fed.
+
+The student bent over him to feel the heart, when, as promptly, he
+sprang back. Spite of the maltreated face, he recognized his combatant
+in the duel with canes; it was Major Von Sendlingen, who had been flung
+on the slab in the public dead-house.
+
+Had Baboushka commanded his death to prevent her complicity in the
+assault on Daniels and his daughter being published, and had she
+suggested the stripping which caused the police to confound the noble
+officer with the victim of the "pickers-up" of drunkards?
+
+But the major shivered in the blast from the door left open, and a brief
+flush ran over the icy skin.
+
+If his enemy did not extend relief to him immediately, he would never
+recover strength to ring the death-bell to which ran the wires appended
+to his fingers and toes.
+
+With three or four rapid strokes and twistings, Claudius broke them. He
+looked round; this waif of the gutter had no clothes, but a torn and
+shapeless garment dangled over his head; it was the old cloak of the
+student. The pockets had been torn bodily away to save time; it was the
+mere integument of the garment.
+
+But it sufficed to retain the scanty heat lingering in the unfortunate
+man, when wrapped about him. With a surprising spell of strength,
+Claudius lifted him upon his breast when so enveloped, and crossed the
+grounds for the third time.
+
+The warder had returned but he had left the gate open to close its
+sliding grate by mechanism worked within his little house. To his amazed
+eyes, Claudius presented himself with the burden.
+
+"Help him! revive him! he is living!" he said. "I will go fetch the
+police surgeon! it is my officer--Major von Sendlingen!"
+
+After the announcement of the rank, Claudius knew that the officer would
+want for nothing. He let the body fall into the large armchair and,
+taking advantage of the warder's consternation at seeing the dead-like
+body sitting between him and the only exit, glided through the narrow
+space between the sliding rails and disappeared.
+
+The boom of an alarm bell, set swinging over the gateway by the warder,
+added wings to his feet, for he feared that police and patrol would
+hurry to the cemetery from all quarters, and he wanted, above all, to
+reach the Jew's hotel before morning.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+TWO AUGURS.
+
+
+Fortunately for the student, the night birds whom he met and to whom in
+asking information to arrive at the Persepolitan Hotel, he gave
+preference over the policemen, felt a fellow feeling for a man pallid,
+tottering, and in clothes which had suffered during his scramble through
+the exhausted mines underlaying Munich.
+
+He reached the hotel before dawn and was not sorry to find it one of
+those old-fashioned hostelries continuing traditions of the
+posting-houses, where he might not expect to be challenged because of
+his appearance. In the stable yard, between a half-awakened horse and a
+sleepy watchdog, who received the new guest with a blinking eye and
+affectionate tongue, an ostler was washing down a ramshackle chaise.
+Claudius guessed that it was prepared for his flight and his heart
+warmed at this proof of the Jew having counted on his coming, though
+belated. The shock-headed man, clattering over the rounded stones in
+wooden shoes, made to fit by the insertion of straw around his naked
+feet, no sooner heard him name Herr Daniels as the one expecting him,
+than he bade him welcome in a cordial tone which his surly face had not
+presaged.
+
+"I suppose he is asleep," he said, "but he left word that he was to be
+aroused at any hour on your coming. I am not allowed within doors in my
+stable dress," he added, "but you will have no trouble in finding the
+rooms. It is that one where the candle burns, one floor above, numbers
+11, 12 and 13--the number is unlucky for a Christian, but that does not
+matter for the likes of them!--and a lamp burns at the turn of the
+stairs. The back door is on the latch."
+
+Claudius, with the satisfaction of having anchored in the harbor,
+crossed the yard and entered the house. He was closing the door behind
+him when he heard a heavy tread at the street gate where he had come in.
+and the dog began to growl. The ostler caught it by the collar as it
+made a bound, and cried out:
+
+"Who is there?"
+
+The schutzman, who had dismounted, prudently held the door close, with
+one hand, to prevent the dog gliding through, while he showed his sword
+drawn in the other, and answered with affected joviality:
+
+"What, Karlchen, am I not known by you better than by your pagan of a
+hound? But catch me putting silly questions to my boon-companion, my
+oldest friend! It is not in here that I saw a suspicious shadow creep,
+eh?"
+
+"By my faith!" replied the groom, laughing heartily, "it may have been a
+shadow--but flesh-and-blood is what my true Ogre is waiting for! We are
+up betimes, worthy Hornitz, and we have neither had our breakfast. What
+has put you on the alert?"
+
+"A general order! There was a riot at the great music hall of the
+Freyers Brothers--plague on it! What art they have in brewing beer that
+leaves a pleasant memory! and we have orders to overhaul every
+suspicious character in the streets, while none can get out of the town.
+It appears that some monstrous criminal is at large! Oh, for the reward,
+that would buy me a little cottage on the Friedplatz road with beer
+unstinted!"
+
+"Pooh! as usual, you gentlemen of the nightwatch are badly informed,"
+grumbled the ostler, pushing the dog into a corner. "I know what it was,
+for one of the theatrical players is a lady lodger of ours. She was
+unfairly supplanted by some insignificant young upstart and, of course,
+the public, always knowing true talent from shallow pretension, broke up
+the seats and pelted the manager with it along with his imposter!"
+
+"Well, good-morning, Karlchen," said the gendarme, taking the
+correction in good part, and withdrawing his booted leg from the door.
+"I may see you when I am off duty and we will make sure that Freyers
+have better taste in brewing beer than in choosing actresses."
+
+Having heard enough to convince him that Daniels was in a house guarded
+by the faithful, Claudius proceeded up the stairs dimly visible before
+him at the end of a clean, bricked passage. His progress was more easy
+when he reached the landing, as the lamp mentioned, in a recess and
+projecting its rays in two directions, shone on the door of the suite of
+three rooms where the Jew and his daughter were lodged.
+
+Pausing before he knocked, Claudius heard the soft step of slippered
+feet. On tapping discreetly, a reserved voice ordered him to come in. It
+was Daniels who spoke; he was in a dressing-gown, with bare head, and,
+having cleared the chairs back to enable him to make the circuit of the
+table in the center of the spacious room, had apparently been walking
+round it like a caged lion. On the table were various articles heaped up
+without order and an open trunk, partly packed. He looked up in emotion
+while Claudius paused on the sill, more affected than he understood the
+reason for.
+
+"Ah, heaven be praised! it is you," said the old man with grave joy, and
+holding out his hands, paternally. "I feared for the worst--that you
+would never come. It is so serious a matter: a nobleman and an officer
+who belongs to the Secret Intelligence Department--his death is not to
+go unpunished."
+
+"At least, he is not dead," said the student; and he hastened to tell
+his story.
+
+"Speak at any tone you please," interrupted Daniels, at the stage of his
+having escaped from the music-hall by the artistes' door and of the
+help of the woman whom he did not profess to distinguish. "My daughter
+is sleeping, and a sitting-room is here between her apartment and this
+one."
+
+But, though without any fear that the noble girl would stoop to listen,
+the student related the rest with a cautious voice. Others might not be
+so delicate.
+
+"You have a great heart," said Daniels, when he heard of the rescue of
+the major from the frigid slab of the morgue. "To do this for an enemy
+is lofty conduct. God grant that you have not met one of those monsters
+of ingratitude whom a kind act embitters. But it would hardly appear
+that he could survive the beating by Baboushka's gang, the ill usage
+from the street sweepers and that of the ghouls of the dead-house. All
+this makes me tremble for the plan I formed to have you conveyed hence
+in a chaise. I have the papers to cover your departure as a clerk whom a
+business firm of good standing are sending out to Buenos Ayres. Once at
+Hamburg, you may turn your face in any direction you desire. But the
+slayer of Major Von Sendlingen would not be able to cross the French or
+Italian frontier."
+
+"For a man intending to see Italy, that would be taking me greatly out
+of the road," muttered Claudius, sinking into a chair.
+
+"Then go as far as Ulm only, where you will let the train proceed
+without you. Send for a doctor whose address I will give you and I
+answer for his helping you to get into Switzerland. After all, that will
+be better. But I see that you are weak with your exertions and want of
+proper nourishment."
+
+"It is rest I most need."
+
+"Then stretch yourself on this sofa, and let me cover you with a
+traveling-rug. When you awake, refreshments will be at hand."
+
+"But you, whom I deprive of rest?"
+
+"It is true that anxiety about you, my young friend, has prevented me
+lying down, but I am not desirous of sleep now. Do as I tell you. I will
+countermand the chaise, and return with the food. This house is not a
+famous inn, but my coreligionists, who are traveling merchants, frequent
+it, and the edibles are good. As for the honesty of the servants and of
+the host, I guarantee it. Unless you have been dogged to the door, I
+believe you are safe."
+
+Claudius said that he seemed not to have been followed. At the house, a
+patrolman had caught a glimpse of him but the ostler had jestingly
+turned him off and quieted his suspicions. Before his host had reached
+the door, where he paused to look back, the young man was nodding with
+eyes closing in spite of his will, and he was soon steeped in slumber.
+
+"The sleep on the night before execution," muttered the Jew. "This is a
+sad matter! That Baboushka is a witch of malevolence, or I am woefully
+misinformed, and the major an awkward antagonist. I would a thousand
+miles separated my daughter, and this young man, from both of them."
+
+In the lobby he saw a young girl, with her hair in curl-papers and a
+candle in her hand, descending the stairs from above.
+
+"Ah, Hedwig," he said gently, "I am not sorry you have risen so early."
+The girl blushed.
+
+"You are as rosy as a carnation. Will you please bring me up some coffee
+and light food as soon as you get the hot water? My daughter and I will
+probably start before your regular breakfast-hour."
+
+The girl seemed vexed by this news, for she bit her lip, but forcing a
+smile, she continued her journey to the kitchen. No one else seemed
+afoot in the large and rambling house, through which the Jew sent
+searching looks as he took the turn to the yard. The ostler received him
+with a grin, and the dog with friendly wags of the stub tail.
+
+"We shall not use the chaise as we purposed, Karl," said the Jew. "At
+your breakfast-time, my daughter will go out alone for an airing, with
+you or your fellow to drive. The young gentleman whom you welcomed is
+quite unfit for a journey before at least three days are over.
+Meanwhile, not an incautious word that will betray where he took
+shelter. In these three days," he added to himself, "we shall know how
+the major fares. Unfortunately, his race have iron constitutions."
+
+This was said with a sorrow rare in one of a people who seldom deplore
+the survival of a brother man.
+
+Daniels was right in his fear: the student needed repose, and only the
+most vigorous counter measures drove off an attack of fever. Rebecca was
+his nurse in the same devoted and intelligent manner as her father was
+his physician, but as he was on the margin of delirium half the time, he
+saw her like one in a vision.
+
+His antagonist, Von Sendlingen, was not so blessed. After a cursory
+treatment in the cemetery gate-keeper's lodge, he was removed, wrapped
+in blankets, to his quarters in the great barracks; the iron
+constitution, of which Daniels spoke, bore him up, and before Claudius
+was on foot again, the officer was outdoors--a little pale, but
+seemingly none the worse for his horrible adventure.
+
+He took up his own case. Fraulein von Vieradlers had already tired of
+her assay in elevating the stage in a social point of view. She had
+excited the adoration of the eccentric Marchioness de Latour-lagneau, a
+very old lady of fortune, who had the habit of conceiving singular
+fancies. This lady engaged the cantatrice as a "noble companion," and
+she hurried off with her into Italy. So the story ran, and added that
+her manager found that the Vieradlers promptly repudiated any kinship
+with her when he talked of their paying the forfeit money. He had
+thereupon endeavored to win back La Belle Stamboulane to his deserted
+stage, but she was obdurate, and the beer flowed flat in the double
+absence of stars inimitable.
+
+The major, whose body, reeking with arnica and iodine, reminded him at
+every step of the drubbing he owed to the civilian, concentrated his
+searches therefore to discover him. He was sure that he had not left the
+town by the ordinary channels, but, as time passed, and the week ended
+fruitlessly, he was inclined to believe that the fiend which befriended
+Baboushka had also shielded Claudius with his wing.
+
+He did not doubt that the old hag, believing he was lifeless, had
+hounded on her followers to steal his uniform and hurl him into the
+kennel for the most hideous of fates, which even the homeless and
+hopeless dread. But for the enemy whom he hated, he might now be a
+boxful of dissected bones in the poor man's lot instead of still
+enjoying the prospect, dear to the scion of an ancient race, of
+occupying his shelf in the family vault.
+
+Although a soldier, he had such intimate relations with the civil
+powers, that the police aided him in searches which he took care
+astutely to represent as quite non-personal. They led him to the street
+of the Persepolitan Hotel, where, before he entered, he was scrutinizing
+the vicinity when he spied the well-known form of the old beggar-chief.
+Their surprise was alike.
+
+"Traitress!" he said, with a red spot blazing on his pale cheeks, as he
+played with the swordknot on his new sword as if he wanted to loose it
+and flog her. "After receiving my gold, to bring me to death's door!
+What have you to say to stay me from handing you to the town's officers
+to be whipped out of it at the cart's-tail?"
+
+To his surprise again, she met his glance firmly, and her eyes seemed as
+irate as his own.
+
+"You are mistaken," she replied, carelessly, as if the matter were of no
+consequence. "How can you expect those stalwart bullies to obey an old
+woman like me? They would have beaten me to a jelly if I had tried to
+shield you. Besides, my officer, I thought you had not a spark of life
+left in you after that beating."
+
+"He shall pay for it--with the sword if worthy--with the stick if a
+plebeian."
+
+"You need not believe he will ever meet you with the sword," said the
+hag, glad to have the dialogue turn on another head than her own in
+spite of her unconcern. "I am going to tell you all about one whom I
+hated by instinct and whom I find to be a hereditary enemy."
+
+"What do you mean? He is but a boy and cannot have wronged you or
+yours."
+
+"His father, major, murdered my loveliest daughter and interrupted her
+career of splendor! Alas! one that had a palace where kings were
+received and to whom princes often sued in vain!"
+
+"Halloa! you, to have a daughter of that calibre!" and he laughed
+coarsely.
+
+"You, who know everything, my officer, must at least have heard of the
+peerless Iza, the original of the most beautiful statue
+which--reproduced in the precious and the mean metals, in clay, in
+parian, in plaster--made the round of the civilized world? 'The Bather!'
+That was my daughter! She had her faults--even the truly lovely have
+mental flaws, though bodily they are perfect--but whilst she lived, her
+poor old mother dressed in silks and velvets--not in rags; she ate and
+drank delicately, not sour crusts and sourer wine; she slept on down and
+not in a cellar!"
+
+Von Sendlingen shook his head; he was of the new generation and he
+preserved but a dim remembrance of the noted beauties--the stars of the
+living galaxy decorating the first cycle of the Bonapartist Restoration.
+
+"I foresaw it all and I warned her; but she was so perverse! It is my
+duty to avenge her, and to see that the same blunder is not made by--no
+matter! Enough that my science--at which you smile, I see--points out to
+me that your greatest enemies and mine are in that house." She gestured
+toward the hotel, which the major had been studying.
+
+"Do you say enemies in the plural?" he said, ceasing to curl his lip in
+mocking of the witch.
+
+"In that house are the Jewish couple, father and daughter, who played at
+the Harmonista, La Belle Stamboulane and the Turkophonist Daniel, and
+the young man who belabored your excellency so that he almost died of
+the drubbing."
+
+"Hang you for being so profuse in your explanations! How do you know all
+this?"
+
+"The servant-maid is a customer of mine. I tell her fortune and she
+tells me all that goes on in her master's house. The young man has been
+cared for there these five or six days, and they only await the chance
+to smuggle him out of the city. Have him seized and secure him in
+prison, where he shall rot--for I declare to you, as surely as there are
+stars above, these letters of the divine volume in which soothsayers
+read, he will be your death in the end unless you are his."
+
+"I would not be contented with that. I want to return him blow for
+blow--and yet you say I cannot fight him in duello."
+
+"Listen, my officer. He has been brought up in ignorance of his name and
+origin, in my country Poland. He is French by birth, and his name is
+Felix Clemenceau. It was his father, a celebrated sculptor, who married
+my daughter Iza, after decoying her to Paris from her mother's side, and
+he murdered her on some frivolous pretext when they were living
+separated and he, heaven knows, had no farther claim upon her--his
+existence was pure indifference to her. I answer for it! They tried his
+father for the atrocity. Even a French jury could not find extenuating
+circumstances for that kind of cold-blooded assassin who slays in the
+small hours the wife of his bosom--after having cast her off and driven
+her to evil ways, poor, spotless angel! They brought him in guilty of a
+foul murder and he was guillotined--gentleman and artist of merit though
+he was. They were kind to his young son; his friends made up a purse and
+sent him afar to be educated and reared in ignorance. But the shadow of
+the guillotine is projected afar, and I saw its red finger point to the
+assassin's offspring. I have found him. If my hand is not too feeble to
+strike, it may anticipate yours."
+
+"I cannot measure swords with a felon's son!" muttered Von Sendlingen.
+"But I shall not cease aching in the heart until he is in the shameful
+grave he imprudently snatched me from."
+
+"You are a man after my own liking," said the hag, chuckling. "I can
+foresee that you will go far and perish in a blaze of glory! Listen!
+There are troublous times when an unscrupulous and ambitious soldier may
+make his mark and carve a good slice out of the great, rich cake called
+Europe. Aid me, and I will aid you. Yes, Herr Major, it is one potentate
+speaking with another," the singular woman went on with sinister pride,
+and trying to draw her shrunken form into straightness; "I rule an army
+of my own, camped by cohorts in the capitals of Europe--dating farther
+back than your own, and, perhaps, as formidable. It is we who spy out
+the weak spots in great cities. The next time, we shall swarm into the
+doomed city in a mass and we shall devour its wealth and luxuries until
+we are gorged. But for the day, it will be glut enough for me to have
+the life's blood of this man. You cannot honor him with single combat,
+it appears. Then, let me propose another mode to finish him."
+
+The major was silent. Standing high in the ranks of the police, he was
+not sure how closely he might ally himself with this avowed leader of
+the evil-doers, who announced the pillage of a metropolis. She took his
+silence for consent or approval, for she jauntily continued:
+
+"The house-maid has told me all they are hatching. They have a chaise
+always ready and passports to mask the departure of the young man as a
+clerk going abroad. But for precaution, they will not have him go to the
+train at the depot; he might be questioned and the discrepancies in the
+passport be perceived. The chaise is to convey him down the line, and he
+will get on the cars at a rural depot where the gendarme and
+ticket-seller will be dull and easily hoodwinked."
+
+"Very neat," said Von Sendlingen, appreciating the plan at its due
+value. "I always said old Daniels was no fool."
+
+"What more easy than to post a couple of the horse patrol on the
+road--young, hot-headed fellows with restless fingers on the triggers?
+The youth will certainly refuse to surrender, whereupon, bang, bang! he
+falls into the ditch with a brace of bullets in his body. You and I will
+have an enemy the less. This is not the way I planned it in my dreams,
+but we must take our revenge with the sauce fate serves it up to us 'on
+the table of Fact.'"
+
+"The scheme is plausible."
+
+"Feasible! especially will it work like well-oiled machinery if you play
+your part of lure creditably."
+
+"My part?" questioned the major.
+
+"Yes, yours. With a sorrowful eye and a smooth face, I confess I could
+not confront the man I hate as strongly as his father. You are
+different--you are an arch-villain--a born diplomatist who wears the
+very mask for this task and has no face, no compunction, no pity of his
+own. Go into that house, ask for Herr Daniels--that is the Jew player's
+non-professional name--and see him and his daughter, perhaps, the young
+student, too. Boldly proclaim your position as the Secret Intelligence
+Agent, by which you learned their whereabouts, and that they harbor the
+charitable young man who saved your life. Touch lightly on his thumping
+you within an inch of it, and enlarge on your undying gratitude.
+Apologize to the young lady--lay all blame on her irresistible charms
+and abuse a little the fair and fickle Fraulein von Vieradlers who has
+eloped without so much as an adieu to you! Depend upon it, Jews though
+they are, they will applaud your Christian forgiveness, and, I do not
+doubt, Frenchman though he is, young Clemenceau will give you his hand.
+Dilate not at all, but urge him to leave the town without delay. From
+the maid I will get to know the hour of the chaise's starting and the
+route so that you can plant your men. I grant that this has the air of a
+highwayman's attack, but, after all, the uniform covers a host of civil
+sins, and, really, I do not see a better way to have done with the
+youth. It will never do to have him strut about Paris boasting that he
+snatched the sword away from an officer and drubbed him with a cane into
+the bargain."
+
+Sullen fire burned in the hearer's eyes. He stamped his foot, suppressed
+an oath, and when he looked up, had a serene countenance.
+
+"You have said enough. A willing steed does not need the spur. I will
+lay the train and prepare the match. Let each look to himself lest he
+suffer by the explosion."
+
+Successful though the old woman had been in her arrangement to convert
+an offended employer into a vigorous ally, she shuddered as if he were,
+in these ominous words, as good a soothsayer as he pretended to be.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+ONE GOOD TURN DESERVES--A BAD ONE.
+
+
+Probably no more terrifying a figure could have presented itself at the
+Persepolitan Hotel than the major of cavalry, and he looked the type of
+his class, insolent with aristocratic hauteur, martial to the point of
+arrogance, and domineering and as blustering toward inferiors as he
+would have been bland and meek to his superiors. The landlord, one of
+the hybrid Levantines in whose blood that of a dozen races flowed, was
+as alarmed as the maid, whom he sent up the stairs to announce the
+visitor to Herr Daniels. Strange to say, the officer, who had taken a
+seat in the sitting-room, unasked, with his heavy sabre held upright
+between his knees, bore the somewhat lengthy delay with patience. The
+girl returned to say that Herr Daniels would be honored with the visit,
+although, he had said, he had not a pleasant remembrance of the
+gentleman. In fact, before his assault in the street upon La Belle
+Stamboulane, the major had persecuted her and deserved the reproof from
+her father which it was too dangerous, as Munich society was ruled, for
+him to utter.
+
+But, contrary to all precedent, the military Lovelace quietly walked
+into the room where Claudius was restored to health and whence he had
+been removed to the inmost chamber vacated by the young singer. The
+major's accident might account for his meekness, but his manners and
+voice accorded with his speech so that one attributed the change to an
+altogether different cause than a purely physical one.
+
+He approached the Jew with open countenance, wearing a chastened and
+subdued expression, and extended his hand as to a brother officer.
+Daniels accepted it, struck by the unexpected mien, although he could
+not, in his astonishment and inveterate prudence, return the pressure.
+The major spoke an apology for his outrageous conduct, in a faltering
+voice and with moist eyes, spacing the apparently unstudied phrases with
+a cough as if to master tearfulness unbecoming even an invalid soldier.
+He laid the blame on the surpassing charms of the songstress who had
+enflamed him beyond his self-control and, partly, on the infernal French
+wine in which he had imprudently over-indulged at the evening's garrison
+officer's dinner. Had he but patriotically stuck to the beer! But that
+was not worth lamenting now. He tendered his regrets to the father of
+the young lady and promised to use his poor influence--here he smiled at
+the disparagement as if he knew his power and that his hearer was sure
+of it--for her professional advancement as long as she rejoiced Munich
+with her beauty and accomplishments.
+
+The night in the dead-house, on the very brink of the deathpit, had
+transformed him, he freely acknowledged. He hardly recognized his own
+voice in communicating the sentiments that carried him into new
+directions, so strange was it all, but he was eager to show by deeds
+that his conversion was great and sincere. He had engaged his protection
+for the distinguished turkophone-player and his unparalleled daughter,
+but he felt that was enough.
+
+"Ample," said Daniels, at last able to speak a word on the torrent of
+glib language momentarily pausing; "but we are going away to fulfill an
+engagement in Paris."
+
+"One moment," said the major, politely lifting his hand from which he
+kept the buckskin gauntlet as if he meant again to shake hands with the
+Ishmael at their farewell. "Perhaps I cannot, then, be of service to
+you, but there is another to whom my assistance is of other value--nay,
+of the highest consequence. I am not referring to the young lady--whom
+Munich will be so sorry to part with and whom I do not expect to see
+again even to accept my excuses--but the student from the Polish
+University who deservedly corrected me and brought me to my sober
+senses--although, perhaps, he had a heavy hand." He spoke with an
+assumption of manly regret, which enchanted the hearer and completed his
+revocation of the bad opinion of the rough suitor of his daughter. Still
+the Jew had not laid aside all his habitual caution and he did not by
+word or movement betray that he had an acquaintance with his champion.
+
+"I see that I must drop all flourishes and speak unfettered," went on
+the major, bluntly. "In two words, our brawl has got to the ears of the
+provost-marshal as well as those of the town guardians, and the search
+is going to be thorough for that young gentleman. I know it is absurd,
+and I protested against it, but the idea has penetrated their wooden
+heads that he is one of those tramp-students who are permeating the
+masses--worse, the dangerous classes--with seditious ideas, and they
+think he and Baboushka's gang too long lording it in the poor quarter,
+are hand and glove. In fact, in a day or two--perhaps now--the forces
+will be a-foot in uniform and in disguise to make a keen and searching
+inspection of the dwellings suspected of harboring the liberal-minded;
+and God knows that you have, Herr Daniels, chosen a veritable hot-bed!
+Two months ago, we arrested a Nihilist with a portmanteau full of glass
+bombs, luckily uncharged, in the attic upstairs; not three weeks since,
+two Hungarian malcontents were stopped at the door--but why enter into
+these details, fitter for the police than a soldier to relate? You, of
+course, were not told of these blots on this hotel's fame or you would
+have selected it as the last roof to shelter your talented daughter. It
+is one thing to cross swords--I mean staves--with a man, and another to
+guide the watchmen to clap their coarse paws on his shoulder. I have
+made honorable amends, I hope, to the lady and yourself, for my
+rudeness; as for the gallant fellow, I bear him no ill will--on the
+contrary! since I could wish to meet with him again, and tell him that
+the Great Prison of Munich is not badly constructed and promises little
+chance of an escape. I beg you to convey the warning to him that he must
+lose not one instant if he can escape beyond the walls."
+
+Still Daniels believed it prudent, if not polite, to make no
+compromising admission. But the speaker was not offended. He smiled
+wisely, not without good humor, and offered his hand so frankly that the
+Jew again took it and this time slightly returned the generous pressure.
+
+But on the way to the door, he was stopped by the entrance of Rebecca.
+Although she was clad in the plain garments affected by the Jewess in
+ordinary days, and they were in the most striking contrast with the
+stage flippery in which the officer had previously seen her, her
+loveliness was as manifest as the stars when even a fleecy cloud veils
+them on an autumnal eve. In her anxiety as regarded her father--or,
+perhaps, the student, who can tell?--she must have stooped to listening
+to some portion of the singular and one-sided dialogue. For she said,
+without any prelude:
+
+"Herr Officer, you have acted a noble part and it would be a grief if I
+had not taken the occasion to accept your apology and thank you for the
+warning which may save the life of one who--believe me--is no longer
+your foe, if he had been one. I am not able to judge the greatness and
+loftiness of your act from your people's point of view, but I shall no
+longer have a mean opinion of the creed which can perform such a
+conversion as yours--that is, making you a true gentleman instead of
+leading one to believe you a heartless libertine."
+
+She held out her hand and he took it so reverently, without haste and
+with tenderness, and kissed it so respectfully that her last doubt
+vanished--although she scarcely had the ghost of one.
+
+He had triumphed completely, and he retired with an airy step and a
+heart replete with gratification.
+
+"If he is dragged into the prison and locked up to rot in the dungeon,
+they will blame me the last of all," he muttered. "Heavens, how
+supernally beautiful she is! There are times when I think that if she
+and her rival occupied the scales of the balance, a butterfly's wing
+would turn them. My heart would be divided in their mutual favor."
+
+With the same aerial step, he passed two or three men in threadbare
+suits and shabby hats, who were hovering about the Persepolitan, and who
+carefully exchanged glances of understanding with him. He went straight
+to the superintendent-inspector of police, and sat down in his cabinet
+to concert with him on the best way to suppress, without scandal, the
+dangerous emissary from ever-restless Poland, lodged in consultation
+with the Jew, the bugbear of the monarchies of Europe.
+
+"Tut, tut! tell not the official that Daniels and his daughter, for the
+paltry lucre of the drink-halls or for artistic satisfaction, made the
+tour of the capitals!"
+
+In the meantime, the "suspects," not themselves suspicious, commenced,
+with Rebecca a listener, upon the move counseled by the chivalrous
+major. It was one they had almost settled upon and they determined to
+put it all the sooner into execution. The post chaise was kept in a
+state of readiness, alike with the horse that drew it on these important
+occasions, a surefooted nag whose pace was better than her appearance.
+Claudius, to be sure, rested under the disadvantage of being a stranger
+to the roads, as he had traveled only upon one to enter this
+city--commonly accounted dull, but so far crammed with serious
+adventures. This blank in his topographical lore was easily filled: the
+bright-eyed Hedwig was to meet him at the first corner, mount into the
+vehicle of which the capacious hood of enameled cloth would hide her,
+and there pilot him in steering to the Sendling _Thur_ or gate. Once in
+the open country, the road was plainer--in fact, he could be guided
+by the locomotive's smoke and whistle till he reached the little
+station. Even twenty miles out, the Persepolitan's landlord had
+acquaintances--perhaps they were brothers in some occult league--and the
+vehicle could be left without misgivings at any of the inns which he
+named.
+
+There was nothing in this plan, so simple as to promise success, to
+trouble the brain, but, all the same, Claudius had a sleepless night,
+though he retired early to be prepared for the probably eventful
+morrow.
+
+He wished to think only of Rebecca, who had added sound hints to her
+father's and the host's experienced advice; but, do what he could, it
+was another's image that haunted him. It was the winning one of the
+aristocratic singer. Again he beheld her matchless shape, her caressing
+and enthralling eyes, her supple undulations in the waltz and her
+shimmering golden curls. And whatever the sounds in the street, where
+there seemed more footfalls than before that evening, all though actual,
+were overpowered and formed the burden to the ghostly but delightful
+strains from that silvery voice. He was not only at the age to be
+impressionable, but he had not known one of those college amorettes
+which may be as innocent as a page of a scientific text-book. No woman
+even in the poetry had caused him to vibrate in the untouched
+heart-chords like this unexpected star in the firmament of beer fumes
+and tobacco smoke! But it was not joyous to muse upon this vision for he
+had no doubt that she marked a new starting-point in his life.
+
+Did he love her, or Rebecca? They had appeared to him so closely
+together that he was confused. He viewed them as a double-star, without
+yet having the coolness to separate them. He was a man to love once
+only, and there is but one love. There are different phases of it as
+there are different lodgers in the same house; they do not know each
+other, but they come in and go forth by the same staircase-way.
+
+Of this he was instinctively certain that if he loved Kaiserina, she
+would guide him in altogether another direction than he had looked and
+whither his proud and admiring professors had pointed. Enormous wealth
+in our days is to the monopolist, immense fame to the specialist. To
+rise above contestants, one must be patient, resigned, long toiling and
+abhorrent of the social ties which fetter one when most of the time is
+demanded to solve a problem, and pester one to recite the two or three
+letters he has learnt when he ought to study till he masters the entire
+alphabet. A man must immolate himself.
+
+Oh, he had been so happy at whiles with the thought, accounted
+providential, that he stood alone, with no one to distract him, to
+impose burdens on him and to claim a right to make inroads on his
+precious hours. He loved the loneliness in which he sank when he stepped
+out of the lecture-room and the amphitheatre. He had not felt the need,
+which others confessed, of some one with whom to share griefs, debate
+enigmas and communicate projects. Since he saw Rebecca, he had, indeed,
+had an almost momentary glimpse of a home where a dashing woman, moving
+silently and airily, guarded his meditations from the external plagues.
+Such a woman was created to comfort, cheer and encourage if he flagged.
+But the love she inspired was ideal, perceived hazily during the hours
+when he was out of health, and divined rather than watched her tender
+ministrations.
+
+The courtships are long when love is based on respect. She gave repose
+to the soul, not excitement to the spirit. He saw that she admired him
+for his courage in daring so much--more than he had fully realized--for
+the despised and trampled-upon, and she pitied one before whom yawned
+the dreadful prison which rarely lets out the political prisoner with
+enough life in his wrecked frame to be worth living out. But he did not
+see that she was truth and that he should follow her. As the sailors
+drive the ship toward the false beacon, near them and garish and
+flaring, so he thought the erratic orb brighter than the serene fixed
+star.
+
+He felt ungrateful. This sneaking out of the town was ridiculous after
+the heroic introduction to La Belle Stamboulane. He examined a pair of
+pistols which the host had generously presented him with, when, after
+the restless night, he rose with the dawn, and he determined to use them
+if assailed. It is the inoffensive, quiet man who works most mischief
+when roused--nothing so terrible even to the wolves as the sheep gone
+mad. The student, having dipped his hand in blood, was now eager to be
+attacked on the highway by a company of unrepentant Von Sendlingens.
+
+This was no mood, however, in which to start on a journey of possible
+peril. Rebecca did not appear at the breakfast table. She, too, had
+passed a wakeful night, but it was in prayer for the safety of the first
+real friend she had so far met among the Gentiles. The host looked in at
+the conclusion of the meal. Nothing could wear a fairer aspect. Even the
+hovering figures which he, for good reason, set down as spies, had
+become tired of their useless quest, and disappeared with the fog that
+floated amid the smoke of the numerous brewery chimneys.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+
+A SECOND DEFEAT.
+
+
+The sun was well up, showing a jolly red face, which indicated that he
+had been passing the night in the tropics, when Claudius, having said
+his farewell within the hospitable house where his bill had been
+obstinately withheld from him, took the reins in the chaise. The
+grinning ostler held the unbarred door of the yard ready to open it
+quickly and slam it behind him. At least, he had not the host's delicacy
+and he had accepted his gratuity.
+
+"Good speed, master!" he had hastily cried out as the equipage rolled
+out into the street.
+
+It was deserted. The horse and vehicle aroused no curiosity where odder
+animals and more curiously antiquated rattletraps were also out. He
+traversed the town as unimpeded as a Czar environed by secret guards.
+The officer at the gate, yawning behind the passport which he did not
+trouble to read, wished him a good dinner at the rural friend's, where
+it was hinted he would put up, and returned into the guardroom to resume
+telling a dream which he wished interpreted. Since Joseph, these
+functionaries at the gate and in prison seem to be tormented with
+puzzling visions.
+
+All had gone well but for one serious omission: Hedwig had not appeared
+to be taken up; yet he had not mistaken the streets laid down in the
+itinerary. But once outside the walls, he was forced to go slowly and
+foresaw the moment when he must stop. It was hazardous to inquire, for,
+while he was dressed, by the hotel-keeper's provision, like a citizen of
+Munich, he had not the speech of the residents.
+
+In his quandary he was greatly relieved when the horse pricked up his
+ears and gave a whinny in a kind of recognition. Claudius glanced to the
+roadside gladly and hopefully, as a young, feminine figure stepped out
+from the cover of a post painted in stripes to indicate parish, township
+and other boundary marks. But although the short frock, coarse woolen
+stockings, cap and velvet bodice were Hedwig's Sunday clothes, sure
+enough, in which the student had once seen the pretty maid, this girl
+was no rustic slightly polished by the hotel experience.
+
+He felt his heart melt like wax in a cast when the bronze rushes within
+the clay--it was Kaiserina von Vieradlers!
+
+A strange feeling nearly mastered him! Instinct bade him run and,
+whipping the horse, flee at the top of speed anywhere beyond the charm
+of this unexpected apparition. And yet she came forward so brightly, and
+so frankly, and her first words were so reassuring that he was ashamed
+of the impulse which--he was yet to know--had all the worth of heavenly
+inspired suggestions.
+
+"Herr Student!" she said sweetly, "it is fated that I shall be of
+service to you. Do not go farther in this course. They lie in wait for
+you. Luckily, I know of a cross-country lane--if you will only let me
+accompany you to set you right, and help me to roll some stones and logs
+from the mouth. It saves time, and you will baffle your foes. Oh, I know
+all. The faithful Hedwig, whose clothes I have borrowed, is a daughter
+of a tenant on my father's estate. She means well, but she has no brains
+for these steps out of her even tenor, and she was glad to have me
+replace her in her mission. Help me up!"
+
+There was no denying her anything. The horse had appeared to greet her
+with pleasure, though it was probably the clothes of Hedwig that he
+recognized with the whinny after a sonorous sniff.
+
+As she held out her hand, he offered his and, like a fawn clearing a
+hedge, she bounded up, just touched with a winged foot the iron step,
+and cleared the seat with a second leap. Crouching down within the
+hood, she began merrily but spoke with gravity before she had finished:
+
+"Drive on after turning."
+
+He turned the horse and vehicle. At the same moment a shrill whistle
+sounded in the opposite direction.
+
+"That's the gendarmes," she said. "The watchman's horn in the old town;
+the military whistle without. They are keeping good guard for you--but
+we shall cheat them, I tell you again!"
+
+She laughed that purely feminine laugh at the prospect of somebody being
+deceived.
+
+"Take the northern fork, although you would seem to be going very
+different to your aim. At the lane I spoke of, stop--but I shall be at
+your elbow to prompt you."
+
+The drive was resumed in this singular way; there was something piquant
+in not seeing his companion, her presence manifested only by her sweet
+breath, the slight rustling of the glazed cloth which afforded her such
+scanty room, and the prattle which flowed from her lips.
+
+She was happy to serve him again; she had liked him from the first sight
+in the hall; they did not seem to be strangers; he was like she knew not
+whom, but she could swear the resemblance was perfect! She had been read
+such a lecture by her manager and the police sub-chief, but, pooh! what
+were such men but the knob on a post--the post remained and the knob was
+unscrewed for another to be put on every now and then. They had
+threatened but she was not a strolling player who feared the lock-up and
+the House of Correction. They would think twice before they sent a
+child of the Vieradlers into the Home of the Unrepentant Magdalens! and
+all this intermixed with snatches of song and flashes of original wit at
+the expense of the police and soldiers and the citizens.
+
+And the flight into Italy with the Marchioness famous for proteges as
+other old ladies for keeping cats or parrots? It was true she had made
+her an offer and she had connived at the police being made to think she
+had accompanied the eccentric dame. But she had remained in Munich to
+help the man who was endeared to her.
+
+Not a word about Baboushka and a fear to break the spell kept Claudius
+quiet on that point.
+
+Eight minutes passed like one, when--"Stop!" she exclaimed, and was out
+beside him without a helping hand and upon the dusty road.
+
+The walls had a gap here, roughly choked up by a higgledy-piggledy heap
+of rubbish. Fraulein von Vieradlers had attacked it before her
+astonished companion, also alighting, came to her aid. There was
+witchery in the creature, for her delicate, ungloved hands, covered with
+rings, tugged at the roughly hewn tree-trunks and misshapen blocks of
+stone without a scratch and, as her frame offered no suggestion of
+strength, the swiftness with which they were moved, confirmed the idea
+of the supernatural. As soon as he recovered from his amazement, he
+aided her energetically, and in an incredibly short space the two
+cleared a passage for the horse to scramble over and the wheels to be
+lifted clean across. Without pausing, they replaced the beams and
+boulders, and made good the breach.
+
+"Excellent!" ejaculated the vocalist, contemplating the work. "But I am
+wrong to delay. We are not out of the vale of tribulation. Help me in
+and tan the horse's hide well! We must, without farther delay, reach the
+farmhouse whose red-tiled roof gleams under the lindens. Help me in, and
+lay on the whip!"
+
+This drive, at redoubled speed, despite its being in broad daylight, had
+to the student the fascination of the gallop of the returned dead lover
+and Lenore in the ballad. Though never cruel before, he now spared the
+horse not a stroke or impatient shout, however imprudent the latter was.
+On the rutty, ill-kept lane the wheels bounded unevenly and the driver
+had hard work to keep his seat; but the girl, by a miracle of balancing,
+held her half-crouching, half-standing position in the _calash_, and
+only now and then, flung forward by a jolt, rested her hands on
+Claudius' shoulders. At this contact--at the sight of those roseate,
+dimpled hands--he was electrified and in the headlong rush he pictured
+himself as Phaeton, careering behind the glancing tails of the steeds of
+the solar chariot.
+
+Such a pace overtasked the poor mare. At any moment now her sudden
+collapse after a stumble might be expected. On the other hand, the
+farm-house, winning-post of the race, loomed up clearly, and, luckily,
+the road improved a little by becoming harder and descending gradually.
+On one side rose a willow coppice, in the trailing branches of which a
+musically rippling brook was running; on the other, the ruins of a barn,
+which a flood had demolished.
+
+On the knoll beyond, the haven stood, and Kaiserina smiled as she leaned
+her head forward so that her cheek was next his.
+
+Again she had saved him!
+
+No; not yet!
+
+From both sides of the road at the hollow, three horsemen came solemnly
+forth, two from the right, one from the ruins.
+
+The girl turned pale and shrank back. Claudius flung down the broken
+whip, and, taking the reins in his teeth, held a pistol in each hand. He
+had recognized in the most prominent rider Major von Sendlingen, and in
+an instant he comprehended that this was a trap and that his chivalric,
+Christian conduct was the most base of impudent tricks.
+
+Was Kaiserina also a betrayer? He did not believe that.
+
+Each horseman had a pistol as well as a sword drawn, and, besides, the
+two inferiors were armed with carbines. This had the air of an
+assassination, and, infuriated by the treachery, Claudius resolved to
+begin the attack. It mattered little whether Fraulein von Vieradlers was
+in the conspiracy or not. Once she had saved his life, and he was bound
+not to molest her now, so long as she remained neutral. She had cowered
+down, from fear or because her guilt oppressed her. Perhaps his contempt
+would punish her sufficiently.
+
+The old mare bore the unusual exertion bravely and charged down the
+incline against the odds like a war-stallion.
+
+"Take him alive!" shouted the major, beating down the pistols with his
+sword flat, as a second thought changed his first intention.
+
+He had spied the young singer in the shadow of the hood, and he had no
+wish to injure her.
+
+"That's not as you decide!" retorted Claudius, and he fired both shots
+at the same time.
+
+But he had not allowed for the steep descent. One bullet stung the
+major in the thigh, the other so cruelly lacerated the horse of the
+gendarme on his right that it screamed, reared and fell sidewise with a
+crash into the brook. The man, although encumbered by his heavy boots,
+contrived to disengage himself and stood up, furious at being unhorsed.
+
+At the same moment, out of the reeds, much as though the disappeared
+horse had suffered a transformation, an old woman leaped up into the
+lane. Her grey hair was disheveled and her pelisse was shredded by the
+brambles. She ran to place herself before the horse in the chaise and
+the gendarmes, and screamed, with her eyes fastened on the girl in the
+vehicle:
+
+"Hold! do not shoot! God is not willing!" But the major alone obeyed the
+injunction; the others, in the saddle and dismounted, were wild with
+rage and pain. Their two firearms rang out as one, and the old woman had
+only time to cover the mark by drawing herself to her full height, with
+an effort unknown for thirty years. Both bullets entered her chest, for
+she fell under the horse's feet, as it stumbled and went down beside
+her.
+
+As the vehicle abruptly came to a stop, quivering in every portion,
+Claudius clung to the frame of the hood to save himself from being cast
+out. The girl was hurled against him, but she did not think of herself.
+She thrust into his hand a revolver and whispered rapidly:
+
+"Quick! they are going to fire again!"
+
+It was true; excepting, this time, the gendarmes had recourse to their
+carbines, the dismounted one having picked his up from the briars, and
+found the cap secure. At that short range, the student would be a dead
+man if he awaited the double discharge.
+
+Heated with the action, inhaling the acrid smell of gunpowder, the
+demon possessed him which at such moments hisses: "Kill, kill, kill!"
+into a man's ear. The angelic demon there had supplied him with the
+weapon, and he fired three shots as rapidly as the mechanism would work.
+
+The dismounted gendarme had come out on an unlucky day; a bullet in his
+neck laid him lifeless in the rushes beside the strangled horse; his
+comrade, pierced so that he bled internally, drew off to the roadside
+mechanically--the image of despair; nothing more heartrending than the
+anguish on his convulsed visage and the increasingly hopeless
+expression.
+
+Here was a double tragedy, but it was the major who, under the eyes of
+Fraulein von Vieradlers, was to furnish the comedy of the incident. His
+horse took the bit in its teeth and ran away with him along the bank of
+the brook, threatening at any moment to lose footing and roll the two in
+the water.
+
+"Victory!" said the girl, with a joy-flushed cheek, alighting and
+displaying no more compassion for the soldiers slain in doing their duty
+than for the chaise horse--or the old woman beside its heaving carcass.
+
+"She is dead," remarked Claudius. "But what did she say? She spoke in
+Polish--I understand it--I caught the words, but they were not
+intelligible."
+
+"Were they not?" continued the girl, not displeased.
+
+"She said, 'my child!'"
+
+"Very well! I am her grandchild. That was not all, though--she
+affectionately recommended you to me, as my cousin."
+
+"Cousin? your cousin?" repeated Claudius, without contradicting the
+speaker on his impression that Baboushka's face had not worn a soft
+expression, in his eyes.
+
+"It would appear that you do not know yourself as Felix Clemenceau?"
+
+"Clemenceau?" echoed the student, remembering what he had heard in the
+music-hall.
+
+"Yes; your father was the famous sculptor."
+
+Was his predilection for art a hereditary trait? the son of a celebrity?
+then his essays in design were unworthy of his name. Abashed, inclined
+to despair, having a glimpse of a tumultuous rabble shouting: "At last
+he is here!" before the ruddy guillotine on a raw morning, a pale, prim
+man between the executioner's aids, the young Clemenceau listened to the
+girl, who probably resembled the Lovely Iza, but looked at the dead
+woman at their feet.
+
+"Yes, we are cousins! that is why I took a fancy to you at the sight. I
+knew this time I loved for a good reason. The band of nature--the bond
+of blood--connected us! But this is not the place or time to pluck
+leaves, and compare them, from our genealogical tree. The major has
+succeeded in reining in his horse, but, who cares? the old farmhouse
+stood a siege in the Great Napoleon's time and could mock at him now.
+Leave all--all these cooling pieces of carrion, and my dear grandma!"
+she sneered, "and let us hasten to the house where I have friends."
+
+Like a man in a dream, Claudius, or, better, Felix Clemenceau, since
+this was his true title, holding the half-emptied revolver by his side,
+automatically allowed the strange creature to lead him from the
+battlefield. He was oppressed by the magnitude of the ruin he left
+behind: the peaceful student to whom the pencil and the eraser were
+alone familiar had handled firearms like "the professor" in a shooting
+gallery. And then the assertion--or revelation--that he was of kin not
+only to the old witch, who had perished in shielding him unintentionally
+in saving her grandchild, but to the latter. Fair as a sylph but
+icy-hearted as a woman of five social seasons! But the son of the
+guillotined wife-murderer should not be fastidious about those relatives
+who deigned to recognize him.
+
+The farmhouse was a large stone and brick structure, moss-grown but firm
+as a castle; at its porch, three men had tranquilly awaited the result
+of the conflict; most of the episodes had been observed by them. Two
+were comfortably clothed like farmer and overseer, and showed a
+respectful bearing to the third. This was a man of about thirty years,
+but looking younger, tall, slender, elegant and proud. Not yet calm,
+Clemenceau vaguely recalled the refined, winning, though dissipated
+visage; this was the gentleman in the Harmonista who had enlightened him
+unawares on the antecedents of Fraulein von Vieradlers. He did not
+notice her companion but his stiffness disappeared as he bowed to her.
+Without asking for any explanation on the affray, he said to her:
+
+"Can he--your companion--ride? The horses are under saddle. If not--"
+
+Clemenceau replied in the affirmative to Fraulein von Vieradlers,
+instead of to the gentleman. He conceived an aversion to him on the
+spot, although his intention to include him in the pre-arranged flight
+was manifest. But he was the victim of circumstances and for the present
+he had to yield. Besides, the prospect held out was for him to continue
+beside the dazzling beauty, whose influence seemed more wide than her
+deceased ancestress.
+
+Like many bookworms, he had entertained a humiliating opinion of the
+sex that makes the world move round; he was beginning to doubt, and he
+would retract it before long.
+
+Kaiserina related the events briefly, while one of the farmers brought
+two magnificent saddle-horses round to the long, high side of the house,
+facing the northwest. Clemenceau mechanically mounted the bay, and the
+gentleman assisted the lady upon the black. Both animals were impatient
+to be gone, and when given the head, started off madly. This exciting
+pace roused the student from his lethargy, and when the steeds had
+settled down to a less frenzied gait, he asked what was his guide's
+intention.
+
+"It is plain. You must be put across the border into France."
+
+"France!" it seemed to him, since the revelation of his birth in that
+country, that the name had a charm unknown heretofore. Yes, he ought to
+make a pilgrimage into that sunny land where his father had been a gem
+in its artistic crown.
+
+"It is your native country and you will be safer there than in Italy or
+Austria. Our next stage will be the little railway station to which you
+may see that long double silver serpent, the metal tracks, stretching
+across the plain."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX.
+
+REPARATION.
+
+
+Fortunately for the fugitives, the poorly paid railway officials in
+these parts are the obsequious servants of those who liberally bribe.
+The station-master, though a very grand personage, indeed, in his
+uniform and metal-bound cap, became pliant as an East Indian waiter and
+accepted without question the explanation of the lady. It was she who
+was spokesman throughout. She said that she and her companion were
+play-actors and that their baggage was detained by a cruel manager of a
+Munich musical beer-hall; this was a wise admission as the man might
+have seen her at the Harmonista, or, at least, her photograph in the
+doorway. But they were compelled to reach Lucerne without delay or lose
+a profitable engagement, by the proceeds of which they could redeem
+their paraphernalia. While listening, the man dealt out the tickets,
+pocketed the gratuity which was handsomely added to a previous donation,
+and, without any surprise, agreed to let any one calling take away the
+horses; they certainly were above the means of strolling singers who had
+to flee from a town. Farther discussion, if he had sought it, was
+curtailed by the electric signal heralding the coming of a train. In
+eight minutes, the two were ensconced in a first-class compartment and
+hurried along toward the Land of Lakes.
+
+In the sumptuous coach, the girl unburdened herself, but, with rare art
+or imperfect knowledge of her origin, she was more explicit on the
+family of her cousin than on her own. However, it was his that had made
+a niche in art and scandalous story.
+
+As for Kaiserina, her mother was the eldest daughter of a Count
+Dobronowska, of a Polish branch of the Vieradlers, who had settled in
+Fuiland. The count had meddled with politics and the Czar had promptly
+confiscated his landed property. The loss and fear of Siberia had broken
+his heart. After his death, the widow passed the intervals of her grief
+in besieging persons of influence to obtain a restitution of the
+estate. Unfortunately, she had no son to fight the battle with the Czar,
+but two daughters were growing up with such a superabundance of charm
+that they promised to be no mean allies in the enterprise. But fortune
+did not altogether favor the widow; it is true that she interested a
+Russian of great wealth and political sway, but when the time came for
+his co-operation to be active, he played her a wicked trick. He
+attracted her elder daughter to him and married her. Not liking to have
+a mother-in-law in his mansion, he pensioned her off, with the proviso
+that her presence should never clash immediately with his own in any
+country. It is regrettable to add that Wanda, Madame Godaloff, agreed to
+this arrangement, and, indeed, having attained woman's goal, troubled
+herself not once about her parent who had schemed and plotted tirelessly
+for this end. The countess had brought her deer to a pretty market; but,
+unhappily, she gained little by the bargain compared with what she had
+dreamed.
+
+She had a brother-in-law who had acted very differently from her
+husband. Instead of playing the patriot--and the fool--he had submitted
+to the tyrant and won a lucrative post at St. Petersburg. He was afraid
+to injure himself by giving countenance to his brother's relict, who was
+always seeking an audience of the Emperor. It was strongly suspected
+that she intended, since Wanda was out of the lists, to throw the next
+daughter, Iza, at the head of a Grand-duke with whom the two girls had
+played when all three were children at Warsaw.
+
+The countess seemed to have educated the girl, as soon as her elder was
+out of the way, for a royal match. Like most Poles, Iza spoke several
+languages fluently, sang and played the harp and piano. She was growing
+lovelier than her sister because she was a purer blonde, and yet Wanda
+had been accounted a miracle. Remembering that, at a later period, a
+foreign adventuress almost inextricably ensnared one of the imperial
+family, the Countess Dobronowska's matrimonial project was not so
+insane. Some other pretender to the grand-ducal left or right hand
+thought it feasible, for everybody said that it was feminine jealousy
+that led to the countess and her "little beauty" being ordered out of
+the White Czar's realm. The pair, spurred on by the police of every
+capital, and all are in communication with St. Petersburg, at last
+rested in Paris. It was a favorable moment; the French government had
+offended the older powers by its presumption in chastising venerable
+Austria almost as severely as the Great Napoleon had done. The
+Dobronowskas were let alone in the imperial city on the Seine; but,
+unfortunately, the important state functionaries soon became as tired of
+the countess's plaints as their brothers on the Neva. Reduced to the
+shifts of the penniless aristocrats, the two lived like the shabby
+genteel. They made a desperate attempt to entrap their Grand-duke again.
+But the victim had warning and the pair were stopped at Warsaw. Here a
+beam of the sun, long withheld, glanced through the clouds and
+transiently warmed "the marrying mamma." A distant relative of hers, one
+Lergins, was an attache of the embassy and he fell in love with his
+"cousin" Iza, as the mother allowed the youth to call her. As he had
+splendid prospects and seemed to be quite another man as regarded
+maternal control of Wanda's husband, mamma dismissed her brilliant
+_ignis fatuus_ and tried to have a clandestine marriage come off. But
+the young secretary of embassy was not of age and again she was forced
+to depart for Paris--that sink-hole for refugees of all sorts. His
+family put pressure on the officiale who in turn applied it to the
+luckless _intriguante_.
+
+Farewell, the future in which a semi-imperial coronet hand gleamed! even
+that where a cascade of gold coin inundated the new Danae. Wearied of
+this constant grasping at the unattainable Iza, who had something of a
+heart, chose for herself, much as her elder had done, with happiness at
+home as the object; one fine morning, married M. Pierre Clemenceau, a
+young but rising sculptor. He had on the previous visit of theirs to
+Paris, materially befriended them. It was only gratitude after all,
+although he, enamored like an artist of this unrivaled beauty, would
+have sacrificed fortune to possess her. Indeed, he sacrificed all--even
+his honor, for he suffered himself to be gulled by her wiles as
+profoundly as he was infatuated by her charms.
+
+At this point, as became a young woman telling of a relative's iniquity,
+Kaiserina glazed the facts and gave a perversion. It was later,
+therefore, that Felix Clemenceau learned in detail the whole mournful
+tale of a beautiful wanton's ingrained perfidy and a loving husband's
+blind confidence. The end was inevitably tragical. Lergins was decoyed
+by the countess to Paris, where she languished like a shark out of
+water. The sculptor's income did not come up to her dreams of luxury,
+any more than those she inspired in her daughter. She brought about a
+separation of the wedded pair and rejoiced when a fresh scandal
+necessitated a duel between the young Russian and the Frenchman.
+Unhappily for her revengeful ideas, it passed over harmlessly enough.
+
+Iza remained the talk and admiration of the gay capital, although women
+of superior physical attractions rendezvous there. Nothing blemished her
+appearance; no excesses, no indulgements, not even bearing a son had a
+blighting effect. Unfortunately for the dissevered artist, she had been
+his model for the most renowned of his works and her name was
+inseparably intertwined with his own.
+
+Although "crowned" as the favorite of a king who came in transparent
+incognito to Paris to visit her, though occupying princely quarters,
+outshining the fading La Mesard and the rising Julia Barucci in
+diamonds, Iza was still known as "the Clemenceau Statue."
+
+Her mother, as lost to shame, was the mistress of the wardrobe in this
+palace; she was spiteful as a witch, and began to resemble one in her
+prime, bloated, red with importance and self-indulgence, before the
+wrinkles came many and fast. One day, annoyed at the persistency with
+which a friend of Clemenceau's watched the queen of the disreputable in
+hopes to make her flagrancy a cause for legal annulment of the marriage,
+she denounced him as a traitor in an anonymous letter to the fretting
+husband, then in Rome. Her daughter agreed to make good the assertion
+that the friend had failed monstrously in his trust.
+
+Like Othello, Clemenceau swore that this demon of lasciviousness should
+betray no more men. The force of depravity should no farther flow to
+corrupt the finest and best. He entered the boudoir of the royal
+favorite and stabbed her to the heart. In the morning, he gave himself
+up to the police.
+
+The victim was so notorious that the Clemenceau trial was a nine days'
+wonder. His advocate was eloquent to a fault, but that inexplicable
+thing, the jury, found no extenuating circumstances in the act and
+brought in the verdict of murder. The good men were incapable of
+appreciating the right he claimed to stop the blighting career of
+Messalina--to divorce with steel where the state of the law, then meekly
+following the ecclesiastical ruling, forbade any sundering of the
+connubial tie except by death.
+
+He met his doom calmly and laid his head beneath the axe with a martyr's
+brow. Kaiserina acknowledged this.
+
+Felix Clemenceau understood everything now. The trustees to whom he owed
+his subsistence-money, M. Rollinet the imperial counsel, and M.
+Constantin Ritz, a famous sculptor's son, and the life-companion of
+Clemenceau, were characters in the momentous drama which Kaiserina
+recited, whom he knew by correspondence.
+
+The finger of fate, which had urged the artist to commit a homicide for
+morality's sake, had pointed out to his son the way which had to be
+followed over corpses of the young student's slaying.
+
+Brooding over the alteration in his future, he exchanged hardly a word
+with his cousin, during the prolonged journey, which they continued
+together, as though mutual reluctance to part bound them indissolubly.
+Logic said there should be a powerful repugnance between those whom the
+shadow of the guillotine's red arm clouded. But, spite of all, Felix
+felt that Kaiserina was, like himself, well within the circle of infamy.
+Her mother was the sister of the shameful Iza, and her husband's careful
+guard of her proved that he doubted her walking virtuously if her
+unscrupulous mother stood by her side. This old Megara--who sold her
+offspring to worse than death--was living--seemed eternal as evil
+itself. It were a pious act to save Kaiserina from her as his father had
+tried to do with Iza. He was pleased that she seemed inclined to cling
+to him as though wearied of the erratic life she seemed to have led
+after a flight from her mother's, and which she did not describe
+minutely. He was also grateful that, in her allusions to his father, she
+did not speak with the bitterness of a blood-avenger.
+
+They made the journey to Paris without any stoppage. He had to visit M.
+Ritz, for M. Rollinet was no longer there, having accepted a judgeship
+in Algeria. In the vehicle, carrying to a hotel where he purposed
+leaving her, Felix said, feelingly:
+
+"I think I see why we were brought together. I am not to lead the life
+of an artist, lounging in galleries, sketching ruins and pretty girls,
+but one of expiation for my poor father's crime."
+
+"Perhaps. More surely," she replied with a smile which, on her peerless
+lips, seemed divine, "_I_ should make the faults of the Dobronowskas be
+forgotten."
+
+They had arrived at the same conclusion as the journey ended, but the
+means had not occurred yet to either.
+
+"Here we are," he exclaimed, as the carriage horse came to a stop.
+
+He alighted, entered the hotel and settled for the young lady's stay.
+Returning, he came to help her out.
+
+"My door will never be closed to you," she said, remembering how, in her
+story, her notorious ancestors had playfully suggested in a letter
+announcing her renunciation of her scheming mother's toils and her
+return to marry Clemenceau, that he might leave his door on the jar for
+her at all instants. "And yet, what will be the gain in our meeting
+again?"
+
+"Everything for our souls, and materially! Here in France, where La
+Belle Iza and the executed Clemenceau point a moral, neither of us can
+find a mate in marriage easily. If blood stains me, shame is reflected
+on you. Let us efface both blood and shame by an united effort! Let our
+life in common force the world to look no farther than ourselves and see
+nothing of the disgrace beyond."
+
+"I do not care a fig for what people think or say," said the one-night
+_diva_, with a curl of the lip. "And I do not understand you fully."
+
+"Wait till I see you again, when all shall be made clear. Meanwhile,
+cousin--since without you I should have lost my life, or, certainly my
+liberty--I am eternally bound to you. It is left to you to have the
+bonds solemnized in the church, here, in France--my country!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X.
+
+THE FOX IN THE FOLD.
+
+
+Among the secluded villas that dot with pretty colors the suburb of
+Montmorency, there is none more agreeable than the Villa Reine-Claude,
+which was in the hands of the notary who had managed the transmission of
+the maintenance money to young Clemenceau. At the hint from M. Ritz, who
+had a debt of honor to pay the son of his dead friend, the house was
+rented at a nominal sum. Here Felix, as he boldly described himself by
+right, though the name had a tinge of mockery, installed himself with
+his bride. He had a portfolio of architectural sketches soon completed
+and, thanks to the fellowship to which his name might exercise a spell,
+all the old artists who had known his father, helped him manfully.
+Luckily, there was something markedly novel in his work.
+
+His odd training helped him. He came from the Polish University into an
+unromantic society which, after its stirring up by the Great Revolution,
+was so levelled and amalgamated that everybody resembled his neighbor as
+well in manners and speech as in attire. Strong characters, heated
+passions, black vices, deep prejudices, grievous misfortunes, and even
+utterly ridiculous persons had disappeared. The country he had been
+reared in still thrilled with patriotism and meant something when it
+muttered threats to kill its tyrant--meant so much that the Czar did not
+pass through a Polish town until the police and military had "ensured an
+enthusiastic reception." But in France, tyrants and love of country were
+mere words to draw applause from the country cousins in a popular
+theatre.
+
+Felix, though a youth, stood a head and shoulders above the level of the
+weaklings excluded as "finished" from these commonplace educational
+institutions--schools called colleges and colleges called universities,
+resulting necessarily from the proclamation of man's equality. He
+sickened at seeing the neutral-tinted lake of society, with
+"shallow-swells," more painful to the right-minded than an ocean in a
+tempest.
+
+He soon became like the French, but not so his wife. She suffered the
+change of her unpronounceable name, being euphonized as "Cesarine,"
+smilingly, but life at home in a demure and tranquil suburb little
+suited the young meteor who had flashed across Germany. Felix saw with
+dismay that domestic bliss was not that which she enjoyed. For a while
+he hoped that she would content herself as his helpmate and the genius
+of the hearth when a mother.
+
+But maternity had nothing but thorns for her. She chafed under the
+burden and her joy was indecent when the little boy died. Until then he
+had believed that the path of duty was wide enough and lined
+sufficiently with flowers to gratify or at least pacify her.
+
+But Cesarine was, like her aunt, a born dissolvent of society's vital
+elements. Ruled by a strong hand, and removed from the pernicious
+influence of the vicious countess, her mother had never inculcated evil
+to her child; on the contrary, impressed by the lesson of Iza's career,
+she had perhaps been too Puritanic with Cesarine, whose flight from home
+at an early age, was like the spring of a deer through a gap in a fence.
+Cesarine, wherever placed, sapped morality, faith, labor and the family
+ties.
+
+In the new country she feared at first that she had but exchanged
+parental despotism for marital tyranny. But soon she perceived that
+nothing was changed that would affect her. On the contrary, France, in
+the last decade of the Empire, was more corrupt than Russia's chief
+towns and the dissoluteness, though not as coarse as at Munich, was more
+diffused. Here she was assured that she could gratify her insatiable
+appetite at any moment. She saw that the manners excused her; the laws
+guaranteed the unfaithful wife, and religion screened her; that the
+social atmosphere, despite slander and gossip, enveloped and preserved
+her; in short, it was clear that to a creature in whom wickedness
+developed like a plant in a hot-house, the freedom society accorded her
+was as delicious as that given by her husband in his trust and his
+devotion to art.
+
+It seemed to her that, after the death of their first-born, his silence
+signified some contempt for her; in fact, she had, stupidly frank for
+once, expressed relief at this escape from the cares of maternity. Did
+he suspect that she had, not with any repugnance, precipitated its
+death? She feared this passionate man who, by strength of will, made
+himself calm, alarmed her more than an angry one would have done. Moved
+by instinct, for she really felt that his sacrifice to her in marrying
+had condoned for his father's blow at her ancestress, she tried to
+return him harm for good. But it is not easy for a serpent to sting a
+rock.
+
+Recovered from the slight eclipse of beauty during her experience as a
+mother, she endeavored to make him once again her worshiper. But her
+tricks, her tears and her caresses seemed not to count as before when
+they fled from Von Sendlingen's vengeance. He remained so strictly the
+husband that she could perceive scarcely an atom of the lover. Then she
+vowed to torture him: he should no longer find a wife in her--not even a
+woman, still less a lovely companion; she would implant in him
+intolerable longing and guard that he might not gratify it--not even
+lull it on any side, while she would become a statue of marble to his
+most maddening advance. He should have no more leisure for study, but be
+thrilled with the incessant and implacable sensation which relaxes the
+muscles, pales the blood, poisons the marrow, obscures reason, weakens
+the will and eats away the soul.
+
+Unfortunately for her hideous project, it was in vain that she painted
+the lily of her cheeks and the carmine of her lips, studied useless arts
+of the toilet harder than a sage muses over nature's secrets to benefit
+mankind, and was the peerless darling of three years ago.
+
+He resisted her till she grew mad.
+
+The progression of vice is such that while she believed she was simply
+at the degree of passion, she contemplated another crime.
+
+She ruled the little household, for she had brought from Germany the
+girl Hedwig, who had been the tool of her grandmother; this silly and
+superstitious girl had gone once to the witch to have her fortune told
+and had never shaken off the bonds; these Cesarine took up and drove her
+by them. She had led to the entrance of the girl under her roof
+ingeniously; Felix was cajoled into believing that she came rather on
+the hint of Fraulein Daniels, the Rebecca, of whom he often had
+agreeable and soothing memories in his distress.
+
+Ah, she would not have interrupted his studies; she would have
+encouraged them; she would never have urged him to accumulate wealth to
+expend it in social diversions; while Cesarine fretted at her splendid
+voice going to waste in this solitude--the house in the suburbs where no
+company comes.
+
+She dreamed of holding a Liberty Hall, where her fancies might have
+unlicensed play and her freaks have free course. While gliding about the
+quiet house in a neat dress, she imagined herself in robes almost regal,
+with golden ornaments, diamonds and the pearls and turquoises which
+suited her fairness. What if the gems were set in impurities?
+
+Alas! perfect as a husband, denying her nothing which his limited means
+allowed, Felix had not once an inclination to tread beside her the
+ballroom floor, the reception hall marbles, and the flower-strewn path
+at the aristocratic charity bazaar. Yet he felt firmly assured that he
+was destined to a great fortune. He saw the gleam of it although he
+could not trace the beam to its source, too dazzling. But she had no
+faith in him, she did not understand his value, and from the time of his
+certainty that they were not the unit of two hearts to which happiness
+accrues and where it abides, he merely resigned himself to the
+irremediable grief. Having vainly tried to make of her a worthy wife,
+and seeing that motherhood had not saved her--earthly redemption though
+it is of her sex--he could only watch her and prevent her resuming that
+orbit which would no doubt end badly, as her race offered too many
+examples.
+
+On one occasion, fatigued with watching that she did not take a faulty
+step, he had written to Russia to see if she would find a harbor there,
+but the answer came from her father and sealed up that outlet. Her
+elopement had caused her mother fatal sorrow, and her father said
+plainly that he regarded her as dead. Though she came to his gates,
+begging her bread, he would bid his janitor drive her away. Her mother
+had been a good wife, but her grandmother had extorted a mint of money
+and, after all, nearly ruined him in the good graces of his Emperor out
+of spite, from her blackmail failing at last to remunerate her.
+
+Since in Cesarine, Felix found no intelligent and sympathetic companion,
+he took into intimacy a kind of apprentice whom he had literally picked
+up on the road. A slender lad of southern origin, whom a band of
+vagrants, making for the sea to embark to South America, had cast off to
+die in the ditch. Clemenceau gave him shelter, nursed him--for his wife
+would have nothing to do with a beggar--and to cover the hospitality and
+soothe the Italian's pride, paid him liberally to be his model. He was
+named Antonino and might have been a descendant of the Emperor from his
+lofty features, burning eye and fine sentiments. Healed, able to resume
+his journey and offered a loan to make it smooth, he effusively uttered
+a declaration of gratitude and devotion, and vowed to remain the slave
+of the man who had saved him from a miserable death.
+
+A good work rarely goes unrewarded. Antonino, who had never touched a
+piece of colored chalk to a black stone, soon revealed strong gift as a
+draftsman and served his new master with brightness and taste.
+
+Left lonely by his wife, each day more and more estranged, Felix loved
+to labor with the youth in the tasks to both congenial. That Cesarine
+should grow jealous would be natural, but it was pique that she felt
+toward Felix. In Antonino, she saw the possible instrument of her
+vengeance. His good looks, fervid temperament, youthful
+impressionability, all conspired in her favor as well as the innate
+artistic craving which had at the first sight lifted her on a pedestal
+as his ideal of the woman to be idolized.
+
+Nevertheless, the vagabond had a stronger spirit than she anticipated,
+and the emotion which she set down as timidity, and which protected him
+from the baseness of deceiving his benefactor, was due to honor. She
+flattered herself that she could pluck the fruit at any time, and, since
+this moneyless youth could not in the least appease her yearning for
+inordinate luxury, she cast about for another conquest.
+
+Clemenceau would not hear of his home being turned into the pandemonium
+of a country-house receiving all "the society that amuses," and rigidly
+restricted his wife from visiting where she would meet the odd medley in
+the suburbs of Paris. Retired opera-singers, Bohemians who have made a
+fortune by chance, superseded politicians, officials who have perfected
+libeling into an art, and reformed female celebrities of the
+dancing-gardens and burlesque theatres. But, as society is constituted,
+it would have earned him the reputation of a tyrant if he had refused
+her receiving and returning the visits of the venerable Marchioness de
+Latour-Lagneau, to whom the Bishop always accorded an hour during his
+pastoral calls. This was a neighbor.
+
+In her old Louis XIV. mansion, conspicuous among the new structures, the
+old dame, in silvered hair which needed no powder, welcomed the "best
+people" in the neighborhood and a surprising number of visitors who "ran
+down" from the city. Considering her age, her activity in playing the
+hostess was remarkable. On the other hand, the "at homes" were most
+respectable, and the music remained "classical;" not an echo of
+Offenbach or Strauss; the conversation was restrained and decorous and
+the scandal delicately dressed to offend no ear.
+
+Not all were old who came to the chateau, and the foreigners were
+numerous to give variety to the gatherings; but the white neck-cloth and
+black coat suppressed gaiety in even the rising youth, who were destined
+for places under government or on boards of finance and commerce.
+
+It may be judged that an afternoon spent in such company was little
+change to Madame Clemenceau, and that the five o'clock tea, initiated
+from the English, was a kind of penitential drink. But she became a
+habitue, and took a very natural liking to hear again the anecdotes
+indicating how matters moved in Germany and Russia, where her childhood
+and early girlhood had passed.
+
+One evening, she arrived late. She was exasperated: Antonino had imbibed
+his master's imperturbability and seemed to meet her advances with
+rebuking chilliness. A marked gravity governed them both of late; they
+shut themselves up for hours in their study, but instead of the silence
+becoming artists, noises of hammering and filing metal sounded, and the
+chimney belched black smoke of which the neighbors would have had reason
+to complain.
+
+"A fresh craze!" thought Cesarine, dismissing curiosity from her mind.
+
+Dull and decorous though the marchioness' salon was, it might be an
+ante-chamber to a more brilliant resort beyond, while the laboratory of
+science leads to no place where a pretty woman cares to be.
+
+The Marchioness had remembered her meeting with Cesarine at Munich and
+was polite enough to express her regret that her offer of a
+companionship had not been accepted. "All her pets had married well,"
+she observed, as much as to say that she would have found no difficulty
+in paving the lovely one with a superior to Clemenceau.
+
+Soon Madame Clemenceau had become the favorite at the chateau; and,
+tardy as she was, the servant hastened to usher her in to her reserved
+chair. It was placed in the row of honor in the large, lofty
+drawing-room, hung with tapestry and damask curtains, and filled with
+funereally garbed men and powdered old dowagers. The late comer was
+struck by their eyes being directed with unusual interest upon a
+vocalist. He stood before the kind of throne on which the marchioness
+conceitedly installed herself.
+
+He was singing in German, and he accompanied himself on a zither. He had
+an excellent baritone voice, and the ballad, simple and unfinished,
+became a tragic _scena_ from his skill in repeating some exceptionally
+talented teacher's instructions.
+
+To Cesarine, the strains awakened dormant meditations; aspirations
+frozen in her placid home, began to melt; a curtain was gradually drawn
+aside to reveal a world where woman reigned over all. What she had heard
+from her grandmother of the magic splendor which Wanda had missed and
+Iza enjoyed, flashed up before her, and her heart warmed delightedly in
+the voluptuous intoxication of unspeakable bliss. On the wings of this
+melody, which, in truth, merely sought to picture the celestial dwelling
+of the elect, she was carried into one of those bijou palaces of the
+best part of the Queen City of the Universe, where the bedizened Imperia
+at the plate-glass window reviews an army of faultlessly-clad gentlemen
+filing before her, and sweetly calls out:
+
+"This, gentlemen, is the spot where you can be amused!"
+
+Yes, Cesarine was intended to entertain men! She longed to be the
+central figure in the scene, however brief, of that apotheosis where
+Cupid is proclaimed superior to all the high interests of human
+conscience; this glittering stage sufficed for her, although it would
+have limited Felix's ideal of man's function.
+
+In a struggle between duty and passion, she expected passion to
+overcome, and she concurred beforehand with this troubadour who
+protested that the gentler sex really held the under one in its
+dependence.
+
+Radiant with pleasure and farther delighted to recognize a well-known
+face on the minstrel's shoulders, she hastened at the conclusion to give
+him her compliments. It was the young nobleman who had aided her flight
+with Clemenceau at Munich, and of whom she had not cherished a second
+thought! Better than all, while titled a baron in Germany, he held a
+viscount's rank in France, and his aunt, the marchioness, presented him
+as the last of the Terremondes.
+
+She had not expected to meet in this coterie a gentleman who patronized
+the singers of a beer-hall, but the frock does not make the monk, and
+Baron Gratian von Linden-Hohen-Linden, Viscount de Terremonde in France,
+was of another species than the frequenters of Latour chateau.
+
+From his income in both countries, he had the means to maintain what
+would have been ruinous establishments; he had the racing stud which no
+English peer would be ashamed of, a gallery of masterpieces acquired
+from living painters, an unrivaled hot-house of orchids, wolf-hounds and
+fox-hounds and other dogs, and the rumor went that the famous Caroline
+Birchoffstein, in consideration of his being a fellow-countryman, was
+more often seen in his box at the Grand Opera House than in her own.
+
+The imperial court, also, not averse to being on good terms with South
+Germany, since Prussia was supposed to be France's greatest opponent in
+case Luxembourg were clutched, petted the Franco-Teuton, and regretted
+that he was so pleasure-loving.
+
+To continue her thraldom over him, Cesarine left not a word unsaid or a
+glance undelivered. In this attack, she was met halfway, for, had she
+been less eager, she must have seen that the viscount-baron's joy at
+seeing her again was sincere.
+
+"You hesitate to ask what happened after your fortunate escape with that
+young student," he said, when they were allowed a few minutes together
+by the artful management of the hostess. "I can tell you that I had to
+pass through a fiery ordeal and I hope you preserved a kindly memory of
+one who suffered tremendously for you. Major Von Sendlingen was not an
+undetached person whose quarrel could be kept among private ones. On the
+contrary, he moved the authorities like a chess-player does the pieces,
+and he moved them against me. At the first, they talked of nothing less
+than trying me for treason, since the projected arrest of the Polish
+conspirator and yourself--kinswoman of the Dobronowska inscribed in the
+black book of the Russian and Polish police--was foiled on my territory.
+The major affirmed that he had seen me not only looking on at the defeat
+of his posse, but holding my farmers in check not to hasten to their
+assistance. He alleged that I had lent racehorses to you and your
+accomplice, for your continued flight. This Polander--"
+
+"You can say Frenchman, now," returned Madame Clemenceau; "he is one,
+and my cousin. The story is long and involved and will keep to another
+day. It is he I married."
+
+"Your husband!" he exclaimed, and she nodded apologetically.
+
+"Then," sighed he, "my dream ends here--on that day when we last met."
+
+"A learned man has said, in a lecture here, that dreams can be repeated
+and continued, by an effort of the will. My advice to you is to try it."
+
+"Do not jest with me! You can see--you can be sure if you will but
+question--that I narrowly escaped the State's prison for helping you.
+Spite of all, I can love no other woman but you--"
+
+She held up her closed fan and touched his lips with the feathery
+edging.
+
+"You must not talk so--at least--here," she said, with her glance in
+contradiction to her words. "I am happy, or contented, strictly
+speaking, in my home, and as soon as my husband realizes one or two of
+the ideas over which he is musing, happiness must be mine. A success in
+art will drag him forth; he must go to Paris to be feasted in the salons
+and lionized in the conversaziones."
+
+And her eyes blazed as she figured herself presiding at an assemblage of
+artists and patrons.
+
+"Pardon me," said the viscount-baron. "I am afraid I add to your worry.
+I see that you are pining for the sphere to which your grace and charms
+entice you. I will do anything you order; but yet, since I, too, am an
+exile, and for your sake, pray do not ask me not to see you and speak of
+love."
+
+"It must be thus," she replied, with half-closed eyes, turning away
+abruptly, as if she feared her virtuous resolution were failing. "Let
+our parting be forever!"
+
+"Forever!" he repeated, following her into the window alcove, although
+thirty pairs of eyes regarded them. "You cannot mean that. At least, I
+deserve--have earned--your friendship by what I have undergone for you.
+Let me have a word of hope! Though divorce is not allowed in this
+country, death befalls any man, for while your statisticians figure out
+that the married live longest, they do not assert that they are
+immortal. Clemenceau dead, his widow may remarry. You say he is an
+enthusiast--one of those college-growths which run to seed without any
+fruit. I thought the contrary from the way he rode my horse and handled
+the pistols. But, being an enthusiast, how can you expect to do anything
+but vegetate? You will always be poor, for, if the man's ideas bore
+fruit, he would only sink the gains in fresh enterprises. These artists
+are always unthrifty, and they should wed their laundresses or their
+cooks. But I--though they have tied up my German revenue, and I have
+been practically banished--enjoy a tolerable return from my property in
+this Empire. I have been offered a very handsome present if I wholly
+transfer allegiance to the Napoleons. Would you not like to have the
+_entre_ to the Empress's coterie and shine among the acknowledged
+beauties? I give you my word that your peer is not among them, and the
+leader would be enchanted with you. Come, suppose a little fatal
+accident to Monsieur--may he not suck poison off his paint brush or cut
+an artery with his sculptor's chisel? And, after a sojourn at Bravitz,
+you might return to Paris a viscountess--a countess, perhaps, and rule
+in a pretty court of your own!"
+
+For a woman who had said adieu! she had lingered still listening much
+too long. They continued the conversation, turned into this ominous
+channel, in the same low key.
+
+Cesarine returned home with the sentiment of loneliness which had
+oppressed her almost utterly removed. She did not love Gratian, but one
+need not be a prisoner to understand how admirable the jailer with the
+outer door-key may appear. She saw in him a precious friend and ally--a
+worshiper who would obey a hint like a fanatic. Cautiously, at the
+marchioness's, and more deeply than at Munich, she made inquiries upon
+his pecuniary standing and was rejoiced to learn that he had not
+deceived her in that respect. It was left to him to be a favorite in the
+court, which, not succeeding in weaning away the scions of the
+Legitimist nobility, greeted the foreign nobles cordially and sought to
+attach them to its standard in foresight of a European war. One thing
+was certain: Gratian had illimitable resources, and the sharp-witted,
+who had sharp tongues, did not hesitate to aver that he was one of those
+spoilt children of politics who are fed from State treasuries--not such
+a shallow-brain as he pretended. The new type of diplomatist was like
+him, the Morny's, not the effete Metternich's, gentlemen who settled
+affairs of the State in the boudoir not in the cabinet.
+
+Brave, gallant, dashing, craftier than his manner indicated, he was
+destined to play no inconsiderable part in the conflict impending; such
+an one might emerge from the smoke a lieutenant of an emperor and
+holding a large slice of territory which neither of the two contestants
+cared yet to rule.
+
+Compared with a sculptor who had produced nothing--an architect whose
+buildings had appeared only on paper--this young noble was to be run
+away with, if not to be run after.
+
+The marchioness favored their future and less public meetings, and her
+gardens were their scene. But while the relations of the treacherous
+wife with her cavalier became closer, a singular change took place in
+him. Instead of growing bolder, he seemed to hold aloof, and he fixed
+each new appointment at a longer interval. He was gloomy and absent,
+and she began to feel that her charm was weakening. She reproached him,
+and tried to find excuses for him. Everybody knew what he had lost at
+the races or over the baccarat-board; and she knew, according to a
+rhymed saying, that "lucky at love is unlucky at gambling."
+
+"It is not that," he answered slowly, with an anxious glance around in
+the green avenues of trimmed trees. "I do not know why I should speak of
+politics to a woman; but you and I are as one: you should know the
+worst. I am not my own master, and they who rule me presume to dictate
+my course as regards my heart. Brain and sword are theirs, but I shall
+feel too ignoble a slave if I sacrifice my love for you to _la haute
+politique_."
+
+"Sacrifice your love! That would be odious--that must not be! Do you
+mean that they want you to marry? How cruel!"
+
+He did not smile at the absurdity of her protest, it was so sincere.
+
+"Well, Cesarine, they are blind here, and deaf to the signs along their
+own frontier. The French rely on a Russian alliance, when already Herr
+von Bismarck, the Prussian ambassador at St. Petersburg, long ago
+secured its suspension. Besides, the Crimean War will always be
+remembered against Napoleon--it is so easy not to ally oneself with
+England, and, considering her proverbial ingratitude, so rarely
+profitable. I spoke of Bismarck! This man of a million, with deep, dark
+eyes, fixed and unreadable, with a cold, mocking mouth, iron will and
+mighty brain, is soon to be pitted against Napoleon, the shadow whom you
+have seen. I am no soothsayer, but I can tell which must go down in the
+charge, and never to hold up his head again. I am one of the flies on
+the common wheel who will be carried into the action and smashed,
+whoever is the victor. I am unwilling to perish thus, when I can find in
+love of you a paradise on earth wherever you consent to dwell with me.
+Listen: I am entrusted with a prodigious sum in cash by a political
+organization, the headquarters of which in France are here, at the old
+marchioness's--a veteran puller of the wires that move the European
+puppets. They have practically seized my German bands, and unless I
+retake them at the head of a column of victorious French, I may as well
+say good-bye to them. As for Terremonde, the revenue is falling every
+quarter. If it were not for this secret service, I should be bankrupt,
+for the Tuileries, perhaps, suspecting my good faith, pay me only in
+pretty words--_a la francaise_. This bank which I hold tempts me sorely,
+Cesarine, but only if you will dip into it with me. Only once in a life
+does a man have his great opportunity. Mine is the present. A fortune--a
+beauty! Never will I have such an opportunity again to found a
+principality in Florida or the South Seas or South America--wherever we
+choose to come to a rest. Speak, Cesarine, are you with me? After a
+while, when the modern Attila has swept over France, perhaps we will
+like to come and view the ruins and fill our gallery with the
+art-treasures which the impoverished defeated ones will gladly sell."
+
+"A large sum!" repeated the woman, frowning as her thoughts
+concentrated.
+
+"Enormous! I have been changing it into sight-drafts, and we can put on
+our wings at a moment's notice."
+
+"It belongs to a political organization, you say?"
+
+"Have no qualms--it is a few drops out of a reptilian fund! No one can
+claim what was handed over to me without witnesses, and no receipt
+demanded. I make no secret: I am offering for your love the price of my
+honor. Only let us flee to a distance for a while. The money could not
+be claimed of me in a public court, but they might punish me with an
+assassin's bullet."
+
+"And for me, for my happiness, you would do this? I cannot doubt you any
+longer, if ever I did. Enough, Gratian, I will go to the world's end
+with you!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI.
+
+A SPRAT AND THE WHALE.
+
+
+A few moments were enough for the two to enter the chateau again, where
+their absence had begun to arouse curiosity, though the guests were too
+well bred to make general remarks. With the cue that these "slow," tame
+gatherings were but the cloak to more important conclaves, Cesarine
+studied them as never before. It was clear. Here and there were groups
+which did not waste a word on the accent of Mademoiselle Delaporte, the
+early history of Aimee Derclee, or the latest episode in the stage and
+boudoir history of "the Beauty who is also the Stupid Beast." For a
+certainty, conspiracy went on here at the gates of the capital; perhaps
+from the pretty belvedere, where the large telescope was mounted for
+lovers to see Venus, the sons of Mars ascertained where the batteries of
+siege guns should be planted to shell Parisian palaces and forts.
+
+Two of a trade never agree, says the wisdom of our ancestors, and from
+that time Cesarine detested Gratian. If he so easily betrayed his
+friends, countrymen and employers for her, what might he not do as
+regards her when she was older and her bloom vanished? Better not place
+herself under his thumb and be cast off, in some remote, barbarous
+region, when the caprice had worn out. But the money! What was this
+political league and its aims to her? For her limited education, that of
+a refined and expensive toy, she was ignorant of the laws and
+regulations governing even herself, and these laws were too subtly
+interwoven and inexorable for man alone to have formed them. She did not
+suspect the great reasons of the State in setting them in motion to
+accomplish collective ends and destinies, whether they wrought good or
+evil to individuals. Enough that they were necessary for a dynasty or a
+class; but in all cases, the rulers knew why they were made.
+
+Little by little, but without loss of time, her perspicacity penetrated
+the disguises, although not to the motives that impelled the plotters.
+She centered her thoughts on the old, white-locked pianist, who silently
+listened to all the parties and was tolerated even when the piano was
+closed; he was taciturn, always blandly smiling and bent in a servile
+bow. Nevertheless, this was the principal of the conspirators and even
+the viscount-baron treated him with some deference as representing a
+formidable power.
+
+One morning, Cesarine came over to the marchioness's and took advantage
+of the drawing-room being open to be aired, to open the piano and
+practice an aria which she had promised at the next soiree. There was
+nothing but praise for her singing, and old, retired tenors and obese
+soprani had assured her that she had but to have one hearing in the
+Opera to be placed among the stars. The aged pianist had often listened
+to her vocalism with enraptured gaze, and she believed he, too, was her
+slave.
+
+He had now glided into the room and upon the piano stool, and, as if by
+magic divining her wish, silently opened the piece of music for which
+she had been hunting. For the first time their eyes met without any
+medium, for he had discarded the tinted spectacles he usually wore.
+These were not the worn orbs of a man who had pored over crabbed
+partitions for sixty years. They were eyes familiar to her.
+
+"Major Von Sendlingen!" she exclaimed, in a kind of terror; for women,
+being judges of duplicity, are alarmed by any one successful in
+disguises.
+
+"Precisely, but do not be alarmed. You struck me in warfare, and I
+forgive your share in that paltry incident. I am your friend, now. By
+the way, as a proof of that assertion, let me tell you that the viscount
+is no more worthy of you than that ever-dreaming student. You think he
+adores you? _pfui_! only so far as you will aid the realization of his
+ambition. Besides, he is only an officer in our ranks; he is not
+unbridled, and at any moment he may be ordered away. Renounce this kind
+of love, my child, not durable and unendurable!"
+
+Was this the major preaching? He who had held with the hare and run with
+the hounds, that is, tried to win the ascending and the declining star!
+
+"Tell me," he continued, seriously, "tell me when you can control your
+heart, and it is I who will set you on that stage where you should have
+figured long since."
+
+She had turned pale and she bit her lip. Her dullness in not suspecting
+the identity of this spy, her lover, pained her acutely. She had thought
+to read the Sphynx, and it had its paw upon her. Her exasperation was so
+keen that she determined to be revenged on both the speaker and Gratian,
+whose inferiority to the major was manifest.
+
+"They shall see how _I_ can plot," she thought, "and best of all, how I
+carry off the prize which I need to obtain a station of my own selection
+in society."
+
+One thing she saw clearly, that Von Sendlingen was out of her clutches.
+He still acknowledged her attractions, but he was obedient to a master
+more paramount. If only he had been capable of jealousy! But, no, he had
+alluded to the Viscount de Terremonde's flame with perfect indifference.
+Like Clemenceau, he would not have fought a duel for her choice.
+Nevertheless, her husband might have another burst of the homicidal
+instinct which his father showed in Paris, and he in Germany. While
+refusing a duel as illogical, he might fell Gratian after the model he
+had displayed for Major Von Sendlingen's profit in Munich.
+
+Perhaps, though, Clemenceau was no longer jealous.
+
+Hedwig had told her of letters addressed to Daniels which she had to
+mail, if Clemenceau was in correspondence with the old Jew, he would not
+have forgotten his daughter, the only woman of whom Cesarine harbored
+jealousy.
+
+But she could attain her end, profound, treacherous and bloody, like the
+dream of a frivolous woman going to extremes. The revelation of Von
+Sendlingen's presence enlightened her and filled the gap in her plan.
+
+Meanwhile, she redoubled her efforts to entrance Gratian, and the day of
+their flight had but to be fixed. On hearing from Madame Clemenceau
+that Von Sendlingen was the chief of surveillance at the coterie, the
+dread that he was his rival in the contest for Cesarine, filled his cup
+to overflowing with disgust. He had believed himself chief of the
+fraternity in France, and behold! another was set over him and probably
+reported that he neglected the business to pay court to a married woman.
+He felt that he was lost and that his only chance to secure the beloved
+one was to step outside the circle which he knew would be the vortex of
+a whirlpool once war was proclaimed.
+
+"You speak most timely," he answered gravely, when she said that she was
+ready; "I have been notified to transfer the funds to another, in such
+terms as would better suit a clerk than a gentleman--a noble
+intelligence officer. That cursed major who learned the piano to be a
+means of torture to his fellow man! he has done it. He loves you no
+longer, and he is my enemy since I looked at him being run away with,
+like a raw recruit, on his first troop-horse. He will, believe me, be
+our destroyer unless we levant."
+
+Nothing was easier. Since four days, Clemenceau had been invisible, even
+at meals. Closeted with his disciple Antonino, they worked out some more
+than ever preposterous conceptions into substance, in the studio where
+the uncompleted artistic models had been neglected. Hedwig was the false
+wife's bondwoman and would actively help in the removal of her trunks.
+The viscount had but to send a trusty man with a vehicle, and the lady
+could meet him at a station of the Outer Circle Railway and thence
+proceed to a main station for Havre or Marseilles, as they selected. The
+famous sight-drafts were safe on Gratian's person. With the simplicity
+of a child, Cesarine wished again and again to gloat over them; never
+could she be convinced that those flimsy pieces of paper stood for large
+sums of ready money and that bankers would pay simply on their
+presentation. It was reluctantly that she restored the wallet to his
+inner pocket, of which she buttoned the flap, bidding him be so very,
+very careful of what would be their subsistence in the mango groves.
+
+"Oh, how I love you," he said, bewildered and enthralled; "I love you
+because you retain, after the finished graces of woman have come, the
+naive traits of the guileless girl. What a joy that I divined your
+excellences when you were so young and that I was favored by your
+regard, and now am gladdened by your trustful smiles."
+
+"I trust you so much that I could wish this money did not weigh on your
+bosom. I love you without it, and I shall love you as long as you live."
+
+Seeming to be as exalted as he, she grasped both his hands and drew his
+face nearer and nearer hers to look him in the eyes.
+
+"I do not ask anything of you but to be good to me. Do not reproach me
+for leaving my lawful lord for you! If there is a fault in quitting him
+who neglects me, never cast it upon me. Let us go! anywhere, if but you
+are ever beside me, to protect, to support and cherish!"
+
+Her moist eyes were as eloquent as her lips, and to have doubted her, he
+must have doubted all evidence of his senses. And yet it was that same
+hand on which he had impressed a score of burning kisses that wrote
+these lines:
+
+"The faithless one will take the train at Montmorency Station this night
+at nine."
+
+And she deposited it, as had been agreed between her and Major Von
+Sendlingen in a vase on the drawing-room mantel-shelf at the
+marchioness's, where the viscount conducted her before their last
+parting. It was one of those notes which burn in the hand, and so
+thought the major, for he took measures, by a communication which he had
+established, to send it to M. Clemenceau.
+
+Except on holidays and Sundays, when the Parisians muster in great force
+to promenade the still picturesque suburbs, the country roads are
+desolate after the return home of the clerks who have slaved at the desk
+in the city. One might believe oneself a hundred miles from a center of
+civilization.
+
+To the station, a little above the highway level, three paths lead. On
+the road itself the village cart which had taken Madame Clemenceau's
+baggage, leisurely jogged. The lady herself, instructed by her
+confederate Hedwig that there was no alarm to be apprehended from the
+studio, strolled along a more circuitous but pleasanter way. Her husband
+and his pupil were, as usual, shut up in "the workshop." The studio had
+been changed for some new fancy of the crack-brained pair; they had
+packed aside the plans and models and had set up a lathe, a forge and a
+miniature foundry. To the clang of hammer and the squeak of file was
+added the detonation now and then of some explosive which did not emit
+the sharp sound or pungent smoke of gunpowder or the more modern
+substitutes' characteristic fumes.
+
+At each shock, Cesarine had trembled like the guilty. They had told her
+that she was born in St. Petersburg when her mother was startled by the
+blowing up of the street in front of their house by an infernal machine
+intended to obliterate the Czar; in the sledge in which he was supposed
+to be riding, a colonel of the _chevalier-gardes_, who resembled him,
+had been injured, but the incident was kept hushed up.
+
+One of the old servants whose age entitled his maunderings to respect
+among his superstitious fellows had, thereupon, prophesied that the
+new-born babe would end its life by violence.
+
+"It is time I should quit the house," she muttered, drawing her veil
+over her eyes, of which the lids nervously trembled. "I cannot hear
+those pop-guns without consternation."
+
+She hurried forth without a regret, and passed, as a hundred times
+before, the family vault in the cemetery, where her murdered infant
+reposed, without a farewell glance, although she might never see the
+place again.
+
+On coming within sight of the station, she perceived a solitary figure,
+that of a man, in a fashionable caped cloak, crossing the fields in the
+same direction as hers. It was probably the viscount going to it
+separately in order not to compromise her and give a clue to the true
+cause of her flight.
+
+Sometimes the unexpected comes to the help of the wicked. Incredible as
+it appeared, she received, on the eve of her departure, a telegram from
+Paris. At first she thought it a device of Viscount Gratian's to cover
+her elopement, but it was not possible for him to have imagined the
+appeal. It was from her uncle, who, traveling in France, and intending
+to pay her a visit since she was married honorably, was stricken with a
+malady. He awaited her at a hotel. Even Von Sendlingen could not have
+drawn up this message too simple not to be genuine and too precise in
+the genealogical allusions not to be a Russian's and a Dobronowska's.
+
+She regarded this cloak as the act of her "fate"--the evil person's
+providence. She handed the paper to Hedwig to be given to her husband as
+an explanation at a later hour.
+
+Cesarine was still watching him when she saw him disappear suddenly. It
+was in crossing an unnailed plank thrown across a drain-cutting. This
+must have turned or broken under his feet unexpectedly, for his fall was
+complete. In the ditch which received him, darkness ruled but it seemed
+to Cesarine that more shadows than one were engaged in deadly strife,
+standing deep in the mire. They wore the aspect of the demons dragging
+down a soul in an infernal bog.
+
+What increased the horror was the silence in which the tragedy was
+enacted; probably the unfortunate Gratian had been seized by the throat
+as soon as he dropped confused into the assassin's clutches.
+
+Halfway between this scene and the dismayed looker on, another shadow
+rose and appeared to take the direction to accost her instead of
+hurrying to the victim's succor. This made him resemble an accomplice,
+and, breaking the spell, Cesarine hurried on without the power to force
+a scream for help from her choking throat.
+
+At that moment, while a strong fascination kept her head turned toward
+the field, a long beam from the locomotive's head-light shot across it.
+It fell for an instant on the solitary form and though its arm made an
+upward movement to obscure its face, she believed that she recognized
+her husband.
+
+Clemenceau on her track! Clemenceau, in concord with the bravest who had
+smothered her gallant in the mud! she had scorned him too much! He was
+capable even of cowardly acts, of being revenged for this renewed
+disgrace upon his ill-fated house!
+
+This time her feet were unchained and she flew up the hill. She thought
+of nothing but to escape the double revenge of the husband she wronged,
+and Von Sendlingen whom she had cheated.
+
+She took her ticket mechanically and entered a coach marked for "Ladies
+Only."
+
+They whisked toward Paris swiftly, before any sinister face looked in at
+the window, or she had time to reflect. In her pocket was the real case
+of the sight-drafts for which she had palmed a duplicate filled with cut
+paper, upon the unlucky viscount. She was rich enough to make a home
+wherever money reigns--a broad enough domain.
+
+The arrival of her relative and the summons to his sick-bed made her
+pause in her movements suddenly altered by the death of the viscount.
+She was almost happy in her foresight by which she had defrauded him and
+his associates. Now, the loss of him stood by itself; she was free to
+use the money as she pleased. She feared Von Sendlingen but little,
+since she would have a good start of him if he pursued.
+
+Should she keep on or see her uncle? Pity for him, a stranger, perhaps
+dying in a hotel, most inhospitable shelter to an invalid, did not enter
+her heart. She had seen her lover murdered without a spark of
+communication, and was now glad that he could never call her to account
+for the theft. But a vague expectation of benefiting by the pretense of
+affection--the desire to have some support in case of Von Sendlingen
+attacking--the excuse and cover her ministration at the sick-bed would
+afford, all these reasons united to guide her to the Hotel de l'Aigle
+aux deux Becs, in the rue Caumartin.
+
+Her uncle was no longer there. His stroke of paralysis had frightened
+the proprietor who suggested his removal to a private hospital, but M.
+Dobronowska had preferred to be attended to in the house, a little out
+of St. Denis, of an acquaintance. It was Mr. Lesperon's, the abode of a
+once noted poetess, whose husband had enjoyed Dobronowska's hospitality
+in Finland and who had tried to repay the obligation.
+
+Cesarine recalled the name; this lady had been a friend of her aunt's
+and she felt she would not be intruding. After playing the nurse, by
+which means she could ascertain whether she would be remembered
+generously in the patient's will, she could continue her flight or
+retrace her steps.
+
+Under cover of Hedwig, she could learn, secretly if she preferred it,
+all that occurred at Montmorency. She found her grand-uncle broken with
+age and serious attack; he was delighted by her beauty and to hear that
+she was so happy in her married life! Evidently he was rich, and she had
+not acted foolishly in going to see him.
+
+Madame Lesperon and her husband recalled her grandmother--whose death
+she did not describe--and her aunt, over whose fate they politely
+blurred the rather lurid tints. Madame Lesperon, as became a poetess,
+saw the loveliness of Clemenceau's idea of separation in marrying his
+cousin and expressed a wish to compliment him face-to-face. Cesarine was
+not so sure that he would come to town to escort her home, he was so
+engrossed in an important project.
+
+She let three days pass without writing a line, alleging that she had
+not the heart while her dear uncle was in danger and that her husband
+knew, of course, where she was piously engaged.
+
+The next morning, Madame Lesperon, a regular reader of the newspapers in
+expectation of the announcement of her poems having at last been
+commended by the Academie, came up to the sick-room with the _Debats_.
+
+"Ah, sly puss," said she, with a smile, "let me congratulate you. One
+can know now why you were so close about your husband's mysterious
+project. Rejoice, dear, for all France rejoices with you."
+
+Cesarine stared all her wonder. The newspapers trumpeting her husband's
+name and not in the satirical tone in which the people hail a disaster
+to a George Dandin.
+
+"The privately appointed committee which has been for some weeks
+thoroughly investigating the marvelous invention--a revolution in
+truth--in gunnery, at the Villa Reine-Claude, Montmorency, have
+deposited a preliminary report at the Ministry of War. We are not at
+liberty to state more than the prodigious result. On a miniature scale,
+but which could be enlarged from millimetres to miles without, we are
+assured, affecting the demonstration, it has been proved that the new
+gun will throw solid shot twelve miles and its special shell nearly
+fifteen. The model target was a row of pegs representing piles strongly
+driven into clay, a little apart, with the interstices filled with racks
+of stones. Two of the new-shaped projectiles dropped on this mark, left
+not enough wood to make a match and enough stone to strike a light upon
+it, while not a splinter of the missile could be found. Judge what would
+happen if they had fallen on a regiment or into a city. Thanks to the
+unremitting devotion of this son of France, his country can regard with
+complacency the monstrous preparations for unprovoked war which a rival
+realm is ostentatiously making."
+
+The other journals repeated the paragraph in much the same language. The
+evening edition added that the happy inventor would not have to wait
+long for his reward. The Emperor, always a connoisseur in artillery, had
+sent him ten thousand francs from his private purse simply as a faint
+token of appreciation. "Those familiar with what, in these rapid times,
+is the ancient history of Paris, may remember that a stain was attached
+to the name of Clemenceau. In his son, it will shine untarnished, and go
+down to posterity glorious with lustre."
+
+"What a fool I have been," thought Cesarine. "I fled with a silly fellow
+who had no more sense than to fall into a trap, for a paltry handful of
+drafts that may not be paid on presentation, and desert a husband who
+will be one of the millionaire-inventors of his country!"
+
+Reflecting in the night, she radically reversed her programme.
+
+Her uncle had recovered from the stroke but the physician warned him
+that the next would kill him. He was happy in the cares of the Lesperons
+and his grandniece, none of whom would be forgotten when the hour struck
+for him to leave his worldly goods. Cesarine could quit him in
+confidence of a handsome inheritance at not a distant day.
+
+Her flight and absence were commendable in the world's most censorious
+eyes. Only one thought perplexed her: was it her husband who had
+officiated at the execution of her gallant? If so, her lie would not
+hold. But in doubt a shameless sinner chooses to brazen it out.
+
+"I should be a confirmed imbecile to let this chance go and not resume
+my authorized position. Ah, his time, without infamy, I can preside at
+the board where the high officials will gladly sit--I shall have
+generals at my feet, perhaps a marshal! Yes, I will go home and brazen
+it out!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII.
+
+WHEN THE CAT'S AWAY.
+
+
+Ten days after the sudden departure of Madame Clemenceau from her
+residence, a little before daybreak, Hedwig came down through the house
+to draw up the blinds and open the windows. She carried a small
+night-lamp and was not more than half awake.
+
+It was the noise of the great invention which had turned the tranquil
+group of villas and cherry orchards into a rendezvous for the singular
+admixture of artilleries and scientific luminaries. The peaceful villa
+entertained a selection of them nightly and it is astonishing how
+heartily the military men ate and the professors drank, for the
+enthusiasm had turned all heads.
+
+Hedwig entered the fine old drawing-room where the symposium had been
+held. It was a capacious room, not unlike an English baronial hall, the
+doorways and windows were furnished with old Gobelin tapestry and the
+heavy furniture was of mahogany, imported when France drew generously on
+her colonies. The long table had been roughly cleared after supper by
+the summary process of bundling all the plates up in the cloth. On it
+had been replaced, for the final debate, drawings and models of the guns
+considered absolute after the novel Clemenceau Cannon. On a
+pedestal-pillar stood a large clock, representing, with figures at the
+base, the forge of Vulcan; his Cyclops had hammered off six strokes a
+little preceding the servant's entrance.
+
+"A quarter past six," she said, yawning. "It will soon be light."
+
+She drew the curtains and pulled the cord which caused the shade to roll
+itself up in each of the three tall windows, before returning to the
+table where she had left her now useless lamp. With a half-terrified
+look, she began to arrange the pretty little cannon, exquisitely modeled
+in nickel and bronze, and miniature shot, shell, chain-shot, etc., which
+she handled with a curiosity rather instinctive than studied. In the
+midst of her mechanically executed work, she was startled by a gentle
+rapping on the plate-glass of a window. The sight of a face in the grey
+morning glimmer startled her still more, but, luckily, she recognized
+it. After hesitation, she crossed the room in surprise and unbolted the
+two sashes, which opened like double doors.
+
+"Hedwig!" said a woman's voice warily speaking, "open to me!"
+
+The girl held the sashes widely apart, muttering:
+
+"The mistress! why the mischief has she come back when we were getting
+on so nicely."
+
+But, letting the new-comer pass her, she tried to smoothe her face, and
+don the smile as stereotyped in servants as in ballet-dancers, while she
+continued the letting in of the daylight to gain time to recover her
+countenance.
+
+Cesarine threw off a cloak, trimmed with fur, and more suitable for a
+colder season, but it was a sable with a sprinkling of isolated white
+hairs most peculiar and a present from her granduncle. She tottered and
+seemed weak, for she had concluded that an affection of illness would
+aid her re-entrance. As Hedwig extinguished the lamp, she sank into an
+arm-chair. She curiously glanced around and inhaled with a questioning
+flutter of the nostrils the lasting odor of cigars and Burgundy, which
+the air retained. In this gloomy apartment where she had often sat
+alone, sure not to be disturbed, the suggestion of uproarious jollity
+hurt her dignity. A singular way to express sorrow and shame at the loss
+of a wife by calling in boon companions! This did not seem like Felix
+Clemenceau, sober and austere, thus to drown care in champagne.
+
+"Are you alone, girl?" she inquired, looking round with a powerful
+impression that the house had unexpected inmates.
+
+"Yes. No one is up yet in the house," responded Hedwig, sharing her
+mistress' uneasiness, though from a less indefinite reason; "at all
+events, nobody has come down yet. But how did you see that it was I who
+came in here before the shades were drawn up?"
+
+"Well, I had made a little peep-hole to see what my husband and his
+fellow conspirator were about, in the time before they shut themselves
+up in their studio. But, if it is my turn to put questions," she went on
+with some offended dignity, "how is it that the back door is bolted as
+well as barred and that I have had to sneak in like a malefactor?"
+
+"If you please, madame, it is the rule to be very careful about
+fastening up, since you went away."
+
+"Oh, on the principle of locking the stable-door when the steed--"
+
+"Oh! they fear the loss of something which, without offense, I may say,
+they esteem more highly than you."
+
+Hedwig answered without even a little impertinence and the other did not
+resent what sounded discourteous.
+
+"Then they do not lock up to keep me out?" she questioned.
+
+"It might be a little bit that way, too."
+
+"It is a new habit. Did the master suggest it?"
+
+"Not the master altogether, madame, but his partner."
+
+"Eh! do you mean Antonino? Monsieur had already lifted him up to be his
+associate, his confidant, his friend, to the exclusion of his lawful
+friend and confidant, his wife--and now, does he make him his partner?"
+
+"No, madame; though he has a good fat share in the enterprise. It is M.
+Daniels who found the funds for the new company in which the master is
+engaged, and he manages the house to leave the master all his time to go
+on inventing and entertaining the grand folks we have to dinner."
+
+"Mr. Daniels! not the old Jew who played that queer straight trumpet at
+Munich--"
+
+"Yes, the turkophone! Ah, he has no need to go about the music halls
+now--he is, if not rich, the man who leads rich men by the nose, to come
+and deposit their superfluous cash in our strong-box."
+
+And she pointed fondly to a large iron-clamped coffin which occupied the
+space between two of the windows. It was a novelty, for Cesarine did not
+recollect seeing it before. Continuing her survey, it seemed to her
+that she noticed a different arrangement of the ornaments than when she
+was queen here, and that the fresh flowers in the vases and two
+palmettoes in urns were placed with a taste the German maid had never
+shown.
+
+"Let me see! this Jewish Orpheus had a daughter--"
+
+"Exactly; she never leaves him. She has rooms within his just the same
+as at our house in Munich. It appears that Jew parents trust their
+pretty daughters no farther than they can see them. But I do not blame
+M. Daniels," went on Hedwig, enthusiastically, "she is so lovely!"
+
+Cesarine rose partly, supporting herself with her hands on the arms of
+the chair. Her eyes flashed like blue steel and her whole frame vibrated
+with kindled rage.
+
+"Do you mean to tell me, girl, that Mademoiselle Rebecca--as her name
+went, I think--is now the mistress of my house?"
+
+"In your absence," returned Hedwig, drawlingly, "somebody had to
+preside, for neither the master, the old gentleman nor M. Antonino take
+the head of the dinner-table with the best grace. It is true that our
+guests are not very particular if the wine flows freely. I do not think
+the young lady likes the position, for I know the old, be-spectacled
+professors are as pestering with their attentions as the insolent
+officers. She would have been so delighted at the relief promised by
+your return that she would run to meet you and you would not have been
+repulsed at the door."
+
+"I daresay," replied Madame Clemenceau, frowning, and tapping the waxed
+wood floor impatiently with her foot. "I did not care to announce my
+return home with a flourish of trumpets. I was not averse to taking the
+house by surprise, and seeing what a transformation has gone on since I
+went away. Besides, it is desirable, not to say necessary, that I should
+speak with you before seeing the others."
+
+Hedwig pouted a little.
+
+"You ought to have written to me, madame, as we were agreed, I thought;
+I have been on tenderhooks because of your silence. I did not even guess
+where you were."
+
+"I did not wish it known for a while, and even then, it appears, I spoke
+too soon," said Cesarine gloomily.
+
+"You did not want me to know, madame?" questioned the servant in
+surprise and with a trace of suspicion.
+
+"Not even you," and hanging her head, she sank into meditation, not
+pleasant, to judge by her hopeless expression.
+
+The servant, who had the phlegmatic brain of her people, was stupefied
+for a little time, then, recovering some vivacity, she inquired
+hesitatingly as though she was never at her ease with the subtle woman.
+
+"Is madame going away without more than a glance around?"
+
+"Why do you talk such nonsense?" queried her mistress, looking up
+abruptly.
+
+The girl intimated that the mysterious entrance portended secrecy to be
+preserved. And, again, the lady had come without baggage, even so much
+as in eloping from home. But Madame Clemenceau explained, with the most
+natural air in the world, that she had walked over from the railway
+station, where her impedimenta remained.
+
+"Walked half a mile?" ejaculated Hedwig, who knew that the speaker had
+been vigorous enough at Munich, but, since her marriage, and living at
+Montmorency, she had assumed the popular air of a semi-invalid, "So you
+are strong in health again?"
+
+"Yes; but I have been very unwell," replied the lady, sinking back in
+the chair as she remembered the course she had intended to adopt. "I was
+very nearly at death's door," she sighed. "I really believed that I
+should nevermore see any of you, my poor husband and you others. Do you
+think that anything hut a severe ailment could excuse me for my strange
+silence--my apparently wicked absence?"
+
+Hedwig went on going through the form of dusting the huge metal-bound
+chest, which had attracted the mistress' eyes as a new article of
+furniture. Had her husband turned miser since Fortune had whirled on her
+wheel at his door as soon as she quitted it? It was not Hedwig's place,
+and it was not in her power to solve enigmas, so she answered nothing.
+
+"My uncle was terribly afflicted," said the lady.
+
+"Your uncle?"
+
+Hedwig's incredulous tone implied that she had not believed in the
+authenticity of the telegram.
+
+"Yes; my granduncle. He was within an ace of dying, and the shock made
+me so bad, after nursing him toward recovery, it was I who stood in
+peril of death. My friends sent for a priest and I confessed."
+
+The girl opened her eyes in wonder and a kind of derision, for she did
+not belong to the aristocratic creed.
+
+"Confessed?" reiterated she; "ah, yes; people confess when they are very
+bad. Was it a complete confession, madame?" she saucily inquired.
+
+"Complete as all believers should make when on the brink of the grave,"
+replied Madame Clemenceau, in her gravest tone to repress the tendency
+to frivolity, for she had not resented the incredulity as regarded
+herself.
+
+"I dare say," said Hedwig, who certainly had one of her lucid intervals,
+"it is as when a body is traveling, one is in such a hurry that
+something is forgotten. You went away so sharply that you forgot to say
+good-bye to the master! if you spoke at all! Whatever did the
+father-confessor say?"
+
+"He gave me very good advice."
+
+"Which you are following, madame?"
+
+"When one not only has seen death smite another beside one but flit
+close by oneself, I assure you, girl, it forces one to reflect. Oh, how
+dreadful the nights are in the sick chamber, with a night-light dimly
+burning and the sufferer moaning and tossing! Then my turn came to
+occupy the patient's position, and it was frightful. Can you not see I
+am much altered--horrid, in fact?"
+
+Hedwig shook her head; without flattery, well as her mistress assumed
+the air of languor, her figure had not been affected by any event since
+the slaying of the Viscount Gratian, and her countenance was unmarred by
+any change except a trifling pallor.
+
+"Yes; after my uncle grew better, I was indisposed and should have died
+but for the cares of an old friend, Madame Lesperon the Female Bard. But
+you would not know this favorite of the Muses. You are not poetically
+inclined, Hedwig!" she added, laughingly. Rising with animation, "but
+that makes no matter! I am glad to see you home again. I thought of you,
+Hedwig, and I have bought you something pretty to wear on your days
+out--bought it in Paris, too."
+
+"Is that so?" exclaimed the girl, much less absent and saucy in the curl
+of her lip; "you are always kind."
+
+"Yes; they are in my new trunk, for which you had better send the
+gardener at once. He is not forgotten either. There is a set of jewelry,
+too, in the old Teutonic style. They say now in Paris that any idea of
+war between France and Prussia is absurd, and there is a revulsion in
+feeling--the vogue is all for German things. I am not sorry that I know
+how to dress in their style, and I have some genuine Rhenish jewelry,
+which become me very well."
+
+"I see that madame has indeed not altered," remarked Hedwig, plentifully
+adorned with smiles, as the sunshine streamed into the grave apartment.
+"You have fresh projects of captivating the men!" Cesarine smiled also,
+and nodded several times.
+
+"Here?" cried the girl, in surprise.
+
+"Certainly here, since I understand you are receiving company in
+shoals."
+
+"That is all over now, madame, and I am sorry, for the callers were very
+generous to me. It appears that the War Ministry do not approve of
+strangers running about Montmorency and into the abode of the great
+inventor of ordinances--"
+
+"Ordnance, child," corrected Madame Clemenceau.
+
+"And the house is sealed up, as you found it, against all comers. We
+have nobody here for you to try graces upon except Mademoiselle
+Rebecca's papa--and he being a Jew, you must not go near him, fresh from
+the confessional."
+
+Madame Clemenceau seemed to be musing.
+
+"I forgot--there's young M. Antonino," continued the servant.
+
+Cesarine made a contemptuous gesture, expressive of the conquest being
+too easy.
+
+"Such sallow youth are best left to platonic love, it's more proper,
+and to them, quite as entertaining."
+
+"Well, madame," said Hedwig, like a cheap Jack, holding up the last of
+his stock, "they are the only men I can offer you; for, since we have
+been firing off guns and cannon, our neighbors have moved away right and
+left--we are so lonely. No servant would stay a week!"
+
+"Those the only men?" said the returned fugitive; "Hedwig, this is not
+polite for your master."
+
+"Oh, madame, a husband never counts."
+
+"You are very much mistaken. He does _count_--his money, I suppose, if
+that is his cash-box." And, yielding to her girlish curiosity, she went
+over to the steel-plated chest and avariciously contemplated it,
+
+"Not at all, madame. That is where they lock up the writings and
+drawings about the new gun!"
+
+"Oh, what do they say?"
+
+"Nothing a Christian can make head or tail of," returned the servant
+reservedly. "They write now in a hand no honest folk ever used. An old
+man who ought to have known better--the Jew--he taught the master, and
+they call it siphon--"
+
+"Cipher, I suppose? It appears the newspapers are right!" resumed the
+lady. "He is a great man!" and she clapped her hands.
+
+Hedwig regarded her puzzled, till her brow unwrinkling at last, she
+exclaimed:
+
+"Upon my word, I believe you have fallen in love with master."
+
+"You might have said: I am still in love. That is why I return to his
+side."
+
+"If you tell him that is the reason," said this speaker, who used much
+Teutonic frankness to her superiors, "you will astonish him more than
+you did me by popping in this morning. He will not believe you."
+
+Madame Clemenceau smiled as those women do who can warp men round to
+their way of thinking.
+
+"But he will! Besides, if it is a difficult task, so much the
+better--when a deed is impossible, it tempts one."
+
+"Well, as far as I can see, madame, that is an odd idea for you to have
+had when far away from master."
+
+"Pish! did you never hear the saying that 'Absence makes the heart grow
+fonder?' Oh, girl, I had so much deep meditation as I stared at the dim
+night-light," and she shuddered and looked a little pale.
+
+"Well, madame, I should have rolled over and shut my eyes," said the
+matter-of-fact maid.
+
+There was more truth in the lady's speech than her hearer gave her
+credit for. She was no exception to the rule that the wives of great
+inventors almost never properly appreciate them. By the light of his
+success, breaking forth like the sun, she feared that the greatest error
+of her life had been made when she miscomprehended him. In her dreams as
+well as her insomnia, it was Clemenceau that she beheld, and not the
+gallants who had flashed across her uneven path, not even the viscount,
+whose spoil was her nest-egg. Alas! it was a mere atom to the solid
+ingot which her misunderstood husband's genius had ensured. She had
+perhaps lost the substance in snapping at the shadow.
+
+"Any way, I love my husband," she proceeded, moaning aloud, and resting
+her chin in the hollow of her hand--the elbow on the table, to which she
+had returned and where she was seated. "I am sure now."
+
+"No doubt," said the servant, unconsciously holding the feather duster
+as a soldier holds his rifle; "madame has heard about our great
+discoveries in artillery? They are revo--revolutionizing--oof! What a
+mouthful--the military world!"
+
+"Yes; I read the newspaper accounts during my convalescence," replied
+Madame Clemenceau.
+
+"Then you fell in love with your husband because of his cannon," said
+Hedwig, laughing. "I do not see what connection there is between them,
+and, in fact," reflecting a little and suddenly laughing more loudly, "I
+hear that cannons produce breaches rather than re-union. Well, after
+all, if cannons do not further love, its a friend to glory and riches!
+The Emperor, some of our visitors said, is very fond of artillery, and
+he will give master immense contracts from the report of the examining
+committee being so favorable."
+
+"Really, Hedwig, you are becoming quite learned from the association
+with scientists. What long words you use!
+
+"That's nothing," said the servant, complacently.
+
+"There is no word difficult in French to a German. but I can tell you
+that, as we cannot live on air, and these promises do not bear present
+fruit, master has been forced to sell this house."
+
+"Eh! why is that? I like the place well enough."
+
+"You were not here to be consulted, madame, and, we wanted the money.
+Master does not wish to be obliged to M. Daniels and, besides, he, too,
+does not get in the cash for his company any too rapidly. Master ran
+into debt while making his guns and cannon, and we have been pinched for
+ready money."
+
+"I am glad to hear it!" ejaculated Cesarine, without spitefulness, and
+with more sincerity than she had spoken previously.
+
+The girl stared without understanding.
+
+"I have money--cash--to help him, and it will be far more proper for
+him to be obliged to his wife than to strangers. Besides, I should not
+tax him with usurious interest," she said maliciously.
+
+"Money, madame," said the servant with her widely opened eyes still more
+distending.
+
+"I have two hundred thousand francs, that is, nearly as many marks,
+coming from my good uncle who is a little late in doing me a
+kindness--but my attention touched him. But do I not hear
+steps--somebody at last moving in the house?"
+
+"Very likely," replied the servant tranquilly, "but nobody will come in
+here, before master has breakfast. Since he stores his secrets in that
+chest, and no company drops in, this is a hermitage. Mademoiselle
+Rebecca is not one of the prying sort."
+
+Madame Clemenceau, who had risen with more nervous anxiety than she
+cared to display to the servants, stood by her chair, looking toward the
+door.
+
+"Has he talked about me, sometimes?"
+
+"Master? never--not before me, anyway, madame."
+
+"Yet you gave him the telegram that explained all?"
+
+"Yes, madame; but not until some time after your departure and when
+master had returned from a promenade alone. I know he was alone, because
+M. Antonino was racing about to show him some of his wonderful
+experiments."
+
+Beyond a doubt, it was Clemenceau who had stood witness to the tragedy
+in the meadow. Hence his inattention to the Russian's despatch, which he
+naturally would disbelieve, and probably to her prolonged absence.
+
+It was humiliating that he had not searched for her.
+
+"What! no allusion to my stay--no hint of my possible return?"
+
+"His silence has been perfect as the grave. Next morning after you left
+and did not return, master looked at the cover which I had from habit
+placed for you, and remarked: 'Oh, by the way, you will have another to
+lay to-morrow, as we shall have two guests for, I hope, a long time.' He
+meant the Danielses, madame. Their coming made it a little livelier for
+him and M. Antonino."
+
+"It looks like a plot," murmured Cesarine, indignantly, as she pictured
+the happy reunions out of which she had been displaced in memory--not
+even her untouched plate left as memento! her chair taken by Rebecca
+Daniels!
+
+"Mr. Daniels is like M. Antonino, too!" continued Hedwig. "Not only is
+he getting up the company for the master's inventions, but for the young
+gentleman's--he has made such a marvel of a rifle--they put a tin box
+into it, and lo! you can fire three hundred shots as quick as a wink! I
+walk in terror since I heard of it! and I touch things as if they would
+go off and make mince-meat of me in the desert to it."
+
+"Never mind that!" cried Madame Clemenceau, testily.
+
+"Although the connection between piping at music halls and enchanting
+the bulls and bears of the Bourse is not clear to me, I can understand
+how M. Daniels, as a financial agent, should be lodging under our roof,
+but his daughter--"
+
+"She is our housekeeper, and, to tell the plain truth, madame, we have
+lived nicely, although money was scarce, since she ruled the roost. Ah,
+these Jews are clever managers!"
+
+Cesarine did not like the earnest tone of praise and hastened to say
+bluntly:
+
+"I suppose, then, she threw the spell over him again which once before,
+at Munich, caused him, a tame bookworm, to fight for her like a
+king-maker?"
+
+"Mademoiselle Rebecca! she act the fascinatress!" exclaimed Hedwig, with
+a burst of indignation.
+
+"What is there extraordinary, pray, in a husband, apparently deserted by
+his wife, paying attention to another handsome young woman?"
+
+"Why, madame, you must forget that master is the most honorable
+gentleman as ever was, and that Mademoiselle Rebecca is a perfect lady!"
+Then, perceiving that her enthusiasm on the latter head was not welcome
+to the hearer, Hedwig, added: "but it does not matter. We are receiving
+no more company, lest the great secret leak out, and so we don't need a
+lady at the table. She is going away with her father, who is to open the
+Rifle Company's offices in Paris, and that's all!"
+
+"It is quite enough!" remarked the other, frowning.
+
+"What is the last word about him?" inquired the servant, "the
+viscount-baron, I mean."
+
+"M. de Terremonde?"
+
+"Yes; you haven't said a word about him."
+
+"Do you not know?" began Cesarine, shuddering as the scene in the
+twilight arose before her on the background of the sombre side of the
+room.
+
+"He was not likely to return hereabouts. Master might have tried the new
+rifle upon him," with a suppressed laugh.
+
+"Well, if you do not know, I need only say that I am perfectly ignorant
+of his whereabouts. I went to town without his escort, and I suppose--if
+he has disappeared," she concluded with emphasis, "that he has gone on a
+journey of pleasure, or is dead."
+
+"Dead," uttered Hedwig, shuddering in her turn, "in what a singular
+tone you say that word."
+
+"What concern is it of mine?" questioned Madame Clemenceau, pursing up
+her lips to conceal a little fluttering from the dread she felt at the
+effectual way in which her lover had been removed from mortal knowledge.
+"I do not mind declaring that, if I am given any choice in the matter, I
+should prefer his taking the latter course."
+
+Hedwig's teeth chattered so that the other looked hard at her till she
+faltered the explanation:
+
+"Your way of saying things, madame, gives me cold shivers up and down
+the back--ugh! Why, that gentleman was over head and ears in love with
+you!"
+
+"That is why he probably went under so quickly, and could not keep his
+head above water!"
+
+"I thought you liked him a goodish bit--"
+
+"I--oh!"
+
+An explosion, very sharp and peculiarly splitting the air, resounded
+under the windows and caused Cesarine to clap her hands to her ears in
+terror.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII.
+
+THE REVOLUTION IN ARTILLERY.
+
+
+"Oh, what is that?" muttered Cesarine, with white lips.
+
+Hedwig laughed, but going to the window, calmly replied:
+
+"It is only the master--no, it is M. Antonino, who is trying the rifle
+they invented. Isn't it funny, though--it does not use powder or
+anything of that sort--it does not shoot out fire, but only the bullet,
+and there's no smoke! I never heard of such a thing, and I call it
+magic!"
+
+"A gun without powder, and no fire or smoke," repeated Madame
+Clemenceau. "It is, indeed, a marvel!" and she approached the window in
+uncontrollable curiosity. "Is he going to shoot again?"
+
+"Well, he gets an appetite by popping at the sparrows before breakfast.
+He is not much of a marksman like master, who is dead on the center,
+every military officer says--but, in the morning, the birds' wings are
+heavy with dew, and he makes a very pretty bag now and then. What must
+the sparrows think to be killed and not smell any powder!"
+
+"I wish you would tell him to go farther, or leave off!" said Cesarine,
+looking out at the young man with the light rifle, fascinated but
+fearing.
+
+"The obedience will be more prompt if you would tell him, madame,"
+returned the maid, "for M. Antonino would do anything for you. To think
+that there should really be something that frightens you!"
+
+"After my illness, I am afraid of everything."
+
+"Very well, I will stop him."
+
+Opening the window, Hedwig called to the Italian by name, and said, on
+receiving his answer:
+
+"Please not to shoot any more!"
+
+"Why not?" came the reply in the mellow voice of the Italian.
+
+"Come in and you'll learn." But she shut the window to intimate that he
+was to enter the house by the door as he had issued, and hastily
+returned to her mistress.
+
+The latter had tottered to the side-board, and seized a decanter, but,
+in the act of pouring out a glass of water, she paused suspiciously.
+
+"Is this good to drink?" she warily inquired.
+
+"Of course, though you are quite right--they do juggle with a lot of
+queer acids and the like dangerous stuff here! They give me the warning
+sometimes after their _swim-posiums_, as they call the sociables, not to
+touch anything till they come down, for poisons are about. Ugh! But do
+not drink so much cold water so early in the morning--it is unhealthy.
+If it were only good beer, now, it would not matter! _Ach_, Muechen!" and
+Hedwig vulgarly smacked her lips.
+
+"After my illness I have been always thirsty, and, sometimes, I seem to
+have infernal fires in my bosom!" sighed Madame Clemenceau, putting down
+the glass with a hand so hot that the crystal was clouded with steam.
+
+Her teeth chattered, as a sudden chill followed the flush, and Hedwig
+shrank back in alarm--the beautiful face became transformed into such a
+close likeness to a wolf's. "You need not be scared any more, for he has
+come into the house. Here he is, too!" and she sprang to the door, as
+well to open it to M. Antonino, as to screen her mistress until she
+cared to reveal her presence.
+
+Perhaps it was application to the work and not pining over the absence
+of Cesarine, but the Italian showed evidence of sleeplessness and his
+pallor had the unpleasant cast of the Southerners when out of spirits.
+
+His eyes were enfevered and his lips dry and cracked. He carried a
+handsome fowling-piece, which presented, at first glance, no feature of
+dissimilarity to the usual pattern except that trigger and hammer were
+absent, and the rim of the barrel was not blackened from the recent
+discharge.
+
+"What did you stop me for when I had hardly more than begun my sport and
+practice?" he inquired.
+
+"Put down that devil's own gun, sir monsieur," said Hedwig, "if you
+please."
+
+"Why, what's the matter?" said he, while obeying by standing the rifle
+in a corner. "I thought you Germans were all daughters or sweethearts of
+soldiers."
+
+"Ay, and most of us women would make as good soldiers as they have here;
+but I was speaking because you gave a shock to madame."
+
+Stepping aside, Antonino discovered Madame Clemenceau, who smiled
+softly.
+
+"Oh, madame!" ejaculated Antonino, at the height of astonishment, not
+unmixed with gladness. "I beg your pardon; I am very sorry--I mean
+glad--that is, I was not aware--if I had had any idea you were home--"
+
+"You could not have known," she answered in a gentle voice. "I was too
+eager to get back, to delay to send a line. As for the noise, another
+time it might not matter, but I came here by an early morning train and
+I had no rest before I started. I am very fatigued and nervous, and the
+shot so sudden, surprised me. For a little while to come, I should like
+you to repeat your experiments with firearms at a distance from the
+house. Is--is that the new kind of rifle?" she inquired, with the
+timidity of a child introduced to the new watchdog.
+
+"Yes, madame!" and his eyes blazing with pride, he proceeded, as he
+crossed the room and returned with the firearm, "it is altogether a new
+invention. Master is an innovator, indeed!"
+
+"Do you object to showing it to me?" continued Cesarine, pleased that
+the enthusiasm gave an excuse for her not entering into an explanation
+of her absence which, even if more plausible than that Hedwig had
+doubtingly received, would require all of Antonino's affectionate faith
+in her to win credence. "I do not object. Even those experienced in the
+old weapons can inspect it and not learn much," he went on, with the
+same pride; "but I thought it frightened you!"
+
+"It did--it does, but I ought to overcome such a ridiculous feeling! I,
+above all women, being a gun-inventor's wife! Is it loaded?" she asked,
+while hesitatingly holding out her hand to take it.
+
+Hedwig had prudently backed over to the window which she held a little
+open to make a leap out for escape in case of accident. Her mistress
+took the rifle and turned it over and over; certainly, it resembled no
+gun she had ever handled before. Its simplicity daunted her and
+irritated her.
+
+"It seems to have two barrels," she remarked, "although one is closed as
+if not to be used. Is it double-barrelled?"
+
+"There are two barrels, or, more accurately speaking, a barrel for
+discharge of the projectile and a chamber for the explosive substance,
+which is the secret."
+
+"Then you load by the muzzle, like the old-fashioned guns?"
+
+"Oh, no; there is no load, no cartridge, as you understand it; only the
+missiles, and they are inserted by the quantity in the breach."
+
+"And there is no trigger or hammer!" exclaimed Cesarine, not yet at the
+end of her wonder.
+
+"Obsolete contrivances, always catching in the clothes or in the
+brambles, and causing the death or maiming of many an excellent man. We
+have changed all that by doing away with appendages altogether. This
+disc, when pressed, allows so much of the explosive matter to enter the
+barrel and it expels the missile by repeated expansions."
+
+"How very, very curious!" exclaimed Madame Clemenceau, returning the
+piece to Antonino with the vexed air of one reluctantly giving up a
+puzzle to the solution of which a prize was attached. "I should like you
+to make it clear to me--"
+
+"The government forbids!" said the Italian, smiling, and assuming a look
+of preternatural solemnity to make the lady smile and Hedwig laugh
+respectfully. "And, then, the company we are getting up, lays a farther
+prohibition on us. However, you are in the arcana--you are one of the
+privileged, I suppose, and if M. Clemenceau does not expressly bar my
+lessons, you shall learn how to knock over sparrows for your cat."
+
+"You will instruct me?"
+
+"Most gladly!"
+
+"That is nice of you, and I am so sorry at having interrupted your
+experiments."
+
+"Thanks; but we have long since gone beyond the experimental stage. I
+was only trying a new bullet that I fancy the shape of. I ask your
+pardon for having given you a fright." He took her hand and kissed it.
+She beckoned to Hedwig as soon as it was released, and smiled kindly on
+him as she left the room with her servant to dress befittingly to show
+herself to Mademoiselle Rebecca. Had it been only her husband to face,
+she might have been content to look dusty with travel as she had to
+Antonino.
+
+"How you delight that poor gentleman," observed Hedwig, between pity
+and admiration. "You would witch an angel."
+
+"I am only practicing to enchant my husband, you dull creature!" said
+Cesarine merrily. "He is a great man, and I have been proud of him from
+the first."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV.
+
+TRULY A MAN.
+
+
+Long after Madame Clemenceau had left the room, the Italian stood in the
+same position as he had taken after kissing her hand. The mild voice
+from the pallid but little changed beauty thrilled him as formerly, and
+went far towards making him as mad as he had been ten days before when
+she had dropped, like an extinguished star, out of that small system. In
+her absence, he had regained quiet and some coolness, and believed he
+had conquered the treasonable passion which threatened his benefactor
+with disgrace. Had she not disgraced him as it was; had she not run away
+with another lover?
+
+Clemenceau had not said one word to his associate about the telegram
+from Paris, which he seemed not to believe, or of the note beginning:
+"The faithless one," by which Von Sendlingen had been warned of
+Gratian's absconding and which he instructed Hedwig to place where her
+master must see it. Hence, the view by Clemenceau of the stamping out of
+the Viscount-baron, for his accomplices had not let the chance pass when
+he stumbled into their ambush, in order to see if the Frenchman in
+jealous spite would assail him.
+
+Clemenceau had recognized his wife and he divined that the lonely man
+making for the same point was the villain, without understanding into
+what deathpit he had fallen.
+
+At the juncture of his being about hurrying after his wife, he heard the
+half-strangled wretch's outcry and the low appeal of humanity
+overpowering the hoarse summons of revenge in his bosom. But when he
+arrived at the broken footway bridge, all was over. A little farther, he
+fancied he saw a shadow in an osier bed, but when he waded to it, all
+was hushed. He called, but no sound responded. All seemed a
+vision--victim and assassins.
+
+And his wife was flying, by the train which had merely stopped to take
+her up. As every resident is known at these suburban stations, he
+refrained from an inquiry which would have made him a laughing-stock.
+
+Since Cesarine had returned, the conflict of duty and passion would be
+resumed and he felt sure that he had been defeated before. Reflecting
+profoundly, he could come to no other conclusion than that he ought to
+shun the dangerous traitress.
+
+As he lifted his head, less troubled after arriving at this resolution,
+he was not sorry to see that Clemenceau had silently entered the room.
+
+"Oh, is it you, my dear master?" he exclaimed.
+
+It was not easy on that placid brow to read whether he knew of
+Cesarine's return or not.
+
+"Well, are you satisfied with your test this morning?" inquired he.
+"Have you succeeded with the bullets of the new shape?"
+
+"I believe so," answered Antonino, "for the modifications which you
+suggested, improved it in every point they dealt with. They go forth
+clean and the windage is much reduced."
+
+"Is the range improved?"
+
+"At fourteen hundred metres I put two elongated balls into an oak so
+deeply that I could not dig them out with my knife. They struck very
+closely to one another. It is a hundred metres greater distance.
+Inserting the bullets by the mass of twenty-five and firing the two took
+four seconds. I was less careful about marking where the others struck,
+and one that I discharged on my return near the house broke and went
+badly askew. With bullets made by regular moulders, such an accident
+should not happen."
+
+"Have you any left? Let me see."
+
+Antonino took two bullets from his waistcoat pocket; they were unlike
+the ordinary globules, and resembled the long, pointed cylinders of
+modern guns. With a pair of pocket plyers, he broke one to exhibit the
+interior to Clemenceau; it was composed of two metals in curiously
+shaped segments and a chamber in one end contained a loose ball of
+another and heavier metal, on the principle of the quick-silver
+enhancing the force of the blow of the "loaded" executioner's sword. All
+had a novel aspect, but the chief inventor was familiar with the
+arrangement.
+
+"By the cavity in it I have reduced the weight of three to two," went on
+Antonino. "I am in hopes to put in fifty or sixty bullets at a time
+without making the arm too heavy, and that would suffice, considering
+that the replacement of the mass of projectiles requires no appreciable
+time, while the supply of explosive, liquefied air suffices for three
+hundred discharges. The repetition of the emissive force does not jar
+the gun, and the metal of our alloy does not show a strain although the
+gauge induces a pressure of fifty thousand pounds per square inch if it
+were accumulated."
+
+"And the injection valve?"
+
+"It works as easily by pressure on the disc, which replaces the trigger,
+perfectly."
+
+"That was your idea."
+
+"After you put me on the track," returned the Italian, gratefully. "Oh,
+I am still very ignorant in these matters."
+
+"Not more than I, a few months ago. I had not handled a firearm until--"
+he checked himself and frowned; then, tranquilly resuming, he said:
+"Labor, and you will reach the goal!"
+
+Antonino looked on silently as his instructor took the gun and inserted
+the bullet, but when he was going over to the open window, with the
+evident intention to fire off into the garden, he followed and laid his
+hand on his arm, saying animatedly:
+
+"Do not fire!"
+
+"Why not?" returned Clemenceau, but without astonishment. "We live in a
+desert since we have frightened our neighbors away. For two leagues
+around, nobody is about at this hour and everybody within our walls is
+accustomed to the noise of the gas exploding."
+
+"Not everybody," remonstrated Antonino. "Madame Clemenceau has returned
+home and the sound frightens her because so strange."
+
+"It is so. That's another matter," replied the inventor, putting the
+rifle down in the corner without haste.
+
+"Did you know it? Have you seen her?" cried Antonino, struck by the
+remarkable unconcern of his master.
+
+"I knew of it by seeing her, yes, as I was coming down stairs a while
+since--she was going to her rooms from this one, with her maid."
+
+"It's a lucky thing that Mademoiselle Daniels refused to occupy them!"
+exclaimed Antonino. "Why did you not speak to your wife?"
+
+"Because I can have nothing to say to her and she would speak to me
+nothing but lies," said Clemenceau in so severe and convinced a tone
+that the young man remained silent, hurt at the judgment pronounced upon
+his idol by its own high-priest. "What are you brooding over?" he
+inquired, after an embarrassing pause.
+
+"My dear master, I think that I ought to ask leave of absence since I
+have finished the work of designing the bullet most fit for the
+gas-rifle."
+
+"Do you ask leave of me, at your age, as of a schoolmaster?"
+
+The relations between the adopted son and the architect, who had
+mistaken his bent and become an innovator in artillery, had been
+affectionate, and on the younger man's side respectful. He had never
+taken any serious steps without asking his consent.
+
+"Well, where did you think of going?" asked Clemenceau.
+
+"To Paris."
+
+"To show the rifle and projectile complete? No, we can test the latter
+at the new series of firing experiments before the Ordnance Committee.
+The Minister of War and the Emperor will not thank you for disturbing
+them for so little. It was the great gun they wanted. They are wedded to
+the Chassepot for the soldier's gun and, besides, the government musket
+factories are opposed to so great a novelty."
+
+"I need exercise--action--the open air," persisted the Italian.
+
+Clemenceau shook his head. Only the day before, the young man had called
+himself the happiest soul in the world and did not wish to quit
+tranquil Montmorency.
+
+"Well, after you have had your fling, would you hasten back?"
+
+"I--I fear not, master," said he. "I daresay if you and M. Daniels
+should approve, I might have a situation to travel for the Clemenceau
+Rifle Company, for some months, in England or America--and explain the
+value of your invention."
+
+"You wish to be my trumpeter, eh?" said the Frenchman, sadly smiling.
+"But what is to become of me during your absence and of M. Daniels?
+Remember that I have nobody to understand me, sympathize with me, become
+endeared to me, and aid me!"
+
+"I, alone?" repeated the Italian, affected by the melancholy tone common
+to the man of one idea who must, to concentrate his thoughts, set aside
+other ties of union with his race.
+
+"Do you doubt it?"
+
+Antonino felt no doubt. He would be the most to be deplored among men if
+he were not fond of Clemenceau after all that he had done for him. He
+was an orphan vagrant, next to a beggar, when he had been housed by him,
+kept, and highly educated. Then, too, with a frankness not common among
+born brothers, the Frenchman had associated him in all his labors for
+the revolution in the science of artillery--the greatest since Bacon
+discovered gunpowder. All that he was, he owed to the man before him.
+
+"Believe me, father," he said, earnestly, "I esteem and venerate you!"
+
+"And yet you keep secrets from me!" reproached Clemenceau.
+
+"I--I have no secrets."
+
+"I see you are too serious."
+
+"I am only sorrowful--sorrowful at quitting you."
+
+"Why should you do it, I repeat?"
+
+"I am never merry--happiness is not my portion," faltered Antonino, not
+knowing what answer to make.
+
+"That's nothing. Better now than later! At your age, unhappiness is
+easily borne--it is only what the sporting gentlemen call a preliminary
+canter. Wait till you come to the actual race!"
+
+"I am not fit to dwell with others--with grave, earnest men; I am too
+nervous and impressionable."
+
+"Because you come of an excitable race, and your childhood was passed in
+too deep poverty. You will grow out of all that, gradually. Stay here;
+oh, keep with me, for I have need of you and you require a
+companion-soul, soothing like mine. The kind of disappointment you
+experience is not to be cured by change of place. You carry it with you,
+and distance increases and strengthens it, and whenever you meet the
+object again to whom was due the vexation you will perceive that you
+went on the journey for no good."
+
+Antonino looked at the speaker as one regards the mind-reader who has
+answered to the point. Clemenceau fixed him with his serene, unvarying
+eyes, and continued, in an emotionless voice, like a statue, speaking:
+
+"You are in love--and you love my wife."
+
+Antonino started away and involuntarily lifted his hands in a position
+of defense. Averting his eyes and unclenching his fists, he muttered
+sullenly:
+
+"What makes you suppose that?"
+
+"I saw it was so."
+
+At the end of a silence more burdensome than any before the younger man
+found his voice and, as though tears interfered with his utterance,
+said pathetically, and indistinctly:
+
+"Do you not acknowledge, master, now, that I must go; for when I am far
+away, perhaps you will forgive the ingrate!"
+
+Looking at the young man of two-and-twenty, Clemenceau knew by his own
+infatuation at the same tender age with the same woman, that he had
+nothing to forgive him for--little to reproach him. It was youth that
+was to blame, and it had loved. No matter who that Cytherean priestess
+was, he must have adored her whether sister, wife or daughter of dearest
+friend, teacher and paternal patron. But it was clear from the grief
+that had made the youth a melancholy man that he was honorable.
+
+Grief is never, when the outcome of remorse, a useless or evil feeling.
+It is a fair-fighting adversary which has only to be overcome to be a
+sure ally, always ready to defend and protect its victor. In his own
+terse language, that of a mathematician and mechanician who knew no
+words of double meaning.
+
+Clemenceau told the Italian this.
+
+"With your youth and your grief, such a spirit as yours and such a
+friend as you have in me, Anto," he said, "you possess the weapons of
+Achilles."
+
+Antonino thought he was mocking at him and frowned.
+
+"You think I am sneering? Or merely laughing at you? Alas, it is a long
+while since I indulged in laughter. It was this woman, with whom you
+have fallen in love, who froze the laugh forever on my lips! she would
+have been the death of me if I had not overruled her and exterminated
+her within my breast. How I loved her! how I have suffered through
+her--enough to be our united portions of future pain--suffer you no
+more, therefore. You are too young, tender and credulous to try a fall
+with that creature. She must have divined long ago that you were
+enamored of her. She is not too clear-sighted in all things, but she
+sees such effects by intuition. It is very probable that she has
+returned to this house on your account, so suddenly. I could guess that
+she was on the eve of flight, but not that she would return. She always
+needs fresh sensations to make herself believe that she is alive, for
+she is more lifeless than those whom she robbed of life."
+
+Antonino did not understand the allusion, for he had never felt less
+like dying than since Cesarine had been seen again.
+
+"I mean that she sends the chill of death into the soul, heart and brain
+of man, and it congeals the marrow in his bones!" said Clemenceau,
+energetically. "You may say that if she is a wicked woman and if,
+whatever her defense, her absence covers some evil step, I ought to
+separate from her. It is all the present state of the law allows. But
+while her absence would have prevented you, or another friend, from
+meeting her, still she would have borne my name. That name I am doubly
+bound to make honorable, for it was stained with blood--that of one of
+her ever-accursed race. My father won an illustrious name and, her
+ancestress, whom he married, was dragging it publically in the mud amid
+all the scandals of society, when he slew her on her couch of gilded
+infamy. Ashamed of this name--not because he was indicated under it, but
+because she had so vilified it--his greatest desire to the friends who
+visited him in the condemned cell, was to have me, his son, change it.
+They had me brought up at a distance under the name of Claudius
+Ruprecht. It might even have happened that another country than that of
+my birth would receive the glory which a heaven-sent idea is to bestow
+upon France. Now, I am more than ever determined that her venom shall
+not sully me. She may cause a little ridicule to arise, but that I can
+scorn. The laugh at Montmorency will not reach Paris, far less echo
+around the globe! For a long time I hoped to enlighten her and redeem
+her, but I have failed. But I am bound to enlighten you and save you, am
+I not? From the feeling you harbor can spring only an additional shame
+for Cesarine, and certain, perhaps irreparable woe for you. Stop, turn
+about and look the other way. A man of twenty, who may naturally live
+another three-score years and work during two of them, who would talk to
+you of that nonsense, love's sorrow? That was all very well once, when
+the world revolved slowly and there was little to be done by the people
+who blocked nobody's way. But these are busy times and things to be done
+cannot wait till you finish loving and wailing, or till you die of a
+broken heart without having done anything for your fellow men."
+
+"Bravo!" exclaimed the sympathetical and easily aroused Italian,
+grasping the speaker by the hand and pressing it with revived energy.
+"My excellent leader, you are right!"
+
+"And by and by," said the other, with an effort, as though he had to
+master inward commotion, "when you win a prize from your own country and
+you look for household joys more agreeably to reward you, you may find
+one not far from here at this moment to be your wife. For, generally,
+the bane is near the antidote--the serpent is crushed under the heel
+next the beneficent plant which heals the bite."
+
+"Rebecca?" questioned the young man in amazement. "But if I can read her
+heart as you do mine, master, Rebecca Daniels loves you."
+
+"She admires me and pities me, Antonino," replied Clemenceau, hastily,
+as if wishful to elude the question. "She does not love me. Besides,
+that is of no consequence. I have no room for love again--always
+provided that I have once loved. Passion often has the honor of being
+confounded with the purer feeling, especially in the young. Did I love
+that monster--for she is a monster, Antonino--I might forgive, for love
+excuses everything--that is true love, but it is rare as virtue--common
+sense and all that is truth. To the altar of love, many are called, but
+few elected, and all are not fit.
+
+"I see you are not convinced, because the dog that bit me is so shapely,
+and graceful and wears so silky a coat! Such dogs are mad and their bite
+in the heart is fatal and agonizing unless one at once applies the white
+hot cautery. The seam remains--from time to time it aches--but the
+victim's life is saved that he may save, serve, gladden his fellow men.
+Would you rather I should weep, or force a smile, and appear happy for a
+period? In any case, since I have cured the injury and she is in my
+house again, I shall not retaliate on her. But if she threatens to
+become a public danger--if she bares her poisonous fangs to harm my
+friend--my son--another--let her beware!"
+
+"Master," stammered Antonino, beginning to see the temptress in the new
+light, as Felix had often shown him other objects to which he had been
+blind, "you may or may not judge her too harshly, but you certainly
+judge me too leniently. Better to let me go away, and far, or at least,
+since you began the revelation, make the evidence complete of your trust
+and esteem."
+
+Clemenceau saw that the young man still believed in Cesarine, but he did
+not care to tell him all he knew of her. Had he been told that she had
+encouraged Gratian to flee with her and had abandoned him at the first
+danger, without lifting a finger to save him, or her voice to procure
+him succor, he might loathe and hate her; but Clemenceau meant to say
+nothing. Such revelations, and denunciations are permissible alone to
+wrath, revenge, or despair, in the man whose heart is still bleeding
+from the wound made in it so that his outburst is sealed by his blood.
+
+"No, Antonino, by my mouth no one shall ever know all that woman has
+done--or what victories I have won over myself--in severe wrestlings."
+
+"I see you have forgiven her," said the Italian, advancing the virtue in
+which he was deficient.
+
+"I have expunged her from my heart," answered Clemenceau firmly. "She is
+a picture on only one page of my life-book, and I do not open it there.
+Knowing my secret, you are the last person to whom I shall speak of
+Cesarine's misdeeds. I wish your deliverance, like mine, to be owed to
+your will, but you are free and have been forewarned, so that you will
+have less effort to make than I. Let the scarlet woman go by and do not
+step across her path. Between two smiles, she will dishonor you or deal
+death to you! She slays like a dart of Satan. That is all you need know.
+But, as, indeed, you deserve a token of esteem and confidence from your
+frankness, affection and labors, I will give you one."
+
+Having seated himself, he drew from an inner pocket a paper written in
+odd characters.
+
+"The time of my giving you the proof of trust should make it more sacred
+and precious still. I have found the solution of the last problem over
+which we pored. You know that while we discovered the means of
+imprisoning the gas in a concentrated form of scarcely appreciable bulk,
+it was not always our obedient slave, we had the fear that sometimes it
+would not submit to being liberated by piecemeal but would now and then
+disrupt its containing chamber in impatience, and then the holder would
+certainly die, choked if the fragments of the gun had not fatally
+lacerated him. After many days and nights, I have found the simple means
+to render the gas innocuous except in the direction to which we direct
+its flow. I have written out the formula, in the minutest particulars
+and in the cipher which you and I alone understand. In the same way we
+two share the secret of this safe."
+
+He handed Antonino a peculiar key and he went to unlock the coffer which
+had aroused Madame Clemenceau's curiosity.
+
+"Lock it up with the other papers," concluded the inventor. "I appoint
+you its keeper while I live--my heir and the carrier out of the work
+after my decease, should I die before having proved what I consign
+there. What matters it now if my material form disappears when my spirit
+lives on in thee! Well," he said, as Antonino returned, after closing
+and fastening the chest, "do you need any farther proof of the
+confidence I have in you?"
+
+Antonino grasped his hand and wrung it fondly When both had recovered
+calmness, they went on speaking of their work, which might be considered
+past the stage when the projector is racked by misgivings. They went
+into the breakfast-room together, prepared to bear the singular meeting
+with the errant wife whose return was so unexpected. But she preferred
+not to take the step so soon, and, as Rebecca also kept away, warned by
+Hedwig, who might appear at the board, the three men took their meal
+together.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV.
+
+THE MAN OF MANY MASKS.
+
+
+From dawn a stranger had been wandering about Montmorency. Armed with a
+large sun-umbrella and a Guid-Joanne, his copiously oiled black
+side-whiskers glistening in the sun, showing large teeth in a friendly
+grin to wayfarers of all degrees, one did not need to hear his strong
+accent of the people of Marseilles to know that he was a son of the
+South. Probably having made a fortune in shipping, in oils or wines, he
+was utilizing his holiday by touring in the north of his country, forced
+to admire, but still pugnaciously asseverating that no garden equalled
+his city park and no main street his Cannebiere. He seemed to have no
+destination in particular; he stopped here and there at random, and used
+a large and powerful field-glass, slung by a patent leather strap over
+his brawny shoulders, to study the points in the wide landscape. Now and
+then he made notes in his guide-book, but with a good-humored
+listlessness which would have disarmed the most suspicious of military
+detectives. On descending the hillside, he did not scruple to stop to
+chat with a nurse maid or two out with the children, and to open his
+hand as freely to give the latter some silver as he had opened his heart
+to the girl--all with an easy, hearty laugh, and the oily accent of his
+fellow-countrymen.
+
+He exchanged the time of day with the clerks hurrying to the railroad
+station; he did not disdain to ask the roadmender, seated on a pile of
+stones, how his labor was getting on, and where he would work next week;
+he leaned on the gate to listen as if enrapt to the groom and gardener
+of a neighbor of Clemenceau's, regretting that the hubbub of cracking
+guns and other ominous explosions was driving their master from home.
+Then, rattling his loose silver, and whistling a fisher's song, which he
+must have picked up off the Hyeres, he paused before the gateway of the
+house which had become the Ogre's Cave of Montmorency, and read half
+aloud the placard nailed on a board to a tree and announcing that the
+property was in the open market.
+
+"The Reine-Claude Villa, eh!" muttered he to himself. "The name pleases
+me! I must go in and see if it is worth the money. To say nothing," he
+added still more secretly, "of the mistress having returned this
+morning. I wonder how she had the courage to walk along the road in the
+dawn, when she might have met the ghost of our poor Gratian von
+Linden-hohen-Linden!"
+
+This acquaintance with the unpublished story of Madame Clemenceau rather
+contradicted the aspect and accent of a Marseillais, and, although the
+black whiskers did not remind one of Von Sendlingen when we saw him at
+Munich, than of his clear shaven, wrinkled face as the Marchioness de
+Letourlagneau pianist, it was not so with the burly figure, more robust
+than corpulent.
+
+He opened the gate without ringing and stepped inside on the gravel path
+winding up to the pretty but not lively house.
+
+"Attention," he muttered suddenly, in a military tone. "Here is our own
+little spy in the camp--Hedwig. It will be as well she does not
+recognize me without my cue."
+
+Running his large red hand over his whiskers, he jovially accosted the
+girl, after adjusting his formidable accoutrement field-glass,
+guide-book, case and heavy watch chain, adorned with a compass and a
+pedometer. She stood on the porch before the windows of the room into
+which her mistress had entered so early in the morning.
+
+"What do you seek, monsieur?" she challenged, after an unfavorable
+glance upon the stranger who had greatly offended her idea of dignity by
+not ringing and waiting at the portals to be officially admitted.
+
+"Pardon me, young lady," the man said, with the southern accent so
+strong that a flavor of garlic at once pervaded the air, "but I did not
+think that your papa and mamma and the family were in the house, seeing
+that it is for sale."
+
+"Young lady? My papa? Let me tell you that I am the housemaid here and
+if you have intended to jest--"
+
+"Jest! purchasing a house, and rather large gardens, is no jest, not in
+the environs of Paris!" returned the visitor. "Is it you who are to show
+the property?"
+
+"No. If you will wait, I will tell master," said Hedwig, not at all
+flattered by being pretendedly taken for "the daughter of the house."
+
+She turned round, made the half-circuit of the house, and entered the
+breakfast-room where the three gentlemen were still in debate.
+
+"A gentleman, to see the house, with a view to purchase, eh?" said
+Clemenceau. "Very well, I will go into the drawing-room and speak with
+him. Is your mistress having a nap?"
+
+"No, monsieur."
+
+"Then, be so good as to tell her that somebody has come about the house,
+and as such inquirers are sure to be supplied by their wives with
+formidable lists of questions about domestic details, I should be
+obliged by her coming down to send the person away satisfied."
+
+He followed Hedwig on the way up through the house as far as the
+drawing-room door, where his path branched off. Entering, he threw open
+the double window-sashes and politely asked the gentleman to make use of
+this direct road, with an apology for suggesting it. But he had seen at
+a glance that this kind of happy-go-lucky tourist was not of the
+ceremonious strain.
+
+"It is you, monsieur," began the latter, taking the seat pointed out to
+him and immediately swinging one leg, mounted on the other knee, with
+the utmost nonchalance, "it is you who are the proprietor of this pretty
+place?"
+
+"Yes; my name is Clemenceau, at your service."
+
+"Then, monsieur, I am--where the plague have I put my card-case--I am
+Guillaume Cantagnac, lately in business as a notary, but for the
+present, at the head of an enterprise for the purchase of landed
+estates, and their development by high culture for the ground and
+superior structures instead of their antiquated houses. I read in the
+_Moniteur des Ventes_, and on the placard at your gates, that you are
+willing to dispose of this residence and the land appertaining
+thereunto. I am not on business this morning, but taking a little
+pleasure-trip--no, not pleasure-trip--God forbid I should find any
+pleasure now! I mean a little tour for distraction after a great sorrow
+that has befallen me."
+
+The stout man, though he could have felled a bull with a blow of his
+leg-of-mutton fist, seemed about to break down in tears. But, burying
+his empurpled nose in a large red handkerchief, he passed off his
+emotion in a potent blast which made the ornaments on the mantel-shelf
+quake, and resumed in an unsteady voice:
+
+"I would have made a note and deferred to another day seeing the
+property you offer and learning its area, value, situation, advantages
+and defects--for there is always some flaw in a terrestrial paradise,
+ha, ha! But your hospitable gate was on the latch--such an inviting
+expression was on the face of a rather pretty servant girl on your
+porch--faith! I could not resist the temptation to make the acquaintance
+of the happy owner of this Eden! and lo! I am rewarded by the power to
+go home to Marseilles and tell my companion domino-players in the Cafe
+Dame de la Garde that I saw the renowned constructor of the new
+cannon--M. Felix Clemenceau, with whom the Emperor has spoken about the
+defense of our beloved country!"
+
+Clemenceau could only bow under this deluge of words.
+
+"M. Clemenceau, will you honor me with the clasp of the hand?"
+
+The host allowed his hand to disappear from view in the enormous one
+presented, timidly.
+
+"Ah! in case of the universal European War, they are talking about,
+France will have need of such men as you!"
+
+The embarrassing situation for the modest inventor was altered for the
+better by the entrance of Antonino, who darted a keen glance upon the
+genial stranger.
+
+"How do you do?" cried the latter, nodding kindly. "Your son, I suppose,
+M. Clemenceau?"
+
+"By adoption. I am hardly of the age to have a son as old as that!"
+
+"I beg your pardon! I see now, that it is brain-work that has worn you
+out a little. But, bless you, that will all get smoothed out when you
+begin to enjoy the windfall of fortune! I dare say now you are selling
+out because the Emperor offers you a piece of one of his parks, wanting
+you to live near him. And I presume this bright young gentleman is of
+the same profession? Has he, too, invented a great gun?"
+
+"He is the author of several not inconsiderable inventions," replied
+Clemenceau for Antonino, who was not delighted with the stranger's ways,
+had gone to look out of the nearest window, although it necessitated his
+rudely turning his back on him.
+
+"Any cannon among them?"
+
+"No, M. Cant--Cant--"
+
+"Cantagnac--"
+
+"Cantagnac; only a very notable bullet of novel shape."
+
+"A bullet, dear me! a bullet! a novel bullet! what an age we are living
+in, to be sure! I applaud you, young man, and you must allow me to say
+to my companions in the Cafe de la Garde at Marseilles, that I shook the
+hand of the inventor of the new bullet!" But as Antonino did not make a
+responsive movement, he had to add, unabashed: "before I go, I mean!
+But allow me to say, gentlemen, that though I am only a commonplace
+notary, and a retired one, at that, ha, ha! a buyer of houses to
+modernize, and land to improve in cultivation; though lowly, and very
+ill-informed on the great questions which occupy you, yet I venture to
+assert that I take the greatest interest in your labors. I would give
+half--aye, three-quarters of my possessions toward your success. My life
+should be yours if it were useful in any way, although that would be a
+small gift, as it has no value in my own eyes. I had a son, M.
+Clemenceau--an only son, tall, dark, handsome and, though he took after
+me, bright--like this young gentleman of talent here!" He flourished the
+voluminous red handkerchief again. "In an evil hour, I let him go on a
+holiday excursion and he chose the Rhine. His boyish gallantry caused
+him to champion a waitress on a steamboat, whom a bullying German
+officer of the Landsturm had chucked under the chin. High words were
+exchanged--my boy challenged the giant, who did not understand our way
+among gentlemen of settling such matters--he knocked my hopeful one
+overboard--no, gentlemen, he was not drowned, but he never recovered
+from the mortification of being laughed at. He came home but to die--in
+the following year, poor, sensitive soul! His mother never held her head
+up again, and I--" he blew his nose with a tremendous peal, "I--I beg
+your pardon for forgetting my business, again."
+
+"Not at all!" exclaimed Clemenceau, while Antonino, angry at having
+misjudged the bereaved parent, offered him the hand he had previously
+refused.
+
+"I thank you both," said M. Cantagnac, hastening to dry his tears which
+might have seemed of the crocodile sort when they had time to remember
+he had been a notary. "This is not my usual bearing! Three years ago I
+was called the Merry One, for I was always laughing, but now"--he gave a
+great gulp at a sob like a rosy-gilled salmon taking in a fly and
+abruptly said:
+
+"So you want to sell your house, with all belongings? Which are--"
+
+"About twelve acres, mostly young wood, but some rocky ground ornamental
+enough, which will never be productive. Do you mind getting the plan,
+Antonino? It is hanging up in my study."
+
+Antonino went out, not sorry to be beyond earshot of the boisterous
+negotiator.
+
+"Young wood, eh?" repeated the latter, "humph! lots of stony ground!
+ahem! yet it is pretty and so near town. I wonder you sell it."
+
+"I want ready money," returned Clemenceau, bluntly.
+
+"So we all do, ha, ha! But you surely could raise on it by mortgage."
+
+"I have tried that."
+
+"The deuce you have! That's strange, when the Emperor said your
+discovery--"
+
+"It is a gold mine, but like gold mines, it has plunged the discoverer
+into debt."
+
+"I dare say it would! and I suppose it is not so certain-sure as the
+newspapers assert--"
+
+"I beg your pardon, it is beyond all doubt," replied Clemenceau,
+sharply.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI.
+
+STRIKE NOT WOMAN, EVEN WITH ROSES.
+
+
+"Stop a bit," said M. Cantagnac, pulling a newspaper out of his pocket.
+"This is a journal I picked up in the cars. I always do that. There is
+sure to be some passenger to throw them down and so I never buy any
+myself when I am traveling, ha, ha! Well, in this very sheet, there is a
+long article about you. It is called 'The Ideal Cannon' and the writer
+declares that the experiment was a great hit, ha, ha! and he undertakes
+to explain the new system."
+
+Clemenceau smiled contemptuously. He was not one of those to make a
+secret public property on which a nation's salvation might depend. In
+such momentous matters, he would have had arsenals, armories, navy yards
+and military museums labeled over the door:
+
+
+    "Speech is silver, silence is of gold;
+    Death unto him who dares the tale unfold!"
+
+
+"Ah, he wouldn't know everything, of course. However, he makes out that
+you obtain the wonderful result by fixing essential oils in a special
+magazine and that you managed to project a solid shot to the prodigious
+distance of--of--" he referred to the newspaper--"fifteen miles by means
+of--of--I do not understand these jaw-breaking scientific terms. Is it
+not nitroglycerine?"
+
+"I do not use them myself," remarked Clemenceau, dryly.
+
+"But he adds--look here!" continued the worthy Man from Marseilles,
+regretfully, "that what you managed to perform with your model and
+material, specially prepared by yourself, could not be attained on the
+proper scale in a war campaign. He goes on to say that the scientific
+world await the explanation of the means to obtain such power as,
+heretofore, the pressure of liquefied gases has been but some five
+hundred pounds to the square inch, about a tenth of that of explosives
+now used. It is admitted, however, that there may be something in your
+increase of effectiveness by reiterated emissions--" He began to
+stammer, as if he were speaking too glibly, but his auditor took no
+alarm. "He continues that, up to this day, gases have failed as
+propelling powers from their instantaneous explosions."
+
+"The writer is correct," said Clemenceau, a little warmed, "or, rather,
+he had foundation for his criticism when he wrote. The powerful agent
+was not perfectly controllable at the period of my last official
+experiments, but that is not the case at present. This enormous, almost
+incalculable power is so perfectly under my thumb, monsieur, that not
+only is it manageable in the largest cannon, but it is suitable for a
+parlor pistol, which a child might play with."
+
+"Wonderful!" ejaculated Cantagnac, with undoubted sincerity, for his
+eyes gleamed.
+
+"In solving that last enigma, I found the power became more strong when
+curbed. Consequently, the gun that would before have carried fifteen
+miles, may send twenty, and the ball, if not explosible, might ricochet
+three."
+
+"Wonderful!" cried the Marseillais again, who displayed very deep
+interest in the abstruse subject for a retired notary.
+
+"The bullet, or shell, or ball--all the projectiles are perfected now!"
+went on Clemenceau, triumphantly, "and were I surrounded by a million of
+men, or had I an impregnable fortress before me, a battery of my cannon
+would finish the struggle in not more than four hours."
+
+"Why, this is a force of nature, not man's work," said Cantagnac,
+through his grating teeth, as though the admiration were extracted from
+him. "I do not see how any army or any fort could resist such
+instruments."
+
+"No, monsieur, not one."
+
+"Would not all the other nations unite against your country?"
+
+"What would that matter, when, I repeat, the number of adversaries would
+not affect the question?"
+
+"What a dreadful thing! I beg your pardon, but I go to church and I have
+had 'Love one another!' dinned into my ears. What is to become of that
+precept, eh?"
+
+"It is what I should diffuse by my cannon," returned Clemenceau.
+
+"By scattering the limbs of thousands of men, ha, ha!" but his laugh
+sounded very hollow, indeed.
+
+"Not so; by destroying warfare," was the inventor's reply. "War is
+impious, immoral and monstrous, and not the means employed in it. The
+more terrible they are, the sooner will come the millennium. On the day
+when men find that no human protection, no rank, no wealth, no
+influential connections, nothing can shield them from destruction by
+hundreds of thousands, not only on the battlefield, but in their houses,
+within the highest fortified ramparts, they will no longer risk their
+country, homes, families and bodies, for causes often insignificant or
+dishonest. At present, all reflecting men who believe that the divine
+law ought to rule the earth, should have but one thought and a single
+aim: to learn the truth, speak it and impress it by all possible means
+wherever it is not recognized. I am a man who has frittered away too
+much of his time on personal tastes and emotions, and I vow that I shall
+never let a day pass without meditating upon the destination whither all
+the world should move, and I mean to trample over any obstacle that
+rises before me. The time is one when men could carouse, amuse
+themselves, doze and trifle--or keep in a petty clique. The real society
+will be formed of those who toil and watch, believe and govern."
+
+"I see, monsieur, that you cherish a hearty hatred for the enemies of
+the student and the worker," said the ex-notary, not without an
+inexplicable bitterness, "and that you seek the suppression of the
+swordsman."
+
+"You mistake--I hate nobody," loftily answered Clemenceau. "If I thought
+that my country would use my discovery to wage an unjust war, I declare
+that I should annihilate the invention. But whatever rulers may intend,
+my country will never long carry on an unfair war and it is only to make
+right prevail that France should be furnished with irresistible power."
+
+While listening, Cantagnac had probably considered that raillery was not
+proper to treat such exaltation, for he changed his tone and noisily
+applauded the sentiments.
+
+"Capital, capital! that's what I call sensible talk! And do you believe
+that I would leave a man, a patriot, in temporary embarrassment when he
+has discovered the salvation of our country? Why, this house will become
+a sight for the world and his wife to flock unto! I am proud that I have
+stood within the walls and I shall tell the domino-players of the
+Cafe--but never mind that now! To business! Between ourselves, are you
+particularly fond of this house?"
+
+"It is my only French home, where I brought my bride, where my child was
+born--where the great child of my brain came forth--"
+
+"Enough! we can arrange this neatly. It is my element to smooth matters
+over. Something is in the air about a company to 'work' your minor
+inventions in firearms, eh? good! I engage, from my financial
+connections, to find you all funds required; I shall charge twenty-five
+per cent. on the profits, and never interfere with your scientific
+department, which I do not understand, anyway. There is no necessity of
+our seeing one another in the business, but I do want to put my shoulder
+to the wheel--_wheel_ of Fortune, eh? ha, ha!" and he rubbed his large
+hands gleefully till they fairly glowed.
+
+There was no resisting openness like this, and Clemenceau heartily
+thanked the volunteer "backer," as is said in monetary circles.
+
+"That's very kind; but the proposal has previously been made to me by an
+old friend, an Israelite who also has connections with the principal
+bankers. But these transactions take time, on a large scale and to
+embrace the world. Meanwhile, although he would readily and easily find
+me temporary accommodation, the pressure on me is not acute enough for
+me to accept a helping hand."
+
+"I understand: you would not be in difficulties if you were another kind
+of man. Let us say no more about it. As the company will be a public
+one, I suppose, I can take shares. About this mortgage over our heads,
+is some bank holding it?"
+
+"Well, no; my wife has it, as part of the marriage portion, or rather
+my gift. I have sent for her to step down to discuss the matter with
+you."
+
+"Happy to see the lady," said Cantagnac, pulling out his whiskers and
+adjusting the points of his collar. "We will discuss it, with an eye to
+your interests, monsieur."
+
+It was clear that M. Cantagnac had not enchanted Antonino, for he had
+taken care not to bring the plan of the house; it was brought, but by
+another hand. On seeing the lady, the Marseillais bowed with exaggerated
+politeness of the old school and stammered his compliments.
+
+"No, no;" Clemenceau hastened to say, "this is not the lady of the
+house, but a guest who, however, will show you the place."
+
+It was Rebecca Daniels. As always happens with the Jews, whose long,
+oval faces are not improved by mental trouble, she looked less
+captivating than when she had shone as the star of the Harmonista
+Music-hall; but, nevertheless, she was, for the refined eye, very
+alluring. She accepted the task imposed on her with a gentle smile,
+although it was evident that in her quick glance she had summed up the
+visitor's qualities without much favor for him.
+
+While Cantagnac was bowing again and fumbling confusedly with his hat,
+Rebecca laid the plan on the table and whispered to Clemenceau:
+
+"Do you know that she is here again?"
+
+He nodded, whereupon her features, which had been animated, fell back
+into habitual calm.
+
+"She sends word by Hedwig, whom I intercepted, that she wants to see you
+before seeing this purchaser of the house. I need not urge you to keep
+calm?"
+
+"No!"
+
+"Come this way, please, monsieur," said Rebecca, lightly, as if fully at
+ease, and she led Cantagnac out of the room.
+
+Left to himself, with the notification of the important interview
+overhanging him, the host pondered. He had at the first loved Rebecca,
+and it was strange to him now that he had let Cesarine outshine her. He
+had acted like an observer, who takes a comet for a planet shaken out of
+its course. Since he loved the Jewess with a holier flame than ever the
+Russian kindled, he perceived which was the true love. This is not an
+earthly fire, but a divine spirit; not a chance shock, but the union of
+two souls in unbroken harmony.
+
+It is possible that Von Sendlingen in transmitting to Clemenceau the
+notice by the butler's wife, that the Viscount Gratian was to aid her in
+flight, but which as plainly revealed the wife's flight, had expected
+the angered husband to execute justice on the betrayer. Human laws could
+have absolved him if he had slain the couple at sight, but Clemenceau,
+after the example of his father, had resolved not to transgress the
+divine mandate again, even in this cause. He would have separated the
+congenial spirits of cunning and deceit, but not by striking a blow, and
+the rebuke to Cesarine would have been so scathing she would never have
+had the impudence to see him again. Not by murder did he mean to
+liberate himself.
+
+On seeing that heaven had taken the parting of the gallant and the
+wanton into its hand, he had simply forbore to intervene. On the one
+hand, he let Gratian's mysterious and stealthy assassins stifle him and
+the other, Cesarine, run to the railroad station unhailed. The one
+deserved death as the other deserved oblivion.
+
+This woman was of the world and would be a clod when no longer
+living--her essence would remain to inspirit some other evil woman--the
+same malignity in a beautiful shape which appeared in Lais, Messalina,
+Lucrezia Borgia, the Medici, Ninon, Lecouvreur, Iza, not links of a
+chain, but the same gem, a little differently set.
+
+But Rebecca's was an ethereal spirit eternal. Thinking of her he could
+believe himself young and comely again and loving forever in another
+sphere. This was the being whom he would eternally adore, whether he or
+she were the first to quit the earth.
+
+Here lay the consolation. Cesarine, like all evil, was transient;
+Rebecca, like all good, everlasting.
+
+"Let her come," said he at last, lifting his head slowly and no longer
+troubled. "She need not fear. I shall bear in mind the Oriental proverb
+Daniels quoted: 'Do not beat a woman, even with roses!'"
+
+Hardly were the words formed in his mind than his wife appeared as
+though by that mind reading, frequent in married couples--she had waited
+for this assurance of her personal safety to be mentally formed.
+
+In the short time given her toilet, she had performed wonders. Perhaps,
+with a surprising effort of her will, she had snatched some rest, for
+her eyes wore the fresh, pellucid gleam after prolonged slumber. Her
+cheeks were smooth and by artifice, seemed to wear the virginal down.
+Easy and graceful as ever, she affected a slight constraint, which
+agreed with a pretence of avoiding his glances.
+
+"You must be astonished to see me!" she exclaimed, for he did not say a
+word of greeting.
+
+No man could have looked less astonished, and, with the greatest
+evenness of tone, he answered:
+
+"You ought to know that nothing you do astonishes me."
+
+"But I remember--I wrote you a long letter explaining my absence and the
+necessity of my sudden departure--the despatch from my poor uncle's
+secretary--I ordered it to be given you--it explained my sudden
+departure--"
+
+"Hedwig gave me the paper," he said shortly.
+
+"But my letter, saying I had nursed him to convalescence and had fallen
+ill myself? You had time to reply but you did not do so."
+
+"I received no letter," he said, like a speaking machine.
+
+"Dear, dear, how could that be!" she muttered, tapping her foot on the
+head of the tiger-skin rug.
+
+"Perhaps it arises from your never writing me any," he said, but without
+bitterness.
+
+"Oh, I could swear--"
+
+"It is of no consequence either way."
+
+"Since you did not reply, I came to you although it was at a great risk.
+I would not tell you that I was leaving a sickroom for fear it would
+fill you with too great pain or too great hope."
+
+"How witty you are!"
+
+"Would you not be happy if I died?"
+
+"If you were in a dying state, somebody might have written for
+you--Madame Lesperon or your uncle," speaking as if the persons were
+fabulous creatures.
+
+"Oh, my granduncle is well known at the Russian Embassy, and Madame and
+M. Lesperon remember your lamented father distinctly."
+
+He bit his lip as if he detested hearing his father spoken of by her.
+
+"Madame wanted to write to you--she expected you to come for me, like
+any other husband, but I knew you were not like other husbands, and
+would not come."
+
+She was sincere; women always speak out when boldness is an excuse.
+
+"You mistake," he interrupted, "I would have come, under the belief that
+on your death bed, you would have confession to make or desires to
+express which a husband alone should hear."
+
+"What do you suppose?" cried Cesarine, trying to forget that the speaker
+must have seen the death of her lover--whether he connived at it or
+not--and her flight, whether he facilitated it or not.
+
+"I do not suppose anything, but I remember and I forsee."
+
+"Do you mean to say that you do not feel ill-will because I have come
+back?"
+
+"Madame Clemenceau, this house is ours--as much yours as mine. That is
+why I asked you to come down here, for it is necessary to sell it."
+
+"Why am I charged with the business?"
+
+"Because you have an interest in it. Half of all I own is yours."
+
+"But you long ago repaid my share, and generously!"
+
+"Not in the eyes of the law, and it pleases me that you should do this."
+
+"But I do not need anything. My uncle was pleased at my nursing him back
+to health; his children have been unkind to him, and he has transferred
+to me some property in France, a handsome income! Grant to me a great
+pleasure--of which I am not worthy," she went on tearfully, "but you
+will have the more merit, then! Let me lend you any sum of which you
+have need."
+
+"I thank you, but I have already refused a thousand times the amount
+from an unsullied hand!" returned Clemenceau, emphatically.
+
+"That Jewess'!" she exclaimed, with a great change in her bearing.
+
+"Hush! strangers present!" and in uttering this talismanic cue between
+married people, he pointed to the shadow on the curtains.
+
+Rebecca had concluded her pilotage of M. Cantagnac and it was he whom
+Clemenceau soon after presented to his wife.
+
+"Let me add, M. Cantagnac, that you must be my guest as long as you stay
+at Montmorency, for the hotels are conducted solely for the
+excursionists who come out of Paris and their accommodations would not
+please you. You are expected to sit down to dinner with us at one
+o'clock, country fashion and I will order a bedroom ready also."
+
+"Gracious heavens! you are really too good!" exclaimed Cantagnac,
+lifting his hands almost devoutly.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII.
+
+DEMON AND ARCH-DEMON.
+
+
+After one sharp slighting look at the visitor, Madame Clemenceau had
+withdrawn her senses within herself, so to say, to come to a conclusion
+on the singular conduct of her husband. His cold scorn daunted her, and
+filled her with dread. Had not the Jewess been on the spot, whom she
+believed to be a rival once more, however high was her character and
+Hedwig's eulogy, she would have prudently fled again without fighting.
+She had the less reason to stay, as the house was to be sold, in a
+manner of speaking, from under her feet.
+
+Yet the Marseillais was worth more than a passing glance. When alone
+with the lady, whom he regarded steadfastly, a radical change took place
+in his carriage, and he who had been so easy and oily became stiff,
+stern and rigid. It was the attitude no longer of a secret agent,
+wearing the mien and mask of his profession, but of a military spy, who
+stands before a subordinate when disguise is superfluous.
+
+"Truly, she is more bewitching than when I first knew her," he muttered
+between his close teeth, as if he admired with awe and suppressed
+breath. "What a pretty monster she is!"
+
+Feeling that his view was weighing upon her, Madame Clemenceau suddenly
+looked up. It seemed to her that something in the altered and insolent
+bearing was not unknown to her but the recollection was hazy, and the
+black whiskers perplexed.
+
+"Did you speak, monsieur?" she said, to give herself countenance.
+
+"I spoke nothing," he replied still in the smooth accent which was not
+familiar to her. "A man of business like myself, feels bound, if he has
+any natural turning that way, to become a physiognomist and
+thought-reader in order not to pay too dearly for bargains; I am happy
+to say that I rarely blunder."
+
+"Then you can read my disposition?" exclaimed Cesarine mockingly.
+
+"I knew it before."
+
+"Indeed! then you would do me a great service, monsieur, if you would
+tell me how it strikes you, as an average man. For I assure you," she
+went on, taking a seat without pointing out one to him, "that some days
+I do not understand myself, a most humiliating thing, though ancient
+wisdom acknowledged that the hardest thing is self-knowledge."
+
+"If you authorize me to be outspoken, madame, I will enlighten you,"
+returned Cantagnac.
+
+"Do not let me be in your way!" impertinently.
+
+"It is the most simple thing, for your entire character is described in
+these four words: venal, ferocious, frivolous and insubmissive!"
+
+She sprang to her feet with quivering lips and flashing eyes, while he,
+like a statue, lowered upon its pedestal, calmly sank upon an arm-chair.
+Then, looking round and listening to make certain that they had no
+observers, he leaned both elbows on the table and fixed his sea-blue
+eyes on the startled lady.
+
+"Kaiserina!" he said in a commanding voice, without the least softening
+with that southern suavity, "for how much do you want to sell me
+secretly, your husband's invention?"
+
+The altered voice appeared not at all strange, but the words were so
+unexpected that she merely stared in bewilderment while he had even more
+deliberately to repeat them. Deeply frightened by this mystery which in
+vain she tried to solve, she forced a laugh.
+
+"Oh, it is no jest--I am one of the most serious of men," proceeded
+Cantagnac, "as becomes one of the busiest."
+
+She looked at him like a fawn, which, having never seen a human being,
+is suddenly peered upon in the lair by the hunter.
+
+"You want to know who I am, speaking to you in this style? See my card
+on the table there--it says I am Cantagnac, the agent, modest but
+passing for rather subtle, of a private and limited company recently
+established with a cash capital fully paid up of several millions of
+_fredericks_--for, to tell the plain facts to you--the obtaining for its
+profit the ideas, inventions and discoveries of others. In short, we,
+who used to despise mental fruits, see that it is the most profitable of
+trades to work genius. As soon as we see, learn, or even scent that an
+important thing is being produced anywhere in the world, we hurry to the
+spot and by one means or another--money, cunning, persuasion, main
+force, if needs must, we make ourselves master of what we must have if
+we mean to be the world's rulers. With a European war impending, even a
+lady will see at once of what value an invention is, like M.
+Clemenceau's."
+
+"In plain language, you are proposing to me an infamous deed!" she
+exclaimed with scathing irony which failed to scare the other.
+
+"I am proposing a matter of business. Where are you going?"
+
+"Straight to my husband--whose confidence you have imposed on by some
+deception"
+
+"Dear madame, do not do what you would eternally deplore," said
+Cantagnac quietly, and motioning with his broad hand for her to be
+seated again. "I deceived your husband with a bit of character acting
+which you would, I think, have applauded, as you were once on the
+stage--the music hall stage, at least."
+
+She sat down, as if this allusion had stunned her.
+
+"His secret is indispensable to my company and I was given instructions
+to try to obtain it, by surprise and for nothing, if possible. Without
+it, many another purchase of ours made at great expense, would become
+utterly useless. From an incomplete acquaintance with your husband, I
+feared I could do nothing with him; from a study of him here, at a later
+period, I doubted still more; and, having spoken with him, I am sure."
+
+A previous acquaintance with Clemenceau? It was a ray of light, but
+still Cesarine, who did not cease to stare at him, failed to identify
+him with a figure in her past. Was this only a new phase of a Proteus?
+
+"Clemenceau is no longer the frank and enthusiastic student but a man of
+talent and feeling who has found his true course. In what concerns the
+revelation he has had from science, he is reserved and circumspect.
+Happily, man that is borne of woman, however great, if a simpleton and
+an idealist, almost always is the prey of the sex in one form or
+another. When they escape feminine influence, they are impregnable, and
+strong measures must be employed."
+
+"Strong measures," repeated Cesarine, shuddering at the icy, passionless
+tone like a lecturer's.
+
+"They must be blotted off the book of life--and it is always painful to
+have to proceed to such extremities. It is frequent, very--and
+ninety-nine times in the hundred, we run up against the woman for whom a
+great magistrate advised the search whenever a crime is perpetrated."
+
+"It would appear that you expect to induce me to commit that crime!"
+sneered the woman, pale but rebellious.
+
+"We have no need to induce you, dear madame, for we can constrain you."
+
+"Constrain me!" repeated the woman savagely and tossing her head with
+pride. "If you really knew my nature, you would not say that. You might
+tell me how?"
+
+"Really know you? you shall judge for yourself. In your marriage
+certificate, you are described as of the Vieradlers, but your eagle is
+not the German one--it is the Polish. The women of your race are
+distinguished for beauty, when young, and freedom in love at all times.
+Your grandma has a volumnious chronicle of scandal all to herself, but
+her glory is thrown into the shade by the peculiar celebrity enjoyed
+rather briefly by her favorite daughter, La Belle Iza, that one of the
+Sirens of Paris who has, under the present Empire, lured the most men to
+wreck. This was your aunt. Her sister, your mother, quite as beautiful,
+was rescued at an early hour from her mother's manoevres to 'place' her,
+as she called it, and for this loss, the indignant old lady vowed a kind
+of unnatural vengeance, to be visited on the child of her who had
+offended her by remaining in the path of virtue. This child is the woman
+before me. Oh, it is useless to look at me like that!" he grimly said,
+with the perplexed air of a man with no ear for music who listens to a
+music-box delighting others. "Pure wasted labor! The old lady, who had
+fallen from her high estate where Iza had lifted her, and was ordered
+out of the capital for extorting hush-money upon her daughter's stock of
+love-letters, the old lady became a queen--a queen of the disreputable
+classes. In Munich, sleepy old town where superstitions linger and the
+women are as besotted with ignorance as the men with beer, she ruled the
+beggars and vagabonds. It was there that fate led you and you fell under
+her hand. She pretended to befriend you, for even so young, you promised
+to have power by your charms, renewing those she had never forgotten in
+her lost Iza. No one consulted the Almanack de Gotha when you were
+launched on an admiring society as one of the Vieradlers. You soon won
+a great reputation for freshness of wit and coquetry in all South
+Germany. In plain words, you could not see a man come into the
+drawing-room without wishing to make him fall in love with you. We want
+to monopolize genius--you to monopolize the love of man. You have the
+mania of loving, more common than it is suspected, especially by those
+who would have us believe that good society is a fold where snowy lambs
+are led about from the cradle to the butcher's shambles, by pastors
+carrying crooks decked with sky blue ribbons. The feeling is a craving
+in you--an involuntary and invincible instinct which was to have its
+inevitable end. You turned from a man who sincerely loved you to make a
+conquest of another whose heart was engaged."
+
+"Stop!" interrupted Cesarine, triumphantly for she had detected genuine
+feeling the last tone used by the living enigma. "I know you now! you
+are the man whom you say really loved me. Down with the masks! You
+are--"
+
+"Not so loud!"
+
+"You are Major von Sendlingen!"
+
+"Say 'Colonel' and you will be exact. Yes; I am the lover whom you cast
+off in favor of the student Ruprecht, as this Clemenceau was called when
+he pottered about Europe, sketching ruined doorways and broken windows
+and dreamed of architectural structures. A man whom destiny had chosen
+to be the greatest demolisher of the age! what sarcasm!"
+
+"Well, you should be the last to complain! Was it like devotion to me
+that you should try to abduct La Belle Stamboulane in the public street?
+
+"To remove her from your path! She was your rival in the music hall!
+Love her, love a Jewess? You do not understand men--you fancy they are
+put here for your pleasure, safeguard and redemption. An error! We are
+neither your joy or your punishment. Let that pass. You married the
+student Ruprecht who turned out to be your cousin Felix Clemenceau. For
+a time you played the part of the idolizing young wife admirably. You
+never reproached his father's head for the murder of your aunt and he
+said never a word about the old beggar-sovereign Baboushka. In your
+gladness at having stolen the man away from Fraulein Daniels, I believe
+you imagined that it was love you felt. Not a bit of it! Love is the sun
+of the soul--all light, heat, motion and creativeness! there are no more
+two loves than two suns. There may be two or many passions, but not two
+loves. If a man loved twice, it would not be love!"
+
+The hard man spoke so tenderly that his hearer dared not scoff.
+
+"He ran through your witchery after a while, but he built his hopes upon
+maternity. You had a child but you connived at its death, if you did not
+deal the stroke."
+
+How accurately Sendlingen had measured this woman! Another would have
+cried out against him at this accusation--or burst into tears and so
+disarmed a less adamantine man. She did not blanch; she did not lift her
+hand to cover her unaltered features, but listened as idly as she would
+to the last plaint of the fool who might blown out his brains at her
+feet. The false Cantagnac pursued in his natural voice, rancid and
+imperious, rolling out the gutturals like a heavy wagon thundering over
+an old road.
+
+"It follows, madame, that if you run to your husband at a faster gait
+than you took to run away with the Baron of Linden, to inform him of my
+proposition, I will tell him what you hear--I will accuse you of
+infanticide, of unfaithfulness--"
+
+"He knows that!" ejaculated the woman with irony and in defiance. "Ask
+him, if you do not believe."
+
+"Impossible."
+
+"He would not say a word to anybody, and I would not have confessed only
+I was driven to it."
+
+"And he forgave you?"
+
+"All!"
+
+"He is very grand; and few men of my acquaintance would not at least
+have caned you smartly. However, it was not long after the 'removal' of
+your child, to put it mildly, that you threw yourself into the swim of
+distractions, such as were to be had hereabouts. The old marchioness'
+circle soon surrounded you; she was one of my company's instruments, and
+from that time we counted on you as a coadjutrix some day."
+
+"On me!"
+
+"Precisely! to whom should we look for aid and complicity in our
+concealed and wary work but to the embodiment of permanent and domestic
+corruption? You are merely an impulse--we are a policy, and you will be
+our bondwoman. Ah, we are merely men--not fools, scoundrels or gods like
+your husband, for only such would tolerate depravity like yours."
+
+"He is like a god," said Cesarine, trembling, in a low, hushed voice.
+"When he speaks, it seems to me that it is what people call conscience."
+
+"How long is it since you acknowledged this superiority?" sneered the
+sham Marseillais.
+
+"Too short a while, alas! some few minutes," sighed she.
+
+"Well, granting he is at least a demi-god, he is a power which we have
+an interest in destroying. Hercules became a nuisance to neglectful
+stable-keepers, and like conservative institutions. Let us have done
+with him. But, first, the final training of yourself. I repeat that the
+marchioness' house was the rendezvous at the gates of Paris, where we
+assembled our bearers of intelligence. Under cover of chit-chat and
+vocal-waltzes, we heard reports and issued orders. It was necessary to
+link you to us and we employed our foremost captivator, the dandy of two
+countries, the international Lothario, the Viscount-baron Gratian von
+Linden-hohen-Linden-_cum_ de Terremonde. Luckily, too, he had been at
+the same period as myself, smitten with your vernal charms, and he
+entered upon his amorous mission with gusto. You believed him very
+wealthy, but let me tell you that the cash he really had under hand was
+our petty expense fund. Judge by that what a capital we control!"
+exclaimed Von Sendlingen proudly. "Our poor Gratian the double dealer,
+seemed not to be loved by the gods any more truly than by his goddess
+here present, for she let him, unassisted, be thrust down, on falling
+through a broken bridge, into the mire of a rivulet visible from your
+window. There he breathed his last. Fit death for a traitor! For our
+corporation, the untimely, unmanageable passion of this athletic fop
+might have had grave consequences, and for you. We did not find the
+money on his person only a pocketbook stuffed with rubbish, as if he
+were the victim of some gross deception. But, have no fear, Madame, we
+are not going to claim the sum from you, we prefer to let you regard it
+as a payment on account. We intend you no mischief, and we intended you
+none, then; we might have stopped your flight--that is, I might have
+done so, but I only threw myself across your path after you ran on, to
+stay your husband from pursuing you."
+
+"You were there?" she stammered, more and more frightened at the
+vastness of the serpent which involved her with its coils, and which was
+so careless about the loss of its golden scales.
+
+"Enough! all is well that ends well! You will serve us?"
+
+"But I have repented!"
+
+"Nonsense! you returned home because your husband was suddenly enriched
+above your dreams. Your repentance was simply a prompting of moral
+hygiene for you to take rest before a new and less unlucky flight. You
+had the instinctive warning that to the greatly successful inventor, the
+modern king or knowing man--for civilization has come round the circle
+to the point where savagery commenced and the wise man rules--to the
+wizard, power, riches, beauty, all gravitate. Your husband would be
+courted; duchesses would sue him to place their husbands or gallants on
+the board of his company--the dark-eyed charmer whom you ousted in the
+Munich music hall and whom you foresaw to be your eternal rival, might
+meet him again. With you beside him, she might be repulsed--with you
+distant, he would surrender at discretion. What a triumph for your
+self-conceit and banquet for your senses to make your husband love you
+even more than when he was the suitor! Look out! in battling with your
+husband you say you fight Conscience; with Mademoiselle Daniels, with
+whom I have had twenty minutes' pleasant conversation, enlightening him,
+you would conflict with Virtue. Tell your husband that the money you
+offered to help him, came out of our bank, and he will not forgive you
+or tolerate you this time. No, for his silence would no longer be
+loftiness of soul, but complicity of which I do not think him capable,"
+he grudgingly said. "He would hand you over to the police, and believe
+me, the Emperor Napoleon, having a mania on the subject of artillery,
+would personally instruct his _procureur_ to draw up an indictment
+against you which would not miss fire. And were you to escape in France,
+we should have that abstracted money's worth from you elsewhere. Now,
+dear lady, for how much will you sell us the secret of M. Clemenceau?"
+
+The woman bowed her head, like one imprisoned in a sand drift, not to be
+crossed in any direction, but closing in and weighing down. She was in a
+pitfall, overpowered like Gratian had been, subjugated, soon to be put
+to the yoke and compelled to draw steadily the harrow of transcendental
+politics. Her caprices, faults, fancies, duplicities, wiles, caresses,
+impudence, conquests and delights were but straws out of which some
+great diplomatist would draw supplies for his cattle. It was humiliating
+to the superb creature, but logical. She gnashed her teeth, but she was
+sure that her cajolery--even her tears would be thrown away on this
+soldier-spy whom once she had jilted, and who at present surfeited
+himself with her defeat.
+
+"It is a crime," she moaned, "a dastardly crime that you require me to
+do."
+
+"Not your first! You robbed us for your own private ends--we want you to
+rob another for ours! you must not always be selfish."
+
+'But I had really repented--"
+
+"Pooh! you may repent of this fresh misdeed while you are about penance.
+I have no objections to you becoming a good wife! it will be a novel
+sensation, and of nothing are you more fond! Suppose you convince your
+husband that it is wicked to kill his fellow-men by the myriad--that
+love of woman is better than glory--decide him to go into a cottage by
+the Mediterranean with you, and--sell us the invention. We could put it
+to a righteous end; clear Africa of cannibals, that the merchants'
+stores, and farms to raise produce to fill them, should replace
+cane-huts. But I doubt you will succeed!"
+
+"Never!" she exclaimed, afraid that her hopelessness would injure her,
+for she would be the creditor of this remorseless combination without
+any prospect of repaying them. But all resistance was useless, she was
+convinced; she had to submit or she would be expunged from life. She who
+had fancied herself so powerful was but the lowly, abject subaltern at
+the beck of a preponderating power of which she understood no more the
+details than the aim and principle.
+
+"There is always a second course," observed Von Sendlingen slowly. "That
+weak, inexperienced, young Italian, who loves you passionately."
+
+"Antonino?"
+
+"Antonino, yes; he carries the key to that coffer, and the key, too, of
+the private cipher in which the inventor records his discoveries."
+
+Shrinking away aghast, her blanched countenance expressed her wonder at
+this preternatural knowledge. These master-spies knew everything, even
+under this roof, better than the wife! This grim giant carried on an
+abominable craft with thorough insight. That she could never emulate,
+for completeness was not her forte. Oh, had she but been a virtuous
+woman--an honorable wife, he had not dared assume to govern her! but
+when of a girl's age, she had acted like a woman; when a wife she had
+acted like the dissolute and unwived; when a mother, she had
+disembarrassed herself of the token of her glory of maternity. She was
+not fit to be anything but the instrument of such universal
+conspirators. She whom the viscount had playfully called "Donna Juana!"
+had met the Statue of the Commander at last, and once grasped, she would
+no more be free.
+
+"I shall report to our committee that we have made our agreement," he
+said calmly and then, as he proceeded toward the door with the jolly
+swagger of the Marseillais transforming his stalwart and rigid frame, he
+added in the southern bland tone, "Delighted to see you again, dear
+Madame Clemenceau!"
+
+She did not hear him, for she had sunk too deeply within the abyss. She
+regretted she had come back. It is true that the company which he
+represented so terrifyingly, might have pursued her and pestered her for
+their money, but she had the gifts that would arouse defenders for her
+in any quarter of the globe.
+
+Had she not one ally? certainly no friend! and yet, if Clemenceau would
+only help her a little, she might cope with the arch-intriguer. If,
+indeed, Felix did not save her, she would be lost. It was a dreadful
+game, but glorious to win it, and she would be another and worthy woman
+if she came out unwounded. In her distress, she would have had recourse
+to the Jew and have utilized Rebecca though her rival, too! Besides,
+there was Antonino, so passionate as to rush blindly, dagger in hand, on
+even a Von Sendlingen.
+
+"Come, come, cheer up," she said to herself, "there is a chance or two
+yet. If only I could get over this crisis, I will reform and sincerely
+resolve not to do a single act for which to reproach myself!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII.
+
+A BITTER PARTING.
+
+
+With a somewhat less burdened mind, Cesarine was still pondering when
+she saw Antonino, who had opened the door but perceived her, about to
+withdraw without notifying her of his presence. It was the act of a
+devotee who feared to pray in the chapel, when the priestess stood by
+the saint's image.
+
+"Do not go," she exclaimed with vehemence. "Come here after closing the
+door tightly, for I want you to enter into a little plot with me."
+
+She had regained her smiling visage and her sweet voice.
+
+"Would you do it?"
+
+"It depends upon who the object is," he said tremulously.
+
+"It is against my husband," she replied with her smile more bright and
+her tone more merry.
+
+"I forewarn you, madame, that I should turn informer," he answered in
+the same light key, but forced.
+
+"That would be very bad for him for I am conspiring for his benefit."
+
+"In that case, madame, I am entirely your man."
+
+"Are you able to keep a secret?" she asked with gravity.
+
+"I think so."
+
+They had withdrawn into the window recess, and could see the gardens, as
+they conversed. The light fell on her through the Valenciennes curtain
+and at her back was a sombre tapestry. Her late trial gave her an
+exhausted air which seemed the additional gloss with which melancholy
+makes a woman more fascinating in the sentimental eyes of youth.
+
+"I dare say you can keep your own," she pointedly said.
+
+"Not so well, I fear, as another's."
+
+"You must give me your word of honor that if my plot does not please
+you, nobody shall be told?"
+
+"I give you my promise," he said freely, just as he would have given her
+anything she asked for.
+
+He had debated with his passion, uttered every reason of others and all
+he could devise, overwhelmed himself with good advice and created a
+Chinese Wall of obstacles, but he heard himself murmuring: "I love her!"
+The only way, he feared, to put an end to his wicked craze was to put an
+end to his life--an irreputable argument, but to be used moderately. She
+allowed him to quiver under her lingering gaze, and finally said:
+
+"The fact is, I do not like the idea of M. Clemenceau selling this
+house. It would be a greater grief than he believes now. He has his
+dearest memories springing here. Besides, he could not work in peace in
+town. Fortunately, my uncle has provided me with the means to help him.
+I want to lend him the sum required, but I fear that he would accept
+nothing from me."
+
+"He is a very proud man," observed the Italian, courteously, for, while
+he worshiped the speaker, he knew that she was not morally without
+blemishes.
+
+Not because her affection for him was a proof of that delinquency, for
+love overlooked that and gave it another name, but because he believed
+Clemenceau, and the woman, while no less alluring, was terrifying as
+well.
+
+"It is an excess of very cruel justice!" said she with a strange warmth.
+"The greatest punishment on a wrongdoer is to refuse her, when
+repentant, the joy of doing a kindness. You need not pretend surprise,
+for I have done harm. I did not forsee what would be thought of my hasty
+conduct, and even if I were wicked; can you expect a woman to have the
+loftiness of genius like him, and the force for resisting temptation
+like you?"
+
+"Like me!" ejaculated Antonino, starting.
+
+"Yes; can you deny that you have had to wrestle and are wrestling now
+with yourself most strenuously?"
+
+He averted his eyes and made no reply.
+
+"Child that you are," she resumed. "You were right when you just now
+said that you could keep the secret of others better than your own. Can
+the eyes of an honest youth like you deceive those of a wayward woman
+like me? I thank you for the effort you have made--and the silence your
+lips have preserved. It matters not. I am glad that after doing the act
+of reparation proposed, I shall have the means to go away, literally,
+for good this time. It is time I went."
+
+He lifted his hand as if to detain her, but let it fall quickly.
+
+After all, if she departed forever without speaking out the secret of
+those two hearts, what harm would be done. Who had the right to prevent
+the susceptible Italian feeling the first impressions of the gentler sex
+and owing them to Cesarine? He could but be thankful that he saw only
+the prologue to "the great dreadful tragedy of Woman." He might blame
+himself for cherishing the memory of the false wife, but he could not
+annul that early sensation. Was it her fault, brought to France at the
+sequel of a romantic adventure, if she met him, a castaway, and
+disturbed his youth and innocence? There had not seemed any evil
+intention in speech or behavior toward him, and he himself might be as
+proud as she was of the pure and respectful sentiment which should have
+contributed toward her amelioration. In this case, he--ignorant of the
+counter-attraction of the Viscount de Terremonde--imagined that she had
+struggled also against the pressure of nature and the sin was no more
+when she triumphed.
+
+"Well, listen to the secret which we can discuss," said she. "I wish to
+be associated with you in a good action, which, I hope, will lead to
+many another, if it is the first. One of these days, when you learn the
+story of my life, you will see there was a little good in it to shine on
+the dark background. Are you not willing to help me increase it? In this
+case, that good and honorable man will profit."
+
+Antonino listened spellbound, he could have been ordered up to their own
+terrible cannon's mouth by that resistless voice.
+
+"Let me live one day in your youth, illusions and unstained conscience,"
+she implored. "Well, here in this little pocketbook are letters of
+credit for two hundred thousand francs. It is all I have--take it."
+
+"What am I to do with it?" said Antonino.
+
+"Put it away somewhere out of my reach to retake it. I know myself and
+that, if I have a good thought one day, I might entertain the reverse on
+the next. If I broke into the money, I could not replace the sum
+extracted, and, another thing, I cannot make the use of it I intended.
+Leave me to win from my husband the acceptance of the help I wish to
+give him. It may take long, but until then, pray keep the money; that
+will not entangle you in any degree."
+
+What a strange woman! he thought. She does evil with the easy, graceful
+air of an almsgiver distributing charity, and she does good with the
+stealth of a criminal!
+
+"I am a fair example of my sex," said she, divining what was in his
+mind, "weak, ignorant, unfortunate: and stupid--and the proof is any
+harm I have done to others is nothing to that I have wrought to myself."
+
+Antonino, taking the pocketbook--a dainty article in Russian
+leather--went to the oaken chest which he opened after what seemed some
+cabalistic manipulation, and the muttering of what seemed an "Open
+Sesame!"
+
+"Have you no safe yet, is that box strong and secure?" she inquired in a
+tone of well assumed anxiety, as she hurriedly took three or four steps
+to bring her again beside him.
+
+"You need not be alarmed. That is a box of which we made the peculiar
+fastenings. It is too heavy to be carried off, and burglars will not
+tamper with it in impunity," said the Italian, smiling maliciously, as
+he put his hand on the lid to raise it.
+
+"I understand; it opens with a secret lock?"
+
+"Yes; one I cannot tell you about."
+
+"I have no use for it," she said hastily, "on the contrary, I wish the
+money to be where I cannot touch it."
+
+"Nobody will touch it there," returned the young man gravely. "Stop! how
+will you get it if anything happens to me--if I should die?"
+
+"A young man like you die in a couple of days!" laughed Cesarine.
+
+"It may occur," he replied gloomily. "Death has hovered over this house
+at any moment of some of our experiments with the most powerful essences
+of nature. And only this morning, when I was out to the post-office,
+they were talking of a hideous discovery--a young man's remains, found
+in a ditch in the Five Hectare Field."
+
+"A--a young man?"
+
+"A foreigner, some said; but his clothes were in tatters, and the
+water-rats had disfigured him."
+
+"Poor fellow!" said she, and quickly she added as if eager to change the
+subject: "my name is on the letters of credit. In case of any mishap, I
+will plainly say so to my husband and he will return me my own
+property."
+
+That was sensible. He had no farther remonstrances to offer, and taking
+advantage of her glancing out into the garden, he closed the lid and
+fastened it so that she could not see how the trick was done. She was
+not vexed, for she saw that man is always weak and on the point of
+losing his Paradise. Antonino would betray as the price of love. She
+allowed him to go in to luncheon alone, wishing to inspect the
+mysterious casket; but, unluckily, she was interrupted by Hedwig, who
+rather officiously wanted to dust the room. Not for the first time,
+Cesarine, remembering the wide occult sway claimed by Colonel Von
+Sendlingen, suspected that the girl was not so much her ally as she
+wished. She had begun to watch her under the impression that she was in
+confederacy with Mademoiselle Daniels. She had perceived no signs of
+that, but she believed she intercepted an exchange of glances with the
+false Marseillais. They were of the same nationality and this fact
+caused Cesarine to be on her guard. Unless Hedwig repeated what had
+happened between Clemenceau and Antonino, how could the colonel know of
+their conversation?
+
+Hesitating to question her directly, disliking her from that moment, and
+feeling her heart shrink at her loneliness when such crushing odds were
+threatening her, she donned her "company smile" and went to the
+sitting-room bravely.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX.
+
+THE COMPACT.
+
+
+Luncheon was served and M. Cantagnac, seated comfortably, was trying the
+delicacies with rare conscientiousness about any escaping his
+harpoon-like fork. Cesarine did not give him a second look and neither
+he nor Clemenceau, with whom he was chatting on politics, more than
+glanced up at her. M. Daniels was more polite, for he warmly accepted a
+second cup of coffee as soon as she, without any attempt to displace
+Mademoiselle Daniels at the urn, took her place beside her.
+
+"Pray go on and attend to the liquors," she said kindly. "I am so
+nervous that I am afraid I shall break something."
+
+She took a seat which placed her on the left of the old Jew. A little
+familiarity was only in keeping when two theatrical artists met.
+
+"What is the matter with your daughter? she seems sad," she remarked
+with apparent interest.
+
+"That is natural enough when we are going away from France, it may be
+forever."
+
+"Going away from here?" inquired Madame Clemenceau.
+
+"Yes; this evening, but we did not like to go without bidding you
+good-bye. Now that we have seen you in good health, and thanked you for
+your hospitality, we can proceed on our mission without compunction."
+
+"A mission--where?"
+
+"I have succeeded in interesting capitalists in your husband's
+inventions. That is settled; and I have taken up again a holy
+undertaking which should hardly have been laid aside for a mere money
+matter. But there is nothing more sacred, after all, than friendship, I
+owe to your husband more than I have thus far repaid," and he bent a
+tender regard on his daughter, with its overflow upon Clemenceau one of
+gratitude.
+
+"Are you going far?" asked Cesarine, keeping her eyes in play but little
+rewarded by her scrutiny of the sham Marseillais who devoured, like an
+old campaigner, never sure of the next meal, or of Rebecca who
+superintended the table in her stead with a serious unconcern.
+
+"Around the world," replied Daniels simply, "straight on to the East."
+
+"Goodness! it is folly to take a young lady with you. Is it a scientific
+errand? No, you said holy. Religious?"
+
+"Scientific of an exalted type."
+
+"Is science somewhat entertaining for young ladies?"
+
+"Some think it so."
+
+"She might not. Leave her with me. We are comrades of art, you know,"
+smiling up cordially at Rebecca, as if they had been friends of
+childhood and had never parted any more than Venus' coupled loves.
+
+"Where?"
+
+"In our house," Cesarine replied, as though she were fully assured that
+the smiling man on the opposite side of the board would not obtain the
+property. "I do not think we shall quit it."
+
+"If she likes," answered Daniels, easily.
+
+"Rebecca!" he gently called, "Madame invites you to stay with her during
+my journey. M. Clemenceau is my dearest friend, and from the time of his
+wife consenting, do not constrain yourself into going if you would
+rather remain."
+
+"I thank you, madame," replied the Jewess, "but I am going with my
+father, because we have never quitted one another, and I do not wish to
+leave him alone."
+
+"Dear child!" exclaimed Daniels embracing her before he let her return
+to the head of the table. "She will not listen to any suggestion of
+marriage. I know of a bright young gentleman who adores her--an
+Israelite like us, in a promising position. He will one day be a
+professor at the Natural History Museum. But she would not hear of him."
+
+"It is not very amusing to live among birds, beasts and reptiles," said
+Cesarine.
+
+"Ha, ha! but then those are stuffed," exclaimed her opposite neighbor,
+showing that he was listening.
+
+"Very likely, she cherishes some little fancy in her heart," said Madame
+Clemenceau, thinking of both her husband and Antonino.
+
+"Possibly," said the Jew, complacently, for he knew that his daughter
+was very fair.
+
+"I believe I know the object," continued Madame Clemenceau.
+
+"I am rather astonished that she should have told you, and not me."
+
+"Oh, she has not told me anything, I guessed."
+
+Daniels seemed relieved.
+
+"And if you should like to hear the name," she began rapidly, but he
+stopped her with a dignified smile. "What, you do not want to know what
+I have found before you, and so much concerns you!"
+
+"If she has not told me, it is because she does not want me to know," he
+observed placidly.
+
+"But what if she tells him!" persisted Cesarine.
+
+"She would not let her lover know the state of her heart without
+informing her father; she would commence with me."
+
+The wife smiled cynically at such unlimited trust and felt her hatred of
+Rebecca augment.
+
+"There are not many fathers like you!"
+
+"Nor many daughters like her," he retorted proudly. "I am of the opinion
+that there is a mistake in the French mode of educating girls. The truth
+about everything should be told them, as is done to their brothers. The
+ignorance in which they are left often arises from their parents
+themselves not knowing the causes and end of things, or have no time, or
+have lost the right to speak of everything to their children from their
+own errors or passions. My wife was the best of women and I believe
+Rebecca takes after her. When she was of the age of comprehension, I
+began to explain the world to her simply and clearly. All of heaven's
+work is noble; no human soul--even a virgin's--has the right to be
+shocked by any feature of it. Rebecca aided me when I sought to make a
+livelihood by the profession of music, to which she had strong
+proclivities."
+
+Clemenceau was listening in courtesy to this argument, and the false
+Marseillais did not lose a word--or a sip of his Kirschwasser.
+
+"Afterward, when my ideas changed, and I could make my way to fortune by
+a thoroughfare, less under the public eye, I associated her in my
+studies. She knows," proceeded Daniels, who had shaken off a spell of
+taciturnity which the stranger and Madame Clemenceau had inspired, and
+seemed unable to pause, "she knows that nothing can be destroyed, and
+that all undergoes transformation, and cannot cease to exists with the
+exception of evil which diminishes as it goes on its way."
+
+Cantagnac slowly absorbed another glass of the cherry cordial, which he
+had to pour out himself as Rebecca had retired to a corner where the
+host turned over the leaves of photographic album as a cover to their
+dialogue.
+
+"If my daughter loves," continued Daniels, seeing at last that his theme
+was too abstruse for his single auditor, "as you conjectured, dear
+madame, it is surely some honorable person worthy of that love; if she
+has not informed me it is because there is some obstacle, such as the
+man's not loving her or being bound to another woman. In any case, the
+obstacle must be insurmountable, or she would not go away with me into
+strange countries through great fatigue on a chimerical search."
+
+Cantagnac had risen and, very courteously for his assumed character, had
+come round the table without going near his host and the Jewess, and
+entered into the other dialogue.
+
+"Did you say you were going far, monsieur?" he inquired.
+
+Daniels nodded and opened his arms significantly to their utmost
+extent.
+
+"Leaving Europe with a scientific design? Ah! may one hear?"
+
+"Perhaps it would not much interest you?" returned the old man, who
+seemed to feel a revival of a prejudice against the visitor upon his
+coming nearer.
+
+"The atmosphere of this house is so learned," replied, the smiling man
+unabashed by the sudden coolness, "and, besides, more things interest me
+than people believe, eh, madame?" directly appealing to the hostess, who
+had to nod.
+
+"You see I have a great deal of spare time since I retired from business
+and I am eager to increase my store, ha, ha!"
+
+"Well, the idea which has tormented more than one of my race, has seized
+me," returned M. Daniels, "I wish to fill up gaps in our traditional
+story and link our present and our future with our past. The question is
+of the Lost Tribes of Israel. I believe after some research, that I know
+the truth on the subject, and, more that I may be chosen to reconquer
+our country. The ideal one is not sufficient for us, and I am going to
+locate the real one and register the act of claiming it. Every man has
+his craze or his ideal, and mine may lead me from China to Great Salt
+Lake, or to the Sahara."
+
+"What a pity," interjected Cantagnac merrily, "that the Wandering Jew
+did not have your idea. It would have helped him work out his sentence
+to walk around the globe!"
+
+"He had no money to lend to monarchs sure to vanquish or to peoples
+astounded by having been overcome. But his five pence have fructified by
+dint of much patience, privation and economy. The Wandering Jew has
+realized the legend and ceases to tramp. He has reached the goal. What
+do you think about my pleasure tour?" he suddenly inquired of
+Clemenceau, whose eye he caught. "Child of Europe, happy son of Japhet.
+I am going to see old Shem and Ham. Have you a keepsake to send them or
+a promise to make?"
+
+"Tell them," said the host, coming over to join the group, while
+Rebecca, during the continued resignation of Madame Clemenceau,
+superintended the servant's removal of the luncheon service, "tell them
+that we are all hard at work here and that more than ever there's a
+chance of our becoming one family."
+
+On seeing Clemenceau approach his wife, the pretended Marseillais
+delicately withdrew to the corner of the sideboard where the cigar-stand
+tempted him. But he kept his eyes secretly on the two men who gave him
+more concern than the two women. He reflected that fate had managed
+things wisely for his plans, for if Clemenceau had married the
+incorruptible Jewess, he might have been more surely foiled. As for
+Daniels, the amateur apostle who hinted at a union of his people, he
+might be dangerous or useful. He determined to put a spy on his track,
+who might smear his face with ochre and stick an eagle's feather in his
+cap so that, if seen to shoot him in a New Mexican canon, that supposed
+lost Tribe of Israel which include the Apaches would gain the credit of
+the murder. While reflecting, his quick ear heard a light loot draw
+near; he did not look round, sure that it was his new recruit who crept
+up to him. It was, indeed, Madame Clemenceau, who put his half-emptied
+liquor glass upon the sideboard by him.
+
+"No heeltapi in our house, Monsieur!" she exclaimed.
+
+Cantagnac tossed off the concentrated cordial with contempt; his head
+was not one to be affected by such potations.
+
+"Thank you! have you already opened the trenches?" he asked in an
+undertone.
+
+"By means of the Italian, yes. I have entered the stronghold."
+
+"But he closed the door in your face!"
+
+"No, no; I can open it at any time."
+
+"Excellent Kisschwasser, this of yours, madame!" exclaimed Von
+Sendlingen, in his satisfaction speaking the word with a little too
+accurate a pronunciation to suit a native of the south of France.
+
+"Mark that man!" whispered Rebecca to Clemenceau, whom she had rejoined
+as he stood by her father. "Distrust him! his laugh is forced and false!
+I am sure that he wishes you evil!"
+
+"Then stay here and shield the house!"
+
+"No; I must go this evening. Ah, you men of brains laugh at us women for
+entertaining presentiments. But we do have them and we must utter them.
+Be on your guard!"
+
+"And must you go?" went on Clemenceau to Daniels, as if he expected to
+find him less resolute than his daughter.
+
+"More than ever!" but, seeing how he had saddened him, he took his hand
+with much emotion and added: "Rebecca will explain. I go away happy to
+think that the honest men outnumber the other sort and that when we all
+take hold of hands, we shall see that the scoundrels excluded from our
+ring will be scarcely worth disabling from farther injury."
+
+Cesarine, perceiving that her confederate was edging gradually toward
+the rifle which Antonino had been shooting with and which had been
+removed from the drawing-room, where the guest for a day had too many
+opportunities to be alone with it. To cover his inspection, she
+suggested that Rebecca should afford the company a final pleasure, a
+kind of swan's song, and went and opened the cottage-piano for her. The
+Jewess did not refuse the invitation and began Gounod's "Medje" in a
+voice which Von Sendlingen had room to admit had improved in tone and
+volumn, and would make her as worthy of the grand opera house as it had,
+five years before, of the Harmonista and its class. Daniels quietly left
+the room, loth to disturb Clemenceau, whom that voice enthralled and who
+became more and more deeply submerged in the thoughts it engendered. He
+suffered pain from the need to liberate his sorrows, confide his spirit
+and communicate his dreams. And was not this singer the very one created
+to comfort him and lull him to rest? Must he remain heroic and
+ridiculous in the indissoluble bond, and endure silently. On Antonino he
+rested his mind and on Rebecca, the daughter of the eternally
+persecuted, he longed to rest his soul.
+
+The greatness of this man and the purity of this gifted creature were so
+clearly made for one another that everybody divined and understood the
+unspoken, immaterial love.
+
+What an oversight to have let Cesarine abduct him when it was Rebecca to
+whom chance had shown that he ought to belong! If he had remained free
+till this second meeting, she would have been his wife, his companion
+his seventh day repose, and the mother of his earthly offspring instead
+of the immortal twins, genius and glory, which poorly consoled the
+childless husband! As it was, the powers constituted would not allow
+them to dwell near each other. She could only be the bride in the second
+life--for eternity. She loved him as few women had ever loved, because
+he was good, great and just--and because he was unhappy. No man existed
+in her eyes superior to him. Nothing but death would set him free from
+the woman who had not appreciated him properly. She had let pass the
+greatest bliss a woman can know on earth--the love of a true heart and
+the protection of a great intellect. If death struck them before the
+wife, Felix would behold Rebecca on the threshold of the unknown land
+where they would be united tor infinity. Her creed did not warrant such
+a hope--his said that in heaven there were no marriages, but her heart
+did not heed such sayings, and her feelings told her that thus things
+would come to pass.
+
+She had concluded the piece of music. She rose and, for the first time,
+gave Cesarine her hand.
+
+"Farewell!" she said.
+
+"Why say it now?" answered Madame Clemenceau, surprised. "You are not
+going till to-morrow morning."
+
+"To-night! I may not see you again, we have so many preparations to
+make."
+
+"Well, as you did not come here to see me, it is of no consequence.
+Farewell!"
+
+"I am your servant, madame," said the Jewess, bowing.
+
+"Ah, Hagar!" hissed she, "unmasked."
+
+"Farewell, Sarah!" retorted Rebecca, stung out of her equanimity by this
+sudden dart of the viper, but Cesarine said no more, and she proceeded
+steadily toward the door.
+
+Clemenceau had preceded her thither.
+
+"What did she say?" he inquired.
+
+"Nothing worth repeating. Beware of her as well as of that man!" but she
+saw that he would not follow her glance and draw a serious inference
+from the way in which the wife and the unwelcome guest had drawn closely
+together. "Fulfil your destiny," she continued solemnly. "Work! remain
+firm, pure and great! Be useful to mankind. Above transient things, in
+the unalterable, I will await you. Do not keep me lonely too long," was
+wrung from her in a doleful sob.
+
+He could not speak, it was useless, for she knew already everything that
+he night say.
+
+"At last!" ejaculated Von Sendlingen in relief, when all had gone out,
+as he sprang on the rifle and feverishly fingered it. "This is the rifle
+of their latest finish. What an odd arrangement! Where the deuce is the
+hammer--the trigger--and all that goes toward making up the good old
+rifle of our fathers? Oh, Science, Science! what liberties are taken in
+your name!" he cried in drollery too bitter not to be intended to cover
+his vexation. "Mind, this rifle is included in our contract?"
+
+"Everything," she answered in a fever, looking toward the doorway, where
+her husband had disappeared with the Jewess. "Be easy! The rifle, the
+cannon, the happiness, the honor and the lives of all here--myself as
+well! If there is anything more you long for, say so!"
+
+"Talk sensibly!" said he severely and gripping her wrist.
+
+Restored by the pressure, she drew a long breath and said in a low
+voice:
+
+"One way or another, things will come to a head to-night. This Jewish
+intriguante and the old fox her father are going away by the railway at
+nine o'clock, and Felix will escort them. Antonino will be alone here,
+and I mean to make him my assistant as he has been my husband's."
+
+"Better trust nobody! it is risky, and, besides, with an accomplice, the
+reward becomes less by his share."
+
+"How much is all? Will you pay five million marks?"
+
+"That's too much. Put it two millions--half when you hand over the
+cipher, half when we hold the working drawings and Antonino's
+ammunition."
+
+"Be it so," she answered after a brief pause, during which both
+listened. "If Antonino will help me, so much the better for him. It
+would be delightful to see Italy with a native! Now go away. We must not
+be seen conversing together."
+
+"If the young man turns restive?" suggested the prudent spy.
+
+"Impossible! he is charmed. However, remember this: Return to-night
+after the party has gone to the station, secrete yourself in the grounds
+where you can watch the drawing-room windows. If one opens and I call,
+run up to aid me. If none open to you, hasten away. The danger with
+which I contend will be one which you could not overcome!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX.
+
+ON THE EVE.
+
+
+The evening was calm and clear over Montmorency, where there was even
+grandeur in the stillness. Nature--the discreet confident and
+inexhaustible counsellor, always ready to intermediate between God and
+man--nature was appeasing passion and misery in all bosoms but Felix
+Clemenceau's, as he strolled in the garden which he did not expect long
+to possess. Rebecca was going away and Cesarine had come, two sufficient
+reasons for him to detest the place. He had called upon the scene to
+give him advice on his course, and he hoped to understand clearly what
+it had commanded to him in the hour of grief tempered with faith. He had
+not the resources of others; he could not consult the shades of his
+parents; his mother's tomb was not one to be pointed out with pride, any
+more than his father's.
+
+It seemed to him that he was ordered to continue struggling till he
+vanquished; this he had always tried. Work and seek out! And yet his
+mind wavered and his resolve was unsettled. It was the ever dulcet voice
+of that Circe which sufficed to agitate and obscure his soul in spite of
+his having believed it was forever detached from her. But these
+umbrageous and odoriferous hills, knew how deeply he loved her, for he
+had spoken of his thraldom to them when he might not speak to her under
+pain of shame and debasement.
+
+Had he not undergone enough and pardoned as far as could be expected?
+But she had disdained condonation, mocked at it and trampled it under
+foot.
+
+Again she came to entangle him in her love. No; her wiles and witchery,
+for she was not a woman to love anyone or anything. Unable to love her
+own flesh and blood, she was an alien to humanity, as well as to love.
+To such a mother, he owed solely indifference.
+
+Such a woman was only a human form, less to him than the least of the
+patient, laborious animals useful to man.
+
+As the stars grew darkened by clouds above the impassible horizon, his
+reflections turned more gloomy and deadly. Was it impious for him to
+arrogate the right to substitute his justice for that supreme, and wield
+its dreadful sword? But he shrank from acting as his father had done,
+and mainly because he saw that, if ever the world knew that he loved
+Rebecca, it would say that he had slain his wife to clear the path to
+the altar for his second marriage.
+
+Cesarine had hinted of repentance, her return portended the same. The
+world would side with her. Yes; he would give her another chance. After
+the guests departed, he would let Antonino also go, he would resign
+himself to being coupled again with this chain-companion in the galleys
+of life!
+
+"If it is true," he concluded, "I will endeavor to lead her to the light
+and truth, although her soul is full of shadows and the divine spark is
+clogged with ashes. Oh, heaven, may she be filled with the temptation to
+do good and mayest thou receive her in thy endless mercifulness!"
+
+The squeaking of the gravel under a regular and heavy step induced him
+to look round, and a burly shape loomed up in the darkness between the
+plane trees. It was the so-called Cantagnac, who bowed, with his hat
+off.
+
+"I have been hunting for you everywhere," he said jovially. "I want to
+say good-bye without company by, for it makes me timid, ha, ha! though
+you would not think it. Nice wholesome air, here! cool, decidedly cool,
+but wholesome. Doing a solitary smoke over a new invention?"
+
+"No, monsieur, I was conversing."
+
+"Eh! but I do not see anybody!"
+
+"I was conversing with Nature."
+
+"Oh, what the poet-fellows call musing, eh?"
+
+"A kind of prayer."
+
+"I see! well, his church is always open and you can go to service
+anytime, and day or night! and no collection-plate, ha, ha!"
+
+"I make it a practice every day, if only briefly."
+
+"Quite right! quite! I am inclined that way myself, since I lost my wife
+and our boy. He said something about hoping to meet me one day up
+there!" and he flourished his handkerchief about his eyes and toward the
+clouds. "Blessed relief to pray and do you really get an answer now and
+then? in time, no doubt, for it's a great way off!"
+
+"Do you not believe in heaven, M. Cantagnac?" demanded Clemenceau,
+bluntly.
+
+In the twilight and loneliness, the question struck home, and the spy
+felt compelled to make some answer.
+
+"My dear M. Clemenceau," he faltered, "I never meddle with matters which
+do not teach me anything. One word has existed thousands of years, and
+yet full explanations on the highest secrets have been wholly refused,
+so that the finest intellects give up seeking them unless they want to
+go mad. So I think it my duty to abstain and not lose my time in studies
+useless and dangerous. It is not merely a matter of reasoning, but of
+prudence. Of course, every man is his own master. I grant that we
+certainly are subjected to a power above our wit and will. We are born
+without knowing how, and die without knowing why. Between birth and
+death, swarm struggles, passions, sorrows, maladies, miseries of all
+kinds; an unfair, uneven sharing of worldly goods, and scoundrels often
+happy and triumphant and honest people most often unhappy and
+erroneously judged. We are told that we should adore and praise this
+state of things; but I only hold such events as certainties that I can
+see and turn to my profitable use. Now you, M. Clemenceau, are a
+honorable man--a great man since you can carry on a conversation with
+Nature! Why not ask her a favor on account of your belief and your work?
+so that you will not have to doubt her some day more than I do. But let
+us talk of more substantial things. I have inspected the plan of the
+property and walked over the grounds. I have your agent's address, and
+in a week, I will write to him and make my offer. I dare say we shall
+come to an agreement. Let me thank you for your very kind welcome--I
+shall be off in ten minutes."
+
+Absorbed in meditation, Clemenceau did not hold out his hand, and, with
+the idea upon him of the engagement with Madame Clemenceau, the spy did
+not remind him of the omission.
+
+"You need not walk over to the station, for M. Daniels and his daughter
+are going in my carriage. I will find you a place."
+
+This arrangement might have necessitated the false Marseillais going
+into the cars and getting out at the next station; so he excused himself
+on the plea that the walk would please him better.
+
+"To tell you the truth, I am bound to take exercise or die of
+apoplexy--so my family doctor tells me. By the way, I have taken leave
+already of Madame Clemenceau. A Russian, you tell me? I never should
+have imagined it! Ah, one can see that you have converted her into a
+true French lady--lucky man! I can understand that you believe in lofty
+ideas beside a beautiful and talented woman like her! Lucky, lucky
+man!"
+
+And he turned aside, calling out as he departed:
+
+"I know my way! give my respects to your friends who are hunting for the
+Lost Tribes! ha, ha!"
+
+This laugh, loud but not jolly as it was intended to appear, routed
+Clemenceau's solemn thoughts. It seemed, like Pan's, from a statue,
+which gleamed in a vista, still to reverberate when the inventor went
+back to the house. At the upper windows gleamed lights which moved to
+and fro, and shadows flitted across the openings; it was the usual
+bustle when guests are packing up, and the idea of the too quiet and
+lonely house, of the morrow saddens the observer.
+
+A woman's form darted across the lawn and made the master start. It came
+along easily, and he saw that it was one familiar with the grounds.
+
+"Hedwig!"
+
+It was the servant who had run out to the stables to see that the horses
+were put to the carriage.
+
+"Stop a minute! we are in privacy here, and I want to have a word with
+you."
+
+The girl paused, intimidated and almost frightened; she lost color as
+she stood, agitatedly, shifting her weight from one foot to the other,
+and averting her eyes from the speaker. A thief caught in a felonious
+act would not have presented a more damning spectacle.
+
+"Not only are we breaking up the household, Hedwig, but the house is
+going to other hands. The mistress and I will live in a hotel at Paris
+for some time, on account of my changed business relations.
+Consequently, we must dispense with your services. Madame will, on grand
+occasions, have a professional hair dresser in, and so--in a word, I
+must ask you to please yourself about returning to your own country, or
+seeking another situation in this one. You can refer to Madame for a
+character; for, I believe, you have always served her faithfully. But
+you need not look to her for a present, too. Here is a couple of hundred
+franc notes by way of notice. I wish you well wherever you go."
+
+To the amazement of the speaker, instead of accepting the token of
+kindness, Hedwig suddenly put both hands behind her back, and stood
+confounded. Tears silently flowed down her cheeks; then, falling on her
+knees, she sobbed:
+
+"Oh, master, I do not deserve this! Oh, master please forgive me! I am a
+very wicked girl!"
+
+"What are you about?" he exclaimed, fearing that the unexpected boon had
+crazed her. "Do get up!"
+
+"No, no; not before master forgives me!" moaned she.
+
+"Oh, yes, yes--anything!" aiding her to rise.
+
+But she continued weeping, and with the fluency in the illiterate when
+they have long brooded over a speech to relieve their mind, she said:
+
+"You don't know what goes on, master! but I am forced to tell you now,
+since you are so good. I have always been in madame's service since we
+came out of Germany. I was devoted to her, and I knew her when I was at
+the Persepolitan Hotel, but devotion when women are concerned, becomes
+complicity.
+
+"Madame never has cared for you, monsieur, for you and yours. She did
+not marry you for any liking, but because of spite. Not spite from your
+father having punished one of her precious family--they are all a bad
+lot--a witch's brood! faugh! but to Mademoiselle Daniels whom she feared
+would secure the prize. Madame carried on dreadful! When she went away
+last time, it is true she had a telegram from her uncle--but that was a
+happy accident. She was going to bolt anyway, and that came in so
+nicely! She was planning to elope with one of her conquests--the
+Viscount--"
+
+"I know!"
+
+"You know? Well, you don't know that the dead man found in the ditch was
+the Viscount--"
+
+"I saw him killed!" in the same measured tone.
+
+"Oh!" She paused, but recovering, she continued, in a lower voice and
+looking furtively around: "You cannot know that she came back with no
+good end. I believe it was to meet the gentleman who came in at the same
+time, a-pretending to buy the house--"
+
+"M. Cantagnac!" muttered the inventor, a tolerable flock of suspicions
+which that ingenious individual had unintentionally excited, rushing
+upon his brain.
+
+"He's no Marseillais--he's a German, and he is a secret agent. He is--he
+is--well, I may make a clean breast of it--he is one you ought to have
+remembered, the major whom you cudgelled in Munich--"
+
+"Von Sendlingen!"
+
+"Yes, and a colonel--I do not know but he is a general now; he has the
+manner and means of one!" said Hedwig, shuddering. "He knows all of
+madame's peccadilloes--ay, all her crimes--"
+
+"Crimes! be careful, girl!"
+
+"Yes, crime, for she killed her little boy! Thank heaven, I had no hand
+in that--she would not trust me there, and that shows I am not so very
+bad a woman, don't it? She poisoned the little innocent as surely as we
+stand here under the eye of God!"
+
+"Go on; go on," said Clemenceau, hoarsely.
+
+"The colonel threatened to tell you these and other things unless she
+consented to sell him all your business secrets--and give him the model
+gun that goes off without any powder and caps."
+
+"Ah! she consented?" growled the inventor, grinding his teeth and his
+eyes kindling.
+
+"Nobody can hold out against the colonel. He soon made me play the spy
+on everybody for his benefit. But this is not all!"
+
+"Not all! what a sink of iniquity! Would she poison Mademoiselle
+Rebecca, too?"
+
+"I do not doubt it! The old witch her grandmother must have taught her
+all the tricks of her trade. But I meant to say that she is setting her
+cap at poor, dear, young M. Antonino--"
+
+"I know that. Take your money! and live honestly."
+
+"No, monsieur," she replied with some dignity. "And here is money that
+the colonel gave me. It burns me! I beg you to give it toward some good
+work, which you understand better than me. Will you not--and forgive
+me?"
+
+"Have you anything more to say?"
+
+"I have been peeping and listening, but they are all very cunning. I
+only gleaned that the colonel who has just gone out as if to the
+station, should return later and hang around to have the rifle and some
+papers delivered to him."
+
+"By Antonino?"
+
+"If your wife can make him a cat's-paw; if not, she is capable of doing
+all herself--though, anyway, she is driven to it. But, monsieur, it
+burdened me and if you had not called me, I was coming to tell you of
+their schemes. I do not like your idea of killing people by hundreds,
+but it may be good to honest folks, beset by savages and such like, and
+it is not right of a servant to let a master be robbed by more than
+bandits and brigands."
+
+"I am grateful to you, girl." She seized his hand and covered it with
+grateful kisses. "Keep your money and this I give you. Do good with your
+own hand, then it will bless both giver and receiver, as is written."
+
+"Monsieur, you are too good. Could I ask a favor--a proof that you do
+not think me altogether bad? Will you recommend me to Mademoiselle
+Daniels. The Jews do not object to Christian servants, and, besides,"
+she said with simplicity, "I am so poor a Christian."
+
+"You shall enter her service. You will continue, reformed under her
+charge. Go and pack up and hasten from this house--accursed as an eyrie
+of vultures!"
+
+"I am glad you have the warning. Excuse me, but if you were to do like
+the colonel only pretend to go away and come back here to use your ears
+and eyes, you would see what happens."
+
+By the look that passed over her master's face, the girl, though no wise
+woman, perceived that she had mistaken. He was not the sort to act like
+a Von Sendlingen and hide himself to peep and listen. He would be no
+better than herself if he acted thus.
+
+"I have advised you to go away with the Daniels. I shall drive the party
+over in the carriage to the station and return as though I knew of
+nothing. There are times for men to act; times for God to have a clear
+field. Persevere in the right path, girl, and say no more to anybody not
+even Mademoiselle Daniels."
+
+"But you will be seeing madame first?" inquired the girl, fearing the
+collision to which she had contributed, but lighter of soul since she
+had flashed the danger-signal.
+
+"M. Antonino first, and then your mistress," replied he in a stern tone
+which put an end to the dialogue.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI.
+
+THE LAST APPEAL.
+
+
+In the large room where Cesarine was to achieve her crowning act of
+treachery, she and her husband were closeted. On the latter's unruffled
+brow not even her feline gaze could read what a perfect acquaintance he
+possessed with all her past and her purposed moves.
+
+"Your maid tells me that you wished to speak to me," he said.
+
+"It is necessary, on the eve of a change in our mode of life, so extreme
+as a home broken up in favor of a stay at a hotel."
+
+"I am listening to you," he said curtly.
+
+"If I were to say to you that I love you, what would be your answer?"
+she said, changing the subject and her tone entirely.
+
+"Nothing! I might wonder what new evil you intended to commit to my
+prejudice. Pure curiosity for you can do nothing more with me."
+
+She was convinced of that, and she thrilled with all the irritation of a
+woman who has lost her power of fascination over even one man.
+
+"Admitting that I cannot do you any harm," she said, "others may and,
+perhaps a great deal. Would you believe that I love you at least if my
+pledge of love consisted in my aiding you to repel the harm and to
+triumph over your enemies at the risk of the greatest danger to myself?"
+
+He shook his head resolutely.
+
+"What other proof do you want?"
+
+He intimated that he could do without any aid from her.
+
+"I am sincere, I swear it!" she exclaimed.
+
+"On what can you swear?"
+
+"It would appear that you, whom people rate as a saint, and so just, do
+not believe in repentance?"
+
+"I do!"
+
+"Then, I repent," said she, rolling her eyes like Magdalen in a Guido
+picture.
+
+"No; those repenting do not say so before they prove it--they give the
+evidence and do not boast."
+
+"But what if I have no time to wait?" she said piteously. "What if it is
+necessary for my soul's sake and perhaps for yours, that I should tell
+you at once what I intended to exhibit gradually when I arrived? make
+the effort to believe me without delay, for one single minute may redeem
+my blackened life and save all to come. Is it so hard for you to listen
+to me, and to believe me?" she wailed. "It would only be renewing
+an old habit of yours, for you used to love me, and ardently, too!
+The first kiss you ever gave to a woman, and the only ones you ever
+received from a woman, are mine! you see I do not doubt you, though
+appearances were against you when I returned to this house. All your
+chastity--enthusiasm--energy, love and faith--all were poured into this
+bosom. Can these things be forgotten? No, no, never! I am sure that when
+a man like you loves a woman like me, her memory never leaves him."
+
+"You mistake!" he said dryly.
+
+"And you, if you think that those fops at the marchioness' were not
+tricked and fooled by me! even the cheat who induced me to leave my
+home--you see, I am frank--he was my dupe, and I saw all the time his
+inferiority to the husband whom I quitted. In that case, it was a
+fortune that tempted me, for you know how pressed we were! But when
+alone, sobered--horrified by the warning conveyed in the sudden death of
+that man, I valued you correctly, and saw that I loved you above all
+men. I was subjected to the power of goodness and loving which is
+enthroned in you. All of a sudden, as you fell in love, I adored you,
+and if only you could have been kept in ignorance of what I did, there
+would have been no wife more faithful, devoted, submissive and loving
+than your own Cesarine."
+
+"Did I not forgive you when I learned of your faults?" he reproached
+her.
+
+"True, you pardoned me," she answered, "but loftily, as one at a
+distance, shaking me off and regaining possession of yourself. In short,
+ceasing to be a man. You led me to see that you would no longer believe
+me, because I had once told a lie. Your behavior was grand, noble and
+lofty, for any other man would have whipped me out of his house like a
+cur; and yet I ought not to have been treated so."
+
+"How? like a daughter of the Vieradlers--though you are probably not
+one?"
+
+"You should have abused me, trampled me under foot, even--but then
+forgiven me like an erring man. I am earthly--worldly--and I do not
+understand grand sentiments and half-forgiveness."
+
+There was some sense in her argument, but arguments would not have any
+effect on a character like his, which losing esteem once, was not to be
+deceived again. He had not required Hedwig's revelation about the web of
+treachery spun around him to be invulnerable to the pleading one. Her
+murder of her infant had ruined her irredeemably. Over it he had shed
+tears, though it was more in her image than his and, she had offered no
+one!
+
+"Are we women more angelic than you men," she exclaimed the more
+feverishly, as she felt she was not gaining ground and that over the
+crumbling edge of which she vaguely hoped to climb, he would not stretch
+a hand in help. "Are faults, errors and failures your privilege, as
+force is? Did I really care for any of those men? Do I even recall one
+of them? It was only in rage and spite against your coldness that I went
+over to the marchioness. I ran to these flirtations to forget, as I
+would have taken morphine to sleep. But I have not forgotten you, and I
+have not slept off my love for you, and this is the truth!"
+
+He made an impatient gesture.
+
+"In short, nobody could wile away my heart. All those men together would
+not equal such a one as you, whom I loved and longed for. I do not wish
+to live--I was really ill in Paris, though you will not believe a word
+of it, and will not trouble to learn that I speak the truth--so ill that
+I sat at death's door and the peeping in terrified me. In that black
+cavern there was no love-light, and I crave for love! Then I discovered
+that I could not live without you, and that I was right to forgive you
+so much, though you will not forgive me heartily a little. See how
+abject I am! You are the master, but do not abuse your power. If I have
+no soul--inspire me with one--animate the statue of white clay--or
+share with me your own. We are bound to each other by sacred ties, and
+the marriage law must have been made by those who forsaw that the
+noblest and most generous of men might be wedded to the most guilty of
+women, but that he would save her. Rescue me!" she cried, sinking upon
+her knees.
+
+"I am ready; what do you want?" he said in moved voice so that at last
+she began to hope.
+
+"Forget my faults and the wrong they have caused you. I want you to
+forgive me everything up to the present minute--proudly hurl the past
+into dead eternity and make all that ought not to have been like what
+never was. Lastly, I crave for our departure for a change of sun and air
+and sky, so that the woman I mean to become henceforward should never be
+reminded for a single instant of the wretch that I was. Oh, let us live
+no more but for each other--you entirely mine as I entirely your own!"
+
+Almost carried away by the eloquent outburst, Clemenceau had but one
+thought to cling to and hold him in the flood. His work of patriotism!
+
+"Your work? well, there should be no work where love presides! after
+all," she continued, rising and venturing to slide her arms upon his
+shoulders, "you only toiled because you believed I did not love you. You
+tried to become celebrated only because you were not happy. You were a
+student when I opened the book of love to you and the little I showed
+you to read gave you the yearning for more. Labor came after love. When
+I caused you pain, you looked for consolation and you owe your genius to
+me. Genius understands or divines everything, and knows what human
+weakness is. Ah, if you had been weak and I mighty, how gladly I would
+have pardoned you! Had you done any wrong--if you were wrung by remorse
+like most of us--what joy to make you forget it. But no, you are honor
+itself, and I lose all hope?"
+
+"Poor creature!" sighed he, but still like marble though her arms
+enfolded him and palpitate warm unlike serpents whose coils their curves
+resembled.
+
+"You pity me?" she murmured coaxingly, although he did not thaw under
+her tightening clasp; "then, you agree?"
+
+He shook his head. As usual, when perversity defends, the pleading
+reached the judge too late. Her pressure became irksome, he thought of
+the devilfish tightening its rings till fatal, and, by an effort,
+irresistible while gentle, he disengaged himself from her arms. They
+dropped inert by her panting sides as if broken. But only for an instant
+her defeat overpowered her.
+
+"I see," she exclaimed, with a great change in her tone, "there is no
+more room in the heart which I deserted! You have replaced me with that
+Rebecca!"
+
+"It is true I love her," her rejoined, "but not as you suppose. Do not
+try to understand how, for you cannot understand. Heaven knows that I
+would have wished to associate you with me in the same love and the same
+glory, but it is impossible. Once we were ships in company, sailing side
+by side--I thought with the same sailing orders--but you stole away in
+the night and I have had to direct my course alone toward a sea
+eternally forbidden to you. Oh, if you only knew how far I am already
+from you! The being who speaks to me by your lips is not known to me--I
+see her not! I do not know who you are. The only bond between us is the
+chain the law imposes--let us carry it between us but each with the
+share apart."
+
+"What is to become of me?" cried Cesarine, forced to try her last
+weapon. "You picked up a starving boy on the road and was kind to him. I
+am an outcast at your feet, hungry for love--succor me, no less kindly!
+I am a living creature, and I may be taught many things. Utilize me by
+your intelligence. Can I not be your pupil, your helper, your assistant?
+Do for me what Daniels has done for his daughter--initiate me into
+science, explain your labels to me and, associate me in your work."
+
+"Teach you what you would sell!" he burst forth at the end of his
+endurance.
+
+"Can you believe that?" she faltered, receding a step, turning white and
+trembling in the fear that he knew all.
+
+"Believe? I am certain that you are lying now as always!" he thundered.
+"It is impossible that your remorse should be sincere; it must mask some
+infamy. You have perpetrated faults which are unattended by remorse.
+Enough! If I am wrong, and you really do repent, it will not take a
+minute, but years for you to be believed, and it does not concern me.
+Apply to the Church, which alone can redeem and absolve such culprits as
+you."
+
+Convinced that she had lost the battle and forgetting her cunning,
+Madame Clemenceau threw off the veil and showed herself the direct
+offspring of the infernal regions. Her voice sounded like the hiss of
+fiery serpents, and her frame quivered as if she stood in a current of
+consuming vapor. Her eyes, too, wore that painful expression of depth of
+agony as though her disappointment were excruciating. With his pardon,
+love, protection and fortune, she might have defied Von Sendlingen and
+his league, but, alone, she was a stormy petrel flapping its
+insignificant pinions in the face of the God of Storms. Felix refused to
+be cheated by her and she was lost. But the criminal hates to stand
+alone in the dock; she wished to be terribly avenged because he was so
+great and so implacable. She would show that she could be extreme, too;
+if she were not encouraged to love, she would hate.
+
+"Oh, you pitiless one, because you have right on your side and your
+conscience," she screamed; "I will drag you down with me into curses and
+blasphemies, and others as well! whoever you hold dear shall perish with
+us!"
+
+"My father was threatened in the same way," retorted Clemenceau. "He had
+not the patience I enjoy. Had he but waited a little, the viper would
+have died in her own venomous slime!"
+
+"Then you will not kill me as your murderer did my aunt?"
+
+"No! you have wrecked my happiness, my home, my private life, but I
+forgive you, and that is your punishment. You have cast your wicked,
+unholy lures about my adopted son, Antonino, but I overlook this because
+he will repulse you and, that will be an augmentation of your
+punishment. You threaten Rebecca Daniels, but such are protected by the
+great Giver of good and, that is again an augmentation of your
+punishment. No, I will not hurt you--I would not kill one to whom long
+life--as it was to your witch grandmother, embitters every fraction of
+time. Live! and, remember, if you are here when I return, that our paths
+diverge forever here and beyond the earth!"
+
+She had sunk in a heap on the tiger-skin rug and her hair, loosened by
+accident or perhaps by design, streamed in a sheet of graven gold over
+her faultless shoulders. Through this shimmering net, her tears flowed,
+detached like strung diamonds scattered from the thread. But her weeping
+and her attitude were thrown away, for she heard his step as regular as
+a soldier's, leaving the room, crossing the vestibule and taking him out
+to where the carriage wheels ground the gravel. Von Sendlingen had gone;
+the Daniels were descending the stairs; even the servants gave no sign
+of life. Already the doomed house began to sound with those dull echoes
+when spectres promenade where human tenants have dwelt. Under ordinary
+conditions, her place was to speed the parting guests, but her farewell
+to Rebecca had expressed her sentiments, and she dared not risk another
+contest of wits with the Hebrew.
+
+She heard the horse's hoofs and the wheels beat the sand, and the click
+of the gate closing after the vehicle. The silence of death fell on the
+deserted house.
+
+"I am alone," she said, sitting up but not rising.
+
+"Now it will be everyone for himself and myself upon the side of evil,
+where they forced me to rank."
+
+Hardly had she risen to her feet, very tremulous, and prepared to go to
+the mirror over the sideboard to re-arrange her hair, than she heard
+footsteps in the hall.
+
+"Hedwig!" but listening more coolly, "no, a man!" she added, "has Von
+Sendlingen the audacity to enter?"
+
+A man opened the door, but stood petrified on the threshold.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII
+
+FELIX
+
+
+It was Antonino.
+
+"Is this the keeper?" thought Cesarine, laughing scornfully within
+herself. "A pretty boy for the austere Clemenceau to trust! Do not
+excuse yourself," she called out. "Close the door--it causes a draft!
+So, you told my husband that you loved me?"
+
+Far from expecting this address, the Italian let several seconds pass
+before he faltered:
+
+"Who told you so?"
+
+"He did! he never lacks frankness, I will say that for him. Well, you
+have destroyed my chances of securing a peaceful life. And yet I never
+did you any harm, did I?"
+
+"I destroy you?" repeated he, as she began to weep after a vain attempt
+to hide her eyes in her tresses.
+
+"How is that?"
+
+"Because I lost control of myself under his anger and his threats, and I
+confessed to him also that I was fond of you. We have a fellow feeling
+and selected the same confidant!"
+
+"You love me?"
+
+"For what else did I come back to this gloomy house? What else would
+have induced me to stay? He drove me away before, and I never suspected
+that it was to clear the scene for Rebecca, fool--child that I was! And
+now he picked the quarrel with me about you in order to go off with the
+heathen! You men are so monopolizing! He wants to be let love the
+inky-eyed Jewess, but I must not say a kind word to you! Oh, what am I
+to do now?" and in pretending to repair the disarray of her hair, down
+came a luxuriant tress. "What does it matter which way I turn? All roads
+lead to the river or the railroad--a step into the cold water or repose
+on the track of the iron horse, and no one will then torment poor
+Cesarine!"
+
+"You have some sinister plan," said Antonino, frightened by her manner.
+"I will not let you go away alone."
+
+"Is it thus you guard your master's house?"
+
+"Then wait till he returns and decide upon something."
+
+"He will decide on separating us, that is sure. Do you think if he takes
+me, that you could go with us?"
+
+"No! but if you meant to kill yourself, I should die after you."
+
+"Why not die together?"
+
+"I do not care."
+
+"Then you love me thoroughly?" she exclaimed in delight.
+
+"Death would be repose, and this struggle is driving me frantic," said
+he, in a deep voice.
+
+"Well, we will die some day," she said with pretended fervor, "but we
+are young and have time before us. Lovers do not willingly die! If you
+love me as I love you, you would, like me, find life all of a sudden
+wondrously bright! What a blessing that I have money for our enjoyment!"
+clapping her hands like a child.
+
+"In your fair Italy, we--"
+
+"Money," repeated he, raised by her magic into a region above such
+sordid ideas and falling quickly.
+
+"Of course! my bank orders! stay, they are in your box. Let us hasten
+away before he returns. Quick, take!"
+
+"No;" said Antonino. "When he left the house in my charge he bade me
+touch nothing, and let nothing be touched until his return."
+
+"He forsaw!" muttered the faithless wife, gnawing one of the tresses
+furiously as she studied the Italian's emotion. "Get me my money!"
+
+"Wait until--"
+
+"And with it those papers that describe your discoveries."
+
+"What do you mean?" he cried, coming to a halt, half-way toward the
+chest while she was undoing one of the windows of which she had drawn
+back the curtains. "The papers--they are not mine, or yours."
+
+"They will make the man I love rich and famous!" she replied, with eyes
+that seemed to light up the room far more than the starlight entering.
+"You know all about the work. With those plans in the language you also
+read, you can rise higher than he! He restricts his genius to his
+country--you--we will sell to the highest bidder!"
+
+"Mercenary fiend! I comprehend all now!" said the Italian.
+
+"So much the better!" she replied, coolly, having opened the window and
+descried a shadow standing guard in a narrow alley. "We shall lose no
+time in explaining."
+
+"You mean to betray your country?"
+
+"Neither mine nor yours! our country is wherever love and gold are
+rulers."
+
+"Wretch!" cried he, taking a step toward her so threateningly that she
+retreated from the window to which his back was turned as he continued
+to face her.
+
+"Which is the meaner?" she responded. "I deceive a man who loaths me,
+scorns me and threatens me with the love of another! You deceive the man
+who shelters you and to whom you owe everything. I betray him who does
+me harm--you, him who did you good. We are on a level, unless you have
+surpassed me. This is love! Did you imagine that you can withdraw the
+foot that takes one step in this path? An error, for one must tread it
+to the end. The steps are passion, the fault, the vice and the crime.
+But I have need of you to save me. I am yours and your soul is mine!
+Take the spoil and follow me!"
+
+In his surprise, Antonino did not remark a footstep, sounding harsh with
+gravel grinding the wood of the verandah, or a grim face at the open
+window.
+
+"You are right," he said. "I am a scoundrel, but I am not going to be a
+villain. It is I who should commit suicide. Farewell! my death be on
+your head!"
+
+"You have spoken your doom!" said she quickly, as she made a sign to Von
+Sendlingen in whose hand she saw naked steel abruptly gleam.
+
+"Who's there?" began the Italian, but, before he could turn, the long
+stiletto, drawn out of a sword-cane, was passed through his slender
+body.
+
+He fell without a groan and his staring eyes, sublimely unconscious of
+his assassin and of the instigator of the crime, were riveted, on the
+ceiling.
+
+"Confound it!" said the colonel, "this is not your husband!"
+
+"No, another conscientious fool!" she said brutally. "Waste no time on
+that boy. Before the man returns, let us seize our prise. Keep your
+hands off. This is no common chest. It opens with a combination lock and
+the word is 'R-e-b-e-c-c-a!'"
+
+She quickly fingered the studs which opened the lock when properly
+played upon, and to the joy of Colonel Von Sendlingen, she could lift up
+the loosened lid. But for a temporary vexation, they saw in the dim
+light that a kind of steel grating still closed the discovered space.
+
+"That will not detain me long," said the colonel, contemptuously, and
+relying upon his great strength as he forced his fingers between these
+bars, he secured a firm hold and began to draw the frame up toward him.
+"You have done your part, madame, well, and I--"
+
+At the same instant, the chest became a mass of the whitest flame which
+expanded monstrously and the whole house shook in a dreadful explosion.
+
+It was supernaturally that Clemenceau had been warned to stand aside and
+let the justice of heaven deal its stroke. No longer fear that Cesarine
+will work evil alone or directed by Von Sendlingen. At the last moment,
+all was put in order again by the execution by the soulless mechanism of
+the burglar defying-safe. The law of heaven shone forth in triumph and
+what was repentant in the errant soul was recalled to where goodness is
+omnipotent.
+
+The flame leaped over the three dead bodies and seized upon the
+furniture, spreading in all sides. The timbers of the villa were old and
+kiln-dried. The proprietor, returning from the station, had a dreadful
+beacon to guide him.
+
+All Montmorency turned out of doors to assist in extinguishing the
+conflagration. Not often does the quiet suburb treat itself to such
+spectacles, and when, to that sensation, was added that of three dead
+bodies dragged from the shattered drawing-room where every thing else
+was consumed, it may be believed that the night was memorable.
+
+The Daniels were telegraphed to at Paris, and they returned before
+midnight. They alone knew that the grief of Clemenceau was given to
+Antonino and not to his wife, but the lookers-on were deceived, and many
+a man, returning to his slippers and the evening journal, scolded his
+wife for having repeated baseless scandals about the proprietor of the
+Reine-Claude Villa living on cool terms with his unfortunate wife.
+
+The coroner of Montmorency did not display any broad perception of the
+tragedy, although the superfluity of eight inches of Sendlingen's steel
+in the side of a young man pronounced dead by asphyxia would have struck
+one of the laity. But the reporters of the Paris press were more
+perspicacious. They related that an envoy of a foreign union of
+unscrupulous capitalists had attempted to rob M. Clemenceau's residence
+of his inventions and France of a glory, but had been met by his
+dauntless wife and an assistant who had punished the brigand, although
+losing their own lives in defence of the patriotic trust. It was formed
+convenient to suppress all mention of the fact of the lady being Russian
+and the man Italian.
+
+But in his death, Von Sendlingen gained some revenge. The loss of
+Antonino the detailed plans delayed Clemenceau in his project. The War
+farther threw them back and it was only recently that his perfected
+cannon was formally accepted. In all his tribulations and
+disappointments, Daniels supported him, for he, too, was an idealist,
+and so truly his friend as to defer his own scheme until he should be at
+ease.
+
+After the fortuitous meeting of those men had come irresistible
+attraction and communion, moral, intellectual and scientific--friendship
+to the full meaning of the word.
+
+Poetic justice, as we call the fate least like what man deals out,
+decreed that the chateau of the Marchioness de Latour-lagneau should be
+dilapidated during the Prussian occupation of Montmorency. On its ruins
+rises the manufactury of he new rifle. On the side of the heart, too,
+the same justice rewarded Clemenceau, for he married Rebecca, and they
+were happy in having sons to bear his name worthily. Cesarine was
+forgotten, since, however great a conflagration may be--however far the
+flare may be cast on the sky--whatever the extent of damage--it must die
+out in time. Such is Passion, and the brighter its blaze the blacker the
+ruins it leaves after it--the deeper the misery--the wider the
+loneliness. It devours itself, with no revival like the Phoenix; but
+Love occupies the whole of life, however extended, and still has the
+strength and volumn to transport its worshipers to the realm of the
+happy.
+
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