Book + 

III + 

Holy Institution + 

I + 

The Value of an Opera-Glass + 

Paris!⁠—City of fashion, pleasure, beauty, wealth, rank, talent, and indeed all the glories of the earth. City of palaces, in which La Vallière smiled, and Scarron sneered; under whose roofs the echoes of Bossuet’s voice have resounded, while folly, coming to be amused, has gone away in tears, only to forget tomorrow what it has heard tonight. Glorious city, in which a bon mot is more famous than a good action; which is richer in the records of Ninon de Lenclos than in those of Joan of Arc; for which Beaumarchais wrote, and Marmontel moralised; which Scottish John Law infected with a furious madness, in those halcyon days when jolly, good-tempered, accomplished, easygoing Philippe of Orléans held the reins of power. Paris, which young Arouet, afterwards Voltaire, ruled with the distant jingle of his jester’s wand, from the far retreat of Ferney. Paris, in which Madame du Deffand dragged out those weary, brilliant, dismal, salon-keeping years, quarrelling with Mademoiselle de l’Espinasse, and corresponding with Horace Walpole; ce cher Horace, who described those brilliant French ladies as women who neglected all the duties of life, and gave very pretty suppers. + 

Paris, in which Bailly spoke, and Madame Roland dreamed; in which Marie Antoinette despaired, and gentle Princess Elizabeth laid down her saintly life; in which the son of St. Louis went calmly to the red mouth of that terrible machine invented by the charitable doctor who thought to benefit his fellow creatures. City, under whose roofs bilious Robespierre suspected and feared; beneath whose shadow the glorious twenty-two went hand in hand to death, with the psalm of freedom swelling from their lips. Paris, which rejoiced when Marengo was won, and rang joy-bells for the victories of Lodd Arcola, Austerlitz, Auerstedt, and Jena; Paris, which mourned over fatal Waterloo, and opened its arms, after weary years of waiting, to take to its heart only the ashes of the ruler of its election; Paris, the marvellous; Paris, the beautiful, whose streets are streets of palaces⁠—fairy wonders of opulence and art;⁠—can it be that under some of thy myriad roofs there are such incidental trifles as misery, starvation, vice, crime, and death? Nay, we will not push the question, but enter at once into one of the most brilliant of the temples of that goddess whose names are Pleasure, Fashion, Folly, and Idleness: and what more splendid shrine can we choose whereat to worship the divinity called Pleasure than the Italian Opera House? + 

Tonight the house is thronged with fashion and beauty. Bright uniforms glitter in the backgrounds of the boxes, and sprinkle the crowded parterre. The Citizen King is there⁠—not King of France; no such poor title will he have, but King of the French. His throne is based, not on the broad land, but on the living hearts of his people. May it never prove to be built on a shallow foundation! In eighteen hundred and forty-two all is well for Louis Philippe and his happy family. + 

In the front row of the stalls, close to the orchestra, a young man lounges, with his opera-glass in his hand. He is handsome and very elegant, and is dressed in the most perfect taste and the highest fashion. Dark curling hair clusters round his delicately white forehead; his eyes are of a bright blue, shaded by auburn lashes, which contrast rather strangely with his dark hair. A very dark and thick moustache only reveals now and then his thin lower lip and a set of dazzling white teeth. His nose is a delicate aquiline, and his features altogether bear the stamp of aristocracy. He is quite alone, this elegant lounger, and of the crowd of people of rank and fashion around him not one turns to speak to him. His listless white hand is thrown on the cushion of the stall on which he leans, as he glances round the house with one indifferent sweep of his opera-glass. Presently his attention is arrested by the conversation of two gentlemen close to him, and without seeming to listen, he hears what they are saying. + 

“Is the Spanish princess here tonight?” asks one. + 

“What, the marquis’s niece, the girl who has that immense property in Spanish America? Yes, she is in the box next to the king’s; don’t you see her diamonds? They and her eyes are brilliant enough to set the curtains of the box on fire.” + 

“She is immensely rich, then?” + 

“She is an Eldorado. The Marquis de Cevennes has no children, and all his property will go to her; her Spanish American property comes from her mother. She is an orphan, as you know, and the marquis is her guardian.” + 

“She is handsome; but there’s just a little too much of the demon in those great almond-shaped black eyes and that small determined mouth. What a fortune she would be to some intriguing adventurer!” + 

“An adventurer! Valerie de Cevennes the prize of an adventurer! Show me the man capable of winning her, without rank and fortune equal to hers; and I will say you have found the eighth wonder of the world.” + 

The listener’s eyes light up with a strange flash, and lifting his glass, he looks for a few moments carelessly round the house, and then fixes his gaze upon the box next to that occupied by the royal party. + 

The Spanish beauty is indeed a glorious creature; of a loveliness rich alike in form and colour, but with hauteur and determination expressed in every feature of her face. A man of some fifty years of age is seated by her side, and behind her chair two or three gentlemen stand, the breasts of whose coats glitter with stars and orders. They are speaking to her; but she pays very little attention to them. If she answers, it is only by a word, or a bend of her proud head, which she does not turn towards them. She never takes her eyes from the curtain, which presently rises. The opera is La Sonnambula. The Elvino is the great singer of the day⁠—a young man whose glorious voice and handsome face have made him the rage of the musical world. Of his origin different stories are told. Some say he was originally a shoemaker, others declare him to be the son of a prince. He has, however, made his fortune at seven-and-twenty, and can afford to laugh at these stories. The opera proceeds, and the powerful glass of the lounger in the stalls records the minutest change in the face of Valerie de Cevennes. It records one faint quiver, and then a firmer compression of the thin lips, when the Elvino appears; and the eyes of the lounger fasten more intently, if possible, than before upon the face of the Spanish beauty. + 

Presently Elvino sings the grand burst of passionate reproach, in which he upbraids Amina’s fancied falsehood. As the house applauds at the close of the scene, Valerie’s bouquet falls at the feet of the Amina. Elvino, taking it in his hand, presents it to the lady, and as he does so, the lounger’s glass⁠—which, more rapidly than the bouquet has fallen, has turned to the stage⁠—records a movement so quick as to be almost a feat of leger-de-main. The great tenor has taken a note from the bouquet. The lounger sees the triumphant glance towards the box next the king’s, though it is rapid as lightning. He sees the tiny morsel of glistening paper crumpled in the singer’s hand; and after one last contemplative look at the proud brow and set lips of Valerie de Cevennes, he lowers the glass. + 

“My glass is well worth the fifteen guineas I paid for it,” he whispers to himself. “That girl can command her eyes; they have not one traitorous flash. But those thin lips cannot keep a secret from a man with a decent amount of brains.” + 

When the opera is over, the lounger of the stalls leaves his place by the orchestra, and loiters in the winter night outside the stage-door. Perhaps he is enamoured of some lovely coryphée⁠—lovely in all the gorgeousness of flake white and liquid rouge; and yet that can scarcely be, or he would be still in the stalls, or hovering about the side-scenes, for the ballet is not over. Two or three carriages, belonging to the principal singers, are waiting at the stage-door. Presently a tall, stylish-looking man, in a loose overcoat, emerges; a groom opens the door of a well-appointed little brougham, but the gentleman says⁠— + 

“No, Farée, you can go home. I shall walk.” + 

“But, monsieur,” remonstrates the man, “monsieur is not aware that it rains.” + 

Monsieur says he is quite aware of the rain; but that he has an umbrella, and prefers walking. So the brougham drives off with the distressed Farée, who consoles himself at a café high up on the boulevard, where he plays écarté with a limp little pack of cards, and drinks effervescing lemonade. + 

The lounger of the stalls, standing in the shadow, hears this little dialogue, and sees also, by the light of the carriage-lamps, that the gentleman in the loose coat is no less a personage than the hero of the opera. The lounger also seems to be indifferent to the rain, and to have a fancy for walking; for when Elvino crosses the road and turns into an opposite street, the lounger follows. It is a dark night, with a little drizzling rain⁠—a night by no means calculated to tempt an elegantly-dressed young man to brave all the disagreeables and perils of dirty pavements and overflowing gutters; but neither Elvino nor the lounger seem to care for mud or rain, for they walk at a rapid pace through several streets⁠—the lounger always a good way behind and always in the shadow. He has a light step, which wakes no echo on the wet pavement; and the fashionable tenor has no idea that he is followed. He walks through long narrow streets to the Rue Rivoli, thence across one of the bridges. Presently he enters a very aristocratic but retired street, in a lonely quarter of the city. The distant roll of carriages and the tramp of a passing gendarmes are the only sounds that break the silence. There is not a creature to be seen in the wide street but the two men. Elvino turns to look about him, sees no one, and walks on till he comes to a mansion at the corner, screened from the street by a high wall, with great gates and a porter’s lodge. Detached from the house, and sheltered by an angle of the wall, is a little pavilion, the windows of which look into the courtyard or garden within. Close to this pavilion is a narrow low door of carved oak, studded with great iron nails, and almost hidden in the heavy masonry of the wall which frames it. The house in early times has been a convent, and is now the property of the Marquis de Cevennes. Elvino, with one more glance up and down the dimly-lighted street, approaches this doorway, and stooping down to the keyhole whistles softly three bars of a melody from Don Giovanni⁠—“Là ci darem la mano.” + 

“So!” says the lounger, standing in the shadow of a house opposite, “we are getting deeper into the mystery; the curtain is up, and the play is going to begin.” + 

As the clocks of Paris chime the half-hour after eleven the little door turns on its hinges, and a faint light in the courtyard within falls upon the figure of the fashionable tenor. This light comes from a lamp in the hand of a pretty-looking, smartly-dressed girl, who has opened the door. + 

“She is not the woman I took her for, this Valerie,” says the lounger, “or she would have opened that door herself. She makes her waiting-maid her confidante⁠—a false step, which proves her either stupid or inexperienced. Not stupid; her face gives the lie to that. Inexperienced then. So much the better.” + 

As the spy meditates time, Elvino passes through the doorway, stooping as he crosses the threshold, and the light disappears. + 

“This is either a private marriage, or something worse,” mutters the lounger. “Scarcely the last. Hers is the face of a woman capable of a madness, but not of degradation⁠—the face of a Phædra rather than a Messalina. I have seen enough of the play for tonight.” + 

II + 

Working in the Dark + 

Early the next morning a gentleman rings the bell of the porter’s lodge belonging to the mansion of the Marquis de Cevennes, and on seeing the porter addresses him thus⁠— + 

“The lady’s-maid of Mademoiselle Valerie de Cevennes is perhaps visible at this early hour?” + 

The porter thinks not; it is very early, only eight o’clock; Mademoiselle Finette never appears till nine. The toilette of her mistress is generally concluded by twelve; after twelve, the porter thinks monsieur may succeed in seeing Mademoiselle Finette⁠—before twelve, he thinks not. + 

The stranger rewards the porter with a five-franc piece for this valuable information; it is very valuable to the stranger, who is the lounger of the last night, to discover that the name of the girl who held the lamp is Finette. + 

The lounger seems to have as little to do this morning as he had last night; for he leans against the gateway, his cane in his hand, and a half-smoked cigar in his mouth, looking up at the house of the marquis with lazy indifference. + 

The porter, conciliated by the five-franc piece, is inclined to gossip. + 

“A fine old building,” says the lounger, still looking up at the house, every window of which is shrouded by ponderous Venetian shutters. + 

“Yes, a fine old building. It has been in the family of the marquis for two hundred years, but was sadly mutilated in the first revolution; monsieur may see the work of the cannon amongst the stone decorations.” + 

“And that pavilion to the left, with the painted windows and Gothic decorations⁠—a most extraordinary little edifice,” says the lounger. + 

Yes, monsieur has observed it? It is a great deal more modern than the house; was built so lately as the reign of Louis the Fifteenth, by a dissipated old marquis who gave supper-parties at which the guests used to pour champagne out of the windows, and pelt the servants in the courtyard with the empty bottles. It is certainly a curious little place; but would monsieur believe something more curious? + 

Monsieur declares that he is quite willing to believe anything the porter may be good enough to tell him. He says this with a well-bred indifference, as he lights a fresh cigar, which is quite aristocratic, and which might stamp him a scion of the noble house of De Cevennes itself. + 

“Then,” replies the porter, “monsieur must know that Mademoiselle Valerie, the proud, the highborn, the beautiful, has lately taken it into her aristocratic head to occupy that pavilion, attended only by her maid Finette, in preference to her magnificent apartments, which monsieur may see yonder on the first floor of the mansion⁠—a range of ten windows. Does not monsieur think this very extraordinary?” + 

Scarcely. Young ladies have strange whims. Monsieur never allows himself to be surprised by a woman’s conduct, or he might pass his life in a state of continual astonishment. + 

The porter perfectly agrees with monsieur. The porter is a married man, “and, monsieur⁠—?” the porter ventures to ask with a shrug of interrogation. + 

Monsieur says he is not married yet. + 

Something in monsieur’s manner emboldens the porter to say⁠— + 

“But monsieur is perhaps contemplating a marriage?” + 

Monsieur takes his cigar from his mouth, raises his blue eyes to the level of the range of ten windows, indicated just now by the porter, takes one long and meditative survey of the magnificent mansion opposite him, and then replies, with aristocratic indifference⁠— + 

“Perhaps. These Cevennes are immensely rich?” + 

“Immensely! To the amount of millions.” The porter is prone to extravagant gesticulation, but he cannot lift either his eyebrows or his shoulders high enough to express the extent of the wealth of the De Cevennes. + 

The lounger takes out his pocketbook, writes a few lines, and tearing the leaf out, gives it to the porter, saying⁠— + 

“You will favour me, my good friend, by giving this to Mademoiselle Finette at your earliest convenience. You were not always a married man; and can therefore understand that it will be as well to deliver my little note secretly.” + 

Nothing can exceed the intense significance of the porter’s wink as he takes charge of the note. The lounger nods an indifferent good day, and strolls away. + 

“A marquis at the least,” says the porter. “O, Mademoiselle Finette, you do not wear black satin gowns and a gold watch and chain for nothing.” + 

The lounger is ubiquitous, this winter’s day. At three o’clock in the afternoon he is seated on a bench in the gardens of the Luxembourg, smoking a cigar. He is dressed as before, in the last Parisian fashion; but his greatcoat is a little open at the throat, displaying a loosely-tied cravat of a peculiarly bright blue. + 

A young person of the genus lady’s-maid, tripping daintily by, is apparently attracted by this blue cravat, for she hovers about the bench for a few moments and then seats herself at the extreme end of it, as far as possible from the indifferent lounger, who has not once noticed her by so much as one glance of his cold blue eyes. + 

His cigar is nearly finished, so he waits till it is quite done; then, throwing away the stump, he says, scarcely looking at his neighbour⁠— + 

“Mademoiselle Finette, I presume?” + 

“The same, monsieur.” + 

“Then perhaps, mademoiselle, as you have condescended to favour me with an interview, and as the business on which I have to address you is of a strictly private nature, you will also condescend to come a little nearer to me?” + 

He says this without appearing to look at her, while he lights another cigar. He is evidently a desperate smoker, and caresses his cigar, looking at the red light and blue smoke almost as if it were his familiar spirit, by whose aid he could work out wonderful calculations in the black art, and without which he would perhaps be powerless. Mademoiselle Finette looks at him with a great deal of surprise and not a little indignation, but obeys him, nevertheless, and seats herself close by his side. + 

“I trust monsieur will believe that I should never have consented to afford him this interview, had I not been assured⁠—” + 

“Monsieur will spare you, mademoiselle, the trouble of telling him why you come here, since it is enough for him that you are here. I have nothing to do, mademoiselle, either with your motives or your scruples. I told you in my note that I required you to do me a service, for which I could afford to pay you handsomely; that, on the other hand, if you were unwilling to do me this service, I had it in my power to cause your dismissal from your situation. Your coming here is a tacit declaration of your willingness to serve me. So much and no more preface is needed. And now to business.” + 

He seems to sweep this curt preface away, as he waves off a cloud of the blue smoke from his cigar with one motion of his small hand. The lady’s-maid, thoroughly subdued by a manner which is quite new to her, awaits his pleasure to speak, and stares at him with surprised black eyes. + 

He is not in a hurry. He seems to be consulting the blue smoke prior to committing himself by any further remark. He takes his cigar from his mouth, and looks into the bright red spot at the lighted end, as if it were the lurid eye of his familiar demon. After consulting it for a few seconds he says, with the same indifference with which he would make some observation on the winter’s day⁠— + 

“So, your mistress, Mademoiselle Valerie de Cevennes, has been so imprudent as to contract a secret marriage with an opera-singer?” + 

He has determined on hazarding his guess. If he is right, it is the best and swiftest way of coming at the truth; if wrong, he is no worse off than before. One glance at the girl’s face tells him he has struck home, and has hit upon the entire truth. He is striking in the dark; but he is a mathematician, and can calculate the effect of every blow. + 

“Yes, a secret marriage, of which you were the witness.” This is his second blow; and again the girl’s face tells him he has struck home. + 

“Father Pérot has betrayed us, then, monsieur, for he alone could tell you this,” said Finette. + 

The lounger understands in a moment that Father Pérot is the priest who performed the marriage. Another point in his game. He continues, still stopping now and then to take a puff at his cigar, and speaking with an air of complete indifference⁠— + 

“You see, then, that this secret marriage, and the part you took with regard to it, have, no matter whether through the worthy priest, Father Pérot⁠—” (he stops at this point to knock the ashes from his cigar, and a sidelong glance at the girl’s face tells him that he is right again, Father Pérot is the priest)⁠—“or some other channel, come to my knowledge. Though a French woman, you may be acquainted with the celebrated aphorism of one of our English neighbours, ‘Knowledge is power.’ Very well, mademoiselle, how if I use my power?” + 

“Monsieur means that he can deprive me of my present place, and prevent my getting another.” As she said this, Mademoiselle Finette screwed out of one of her black eyes a small bead of water, which was the best thing she could produce in the way of a tear, but which, coming into immediate contact with a sticky white compound called pearl-powder, used by the lady’s-maid to enhance her personal charms, looked rather more like a digestive pill than anything else. + 

“But, on the other hand, I may not use my power; and, indeed, I should deeply regret the painful necessity which would compel me to injure a lady.” + 

Mademoiselle Finette, encouraged by this speech, wiped away the digestive pill. + 

“Therefore, mademoiselle, the case resolves itself to this: serve me, and I will reward you; refuse to do so, and I can injure you.” + 

A cold glitter in the blue eyes converts the words into a threat, without the aid of any extra emphasis from the voice. + 

“Monsieur has only to command,” answers the lady’s-maid; “I am ready to serve him.” + 

“This Monsieur Elvino will be at the gate of the little pavilion tonight⁠—?” + 

“At a quarter to twelve.” + 

“Then I will be there at half-past eleven. You will admit me instead of him. That is all.” + 

“But my mistress, monsieur: she will discover that I have betrayed her, and she will kill me. You do not know Mademoiselle de Cevennes.” + 

“Pardon me, I think I do know her. She need never learn that you have betrayed her. Remember, I have discovered the appointed signal;⁠—you are deceived by my use of that signal, and you open the door to the wrong man. For the rest I will shield you from all harm. Your mistress is a glorious creature; but perhaps that high spirit may be taught to bend.” + 

“It must first be broken, monsieur,” says Mademoiselle Finette. + 

“Perhaps,” answers the lounger, rising as he speaks. “Mademoiselle, au revoir.” He drops five twinkling pieces of gold into her hand, and strolls slowly away. + 

The lady’s-maid watches the receding figure with a bewildered stare. Well may Finette Léris be puzzled by this man: he might mystify wiser heads than hers. As he walks with his lounging gait through the winter sunset, many turn to look at his aristocratic figure, fair face, and black hair. If the worst man who looked at him could have seen straight through those clear blue eyes into his soul, would there have been something revealed which might have shocked and revolted even this worst man? Perhaps. Treachery is revolting, surely, to the worst of us. The worst of us might shrink appalled from the contemplation of those hideous secrets which are hidden in the plotting brain and the unflinching heart of the cold-blooded traitor. + 

III + 

The Wrong Footstep + 

Half-past eleven from the great booming voice of Notre Dame the magnificent. Half-past eleven from every turret in the vast city of Paris. The musical tones of the timepiece over the chimney in the boudoir of the pavilion testify to the fact five minutes afterwards. It is an elegant timepiece, surmounted by a group from the hand of a fashionable sculptor, a group in which a golden Cupid has hushed a grim bronze Saturn to sleep, and has hidden the old man’s hourglass under one of his lacquered wings⁠—a pretty design enough, though the sand in the glass will never move the slower, or wrinkles and gray hairs be longer coming, because of the prettiness of that patrician timepiece; for the minute-hand on the best dial-plate that all Paris can produce is not surer in its course than that dark end which spares not the brightest beginning, that weary awakening which awaits the fairest dream. + 

This little apartment in the pavilion belonging to the house of the Marquis de Cevennes is furnished in the style of the Pompadour days of elegance, luxury, and frivolity. Oval portraits of the reigning beauties of that day are let into the panels of the walls, and “Louis the Well-beloved” smiles an insipid Bourbon smile above the mantelpiece. The pencil of Boucher has immortalized those frail goddesses of the Versailles Olympus, and their coquettish loveliness lights the room almost as if they were living creatures, smiling unchangingly on every comer. The chimneypiece is of marble, exquisitely carved with lotuses and water-nymphs. A wood fire burns upon the gilded dogs which ornament the hearth. A priceless Persian carpet covers the centre of the polished floor; and a golden Cupid, suspended from the painted ceiling in an attitude which suggests such a determination of blood to the head as must ultimately result in apoplexy, holds a lamp of alabaster, which floods the room with a soft light. + 

Under this light the mistress of the apartment, Valerie de Cevennes, looks gloriously handsome. She is seated in a low armchair by the hearth⁠—looking sometimes into the red blaze at her feet, with dreamy eyes, whose profound gaze, though thoughtful, is not sorrowful. This girl has taken a desperate step in marrying secretly the man she loves; but she has no regret, for she does love; and loss of position seems so small a thing in the balance when weighed against this love, which is as yet unacquainted with sorrow, that she almost forgets she has lost it. Even while her eyes are fixed upon the wood fire at her feet, you may see that she is listening; and when the clocks have chimed the half-hour, she turns her head towards the door of the apartment, and listens intently. In five minutes she hears something⁠—a faint sound in the distance, the sound of an outer door turning on its hinges. She starts, and her eyes brighten; she glances at the timepiece, and from the timepiece to the tiny watch at her side. + 

“So soon!” she mutters; “he said a quarter to twelve. If my uncle had been here! And he only left me at eleven o’clock!” + 

She listens again; the sounds come nearer⁠—two more doors open, and then there are footsteps on the stairs. At the sound of these footsteps she starts again, with a look of anxiety in her face. + 

“Is he ill,” she says, “that he walks so slowly? Hark!” + 

She turns pale and clasps her hands tightly upon her breast. + 

“It is not his step!” + 

She knows she is betrayed; and in that one moment she prepares herself for the worst. She leans her hand upon the back of the chair from which she has risen, and stands, with her thin lips firmly set, facing the door. She may be facing her fate for aught she knows, but she is ready to face anything. + 

The door opens, and the lounger of the morning enters. He wears a coat and hat of exactly the same shape and colour as those worn by the fashionable tenor, and he resembles the tenor in build and height. An easy thing, in the obscurity of the night, for the faithful Finette to admit this stranger without discovering her mistake. One glance at the face and attitude of Valerie de Cevennes tells him that she is not unprepared for his appearance. This takes him off his guard. Has he, too, been betrayed by the lady’s-maid? He never guesses that his light step betrayed him to the listening ear which love has made so acute. He sees that the young and beautiful girl is prepared to give him battle. He is disappointed. He had counted upon her surprise and confusion, and he feels that he has lost a point in his game. She does not speak, but stands quietly waiting for him to address her, as she might were he an ordinary visitor. + 

“She is a more wonderful woman than I thought,” he says to himself, “and the battle will be a sharp one. No matter! The victory will be so much the sweeter.” + 

He removes his hat, and the light falls full upon his pale fair face. Something in that face, she cannot tell what, seems in a faint, dim manner, familiar to her⁠—she has seen someone like this man, but when, or where, she cannot remember. + 

“You are surprised, madame, to see me,” he says, for he feels that he must begin the attack, and that he must not spare a single blow, for he is to fight with one who can parry his thrusts and strike again. “You are surprised. You command yourself admirably in repressing any demonstration of surprise, but you are not the less surprised.” + 

“I am certainly surprised, monsieur, at receiving any visitor at such an hour.” She says this with perfect composure. + 

“Scarcely, madame,” he looks at the timepiece; “for in five minutes from this your husband will⁠—or should⁠—be here.” + 

Her lips tighten, and her jaw grows rigid in spite of herself. The secret is known, then⁠—known to this stranger, who dares to intrude himself upon her on the strength of this knowledge. + 

“Monsieur,” she says, “people rarely insult Valerie de Cevennes with impunity. You shall hear from my uncle tomorrow morning; for tonight⁠—” she lays her hand upon the mother-of-pearl handle of a little bell; he stops her, saying, smilingly⁠— + 

“Nay, madame, we are not playing a farce. You wish to show me the door? You would ring that bell, which no one can answer but Finette, your maid, since there is no one else in this charming little establishment. I shall not be afraid of Finette, even if you are so imprudent as to summon her; and I shall not leave you till you have done me the honour of granting me an interview. For the rest, I am not talking to Valerie de Cevennes, but to Valerie de Lancy; Valerie, the wife of Elvino; Valerie, the lady of Don Giovanni.” + 

De Lancy is the name of the fashionable tenor. This time the haughty girl’s thin lips quiver, with a rapid, convulsive movement. What stings her proud soul is the contempt with which this man speaks of her husband. Is it such a disgrace, then, this marriage of wealth, rank, and beauty, with genius and art? + 

“Monsieur,” she says, “you have discovered my secret. I have been betrayed either by my servant, or the priest who married me⁠—no matter which of them is the traitor. You, who, from your conduct of tonight, are evidently an adventurer, a person to whom it would be utterly vain to speak of honour, chivalry, and gentlemanly feeling⁠—since they are doubtless words of which you do not even know the meaning⁠—you wish to turn the possession of this secret to account. In other words, you desire to be bought off. You know, then, what I can afford to pay you. Be good enough to say how much will satisfy you, and I will appoint a time and place at which you shall receive your earnings. You will be so kind as to lose no time. It is on the stroke of twelve; in a moment Monsieur De Lancy will be here. He may not be disposed to make so good a bargain with you as I am. He might be tempted to throw you out of the window.” + 

She has said this with entire self-possession. She might be talking to her modiste, so thoroughly indifferent is she in her high-bred ease and freezing contempt for the man to whom she is speaking. As she finishes she sinks quietly into her easy-chair. She takes up a book from a little table near her, and begins to cut the leaves with a jewelled-handled paper-knife. But the battle has only just begun, and she does not yet know her opponent. + 

He watches her for a moment; marks the steady hand with which she slowly cuts leaf after leaf, without once notching the paper; and then he deliberately seats himself opposite to her in the easy-chair on the other side of the fireplace. She lifts her eyes from the book, and looks him full in the face with an expression of supreme disdain; but as she looks, he can see how eagerly she is also listening for her husband’s step. He has a blow to strike which he knows will be a heavy one. + 

“Do not, madame,” he says, “distract yourself by listening for your husband’s arrival. He will not be here tonight.” + 

This is a terrible blow. She tries to speak, but her lips only move inarticulately. + 

“No, he will not be here. You do not suppose, madame, that when I contemplated, nay, contrived and arranged an interview with so charming a person as yourself, I could possibly be so deficient in foresight as to allow that interview to be disturbed at the expiration of one quarter of an hour? No; Monsieur Don Giovanni will not be here tonight.” + 

Again she tries to speak, but the words refuse to come. He continues, as though he interpreted what she wants to say⁠— + 

“You will naturally ask what other engagement detains him from his lovely wife’s society? Well, it is, as I think, a supper at the Trois Frères. As there are ladies invited, the party will no doubt break up early; and you will, I dare say, see Monsieur de Lancy by four or five o’clock in the morning.” + 

She tries to resume her employment with the paper-knife, but this time she tears the leaves to pieces in her endeavours to cut them. Her anguish and her womanhood get the better of her pride and her power of endurance. She crumples the book in her clenched hands, and throws it into the fire. Her visitor smiles. His blows are beginning to tell. + 

For a few minutes there is silence. Presently he takes out his cigar-case. + 

“I need scarcely ask permission, madame. All these opera-singers smoke, and no doubt you are indulgent to the weakness of our dear Elvino?” + 

“Monsieur de Lancy is a gentleman, and would not presume to smoke in a lady’s presence. Once more, monsieur, be good enough to say how much money you require of me to ensure your silence?” + 

“Nay, madame,” he replies, as he bends over the wood fire, and lights his cigar by the blaze of the burning book, “there is no occasion for such desperate haste. You are really surprisingly superior to the ordinary weakness of your sex. Setting apart your courage, self-endurance, and determination, which are positively wonderful, you are so entirely deficient in curiosity.” + 

She looks at him with a glance which seems to say she scorns to ask him what he means by this. + 

“You say your maid, Finette, or the good priest, Monsieur Pérot, must have betrayed your confidence. Suppose it was from neither of those persons I received my information?” + 

“There is no other source, monsieur, from which you could obtain it.” + 

“Nay, madame, reflect. Is there no other person whose vanity may have prompted him to reveal this secret? Do you think it, madame, so utterly improbable that Monsieur de Lancy himself may have been tempted to boast over his wine of his conquest of the heiress of all the De Cevennes?” + 

“It is a base falsehood, monsieur, which you are uttering.” + 

“Nay, madame, I make no assertion. I am only putting a case. Suppose at a supper at the Maison Dorée, amongst his comrades of the Opera and his admirers of the stalls⁠—to say nothing of the coryphées, who, somehow or other, contrive to find a place at these recherché little banquets⁠—suppose our friend, Don Giovanni, imprudently ventures some allusion to a lady of rank and fortune whom his melodious voice or his dark eyes have captivated? This little party is not, perhaps, satisfied with an allusion; it requires facts; it is incredulous; it lays heavy odds that Elvino cannot name the lady; and in the end the whole story is told, and the health of Valerie de Cevennes is drunk in Clicquot’s finest brand of champagne. Suppose this, madame, and you may, perhaps, guess whence I got my information.” + 

Throughout this speech Valerie has sat facing him, with her eyes fixed in a strange and ghastly stare. Once she lifts her hand to her throat, as if to save herself from choking; and when the schemer has finished speaking she slides heavily from her chair, and falls on her knees upon the Persian hearthrug, with her small hands convulsively clasped about her heart. But she is not insensible, and she never takes her eyes from his face. She is a woman who neither weeps nor faints⁠—she suffers. + 

“I am here, madame,” the lounger continues⁠—and now she listens to him eagerly; “I am here for two purposes. To help myself before all things; to help you afterwards, if I can. I have had to use a rough scalpel, madame, but I may not be an unskilful physician. You love this tenor singer very deeply; you must do so; since for his sake you were willing to brave the contempt of that which you also love very much⁠—the world⁠—the great world in which you move.” + 

“I did love him, monsieur⁠—O God! how deeply, how madly, how blindly! Nay, it is not to such an eye as yours that I would reveal the secrets of my heart and mind. Enough, I loved him! But for the man who could degrade the name of the woman who had sacrificed so much for his sake, and hold the sacrifice so lightly⁠—for the man who could make that woman’s name a jest among the companions of a tavern, Valerie de Cevennes has but one sentiment, and that is⁠—contempt.” + 

“I admire your spirit, madame; but then, remember, the subject can scarcely be so easily dismissed. A husband is not to be shaken off so lightly; and is it likely that Monsieur de Lancy will readily resign a marriage which, as a speculation, is so brilliantly advantageous? Perhaps you do not know that it has been, ever since his début, his design to sell his handsome face to the highest bidder; that he has⁠—pardon me, madame⁠—been for two years on the lookout for an heiress possessed of more gold than discrimination, whom a few pretty namby-pamby speeches selected from the librettos of the operas he is familiar with would captivate and subdue.” + 

The haughty spirit is bent to the very dust. This girl, truth itself, never for a moment questions the words which are breaking her heart. There is something too painfully probable in this bitter humiliation. + 

“Oh, what have I done,” she cries, “what have I done, that the golden dream of my life should be broken by such an awakening as this?” + 

“Madame, I have told you that I wish, if I can, to help you. I pretend no disinterested or Utopian generosity. You are rich, and can afford to pay me for my services. There are only three persons who, besides yourself, were witnesses of or concerned in this marriage⁠—Father Pérot, Finette, and Monsieur de Lancy. The priest and the maidservant may be silenced; and for Don Giovanni⁠—we will talk of him tomorrow. Stay, has he any letters of yours in his possession?” + 

“He returns my letters one by one as he receives them,” she mutters. + 

“Good⁠—it is so easy to retract what one has said; but so difficult to deny one’s handwriting.” + 

“The De Cevennes do not lie, monsieur!” + 

“Do they not? What, madame, have you acted no lies, though you may not have spoken them? Have you never lied with your face, when you have worn a look of calm indifference, while the mental effort with which you stopped the violent beating of your heart produced a dull physical torture in your breast; when, in the crowded opera-house, you heard his step upon the stage? Wasted lies, madame; wasted torture; for your idol was not worth them. Your god laughed at your worship, because he was a false god, and the attributes for which you worshipped him⁠—truth, loyalty, and genius, such as man never before possessed⁠—were not his, but the offspring of your own imagination, with which you invested him, because you were in love with his handsome face. Bah! madame, after all, you were only the fool of a chiselled profile and a melodious voice. You are not the first of your sex so fooled; Heaven forbid you should be the last!” + 

“You have shown me why I should hate this man; show me my revenge, if you wish to serve me. My countrywomen do not forgive. O Gaston de Lancy, to have been the slave of your every word; the blind idolater of your every glance; to have given so much; and, as my reward, to reap only your contempt!” + 

There are no tears in her eyes as she says this in a hoarse voice. Perhaps long years hence she may come to weep over this wild infatuation⁠—now, her despair is too bitter for tears. + 

The lounger still preserves the charming indifference which stamps him of her own class. He says, in reply to her entreaty⁠— + 

“I can lead you to your revenge, madame, if your noble Spanish blood does not recoil from the ordeal. Dress yourself tomorrow night in your servant’s clothes, wearing of course a thick veil; take a hackney-coach, and at ten o’clock be at the entrance to the Bois de Boulogne. I will join you there. You shall have your revenge, madame, and I will show you how to turn that revenge (which is in itself an expensive luxury) to practical account. In a few days you may perhaps be able to say, ‘There is no such person as Gaston de Lancy: the terrible delusion was only a dream; I have awoke, and I am free!’ ” + 

She passes her trembling hand across her brow, and looks at the speaker, as if she tried in vain to gather the meaning of his words. + 

“At ten o’clock, at the entrance to the Bois de Boulogne? I will be there,” she murmurs faintly. + 

“Good! And now, madame, adieu! I fear I have fatigued you by this long interview. Stay! You should know the name of the man to whom you allow the honour of serving you.” + 

He takes out his card-case, lays a card on the tiny table at her side, bows low to her, and leaves her⁠—leaves her stricken to the dust. He looks back at her as he opens the door, and watches her for a moment, with a smile upon his face. His blows have had their full effect. + 

O Valerie, Valerie! loving so wildly, to be so degraded, humiliated, deceived! Little wonder that you cry tonight. There is no light in the sky⁠—there is no glory in the world! Earth is weary, heaven is dark, and death alone is the friend of the broken heart! + 

IV + 

Ocular Demonstration + 

Inscribed on the card which the lounger leaves on the table of Mademoiselle de Cevennes, or Madame de Lancy, is the name of Raymond Marolles. The lounger, then, is Raymond Marolles, and it is he whom we must follow, on the morning after the stormy interview in the pavilion. + 

He occupies a charming apartment in the Champs Élysées; small, of course, as befitting a bachelor, but furnished in the best taste. On entering his rooms there is one thing you could scarcely fail to notice; and this is the surprising neatness, the almost mathematical precision, with which everything is arranged. Books, pictures, desks, pistols, small-swords, boxing-gloves, riding-whips, canes, and guns⁠—every object is disposed in an order quite unusual in a bachelor’s apartment. But this habit of neatness is one of the idiosyncrasies of Monsieur Marolles. It is to be seen in his exquisitely-appointed dress; in his carefully-trimmed moustache; it is to be heard even in the inflections of his voice, which rise and fall with rather monotonous though melodious regularity, and which are never broken by anything so vulgar as anger or emotion. + 

At ten o’clock this morning he is still seated at breakfast. He has eaten nothing, but he is drinking his second cup of strong coffee, and it is easy to see that he is thinking very deeply. + 

“Yes,” he mutters, “I must find a way to convince her; she must be thoroughly convinced before she will be induced to act. My first blows have told so well, I must not fail in my masterstroke. But how to convince her⁠—words alone will not satisfy her long; there must be ocular demonstration.” + 

He finishes his cup of coffee, and sits playing with the teaspoon, clinking it with a low musical sound against the china teacup. Presently he hits it with one loud ringing stroke. That stroke is a note of triumph. He has been working a problem and has found the solution. He takes up his hat and hurries out of the house; but as soon as he is out of doors he slackens his step, and resumes his usual lounging gait. He crosses the Place de la Concorde, and makes his way to the Boulevard, and only turns aside when he reaches the Italian Opera House. It is to the stage-door he directs his steps. An old man, the doorkeeper, is busy in the little dark hall, manufacturing a pot à feu, and warming his hands at the same time at a tiny stove in a corner. He is quite accustomed to the apparition of a stylish young man; so he scarcely looks up when the shadow of Raymond Marolles darkens the doorway. + 

“Good morning, Monsieur Concierge,” says Raymond; “you are very busy, I see.” + 

“A little domestic avocation, that is all, monsieur, being a bachelor.” + 

The doorkeeper is rather elderly, and somewhat snuffy for a bachelor; but he is very fond of informing the visitors of the stage-door that he has never sacrificed his liberty at the shrine of Hymen. He thinks, perhaps, that they might scruple to give their messages to a married man. + 

“Not too busy, then, for a little conversation, my friend?” asks the visitor, slipping a five-franc piece into the porter’s dingy hand. + 

“Never too busy for that, monsieur;” and the porter abandons the pot à feu to its fate, and dusts with his coloured handkerchief a knock-kneed-looking easy-chair, which he presents to monsieur. + 

Monsieur is very condescending, and the doorkeeper is very communicative. He gives monsieur a great deal of useful information about the salaries of the principal dancers; the bouquets and diamond bracelets thrown to them; the airs and graces indulged in by them; and divers other interesting facts. Presently monsieur, who has been graciously though rather languidly interested in all this, says⁠—“Do you happen to have amongst your supernumeraries or choruses, or any of your insignificant people, one of those mimics so generally met with in a theatre?” + 

“Ah,” says the doorkeeper, chuckling, “I see monsieur knows a theatre. We have indeed two or three mimics; but one above all⁠—a chorus-singer, a great man, who can strike off an imitation which is life itself; a drunken, dissolute fellow, monsieur, or he would have taken to principal characters and made himself a name. A fellow with a soul for nothing but dominoes and vulgar wine-shops; but a wonderful mimic.” + 

“Ah! and he imitates, I suppose, all your great people⁠—your prima donna, your basso, your tenor⁠—” hazards Monsieur Raymond Marolles. + 

“Yes, monsieur. You should hear him mimic this new tenor, this Monsieur Gaston de Lancy, who has made such a sensation this season. He is not a bad-looking fellow, pretty much the same height as De Lancy, and he can assume his manner, voice, and walk, so completely that⁠—” + 

“Perhaps in a dark room you could scarcely tell one from the other, eh?” + 

“Precisely, monsieur.” + 

“I have rather a curiosity about these sort of people; and I should like to see this man, if⁠—” he hesitates, jingling some silver in his pocket. + 

“Nay, monsieur,” says the porter; “nothing more easy; this Moucée is always here about this time. They call the chorus to rehearsal while the great people are lounging over their breakfasts. We shall find him either on the stage, or in one of the dressing-rooms playing dominoes. This way, monsieur.” + 

Raymond Marolles follows the doorkeeper down dark passages and up innumerable flights of stairs; till, very high up, he stops at a low door, on the other side of which there is evidently a rather noisy party. This door the porter opens without ceremony, and he and Monsieur Marolles enter a long low room, with bare whitewashed walls, scrawled over with charcoal caricatures of prima donnas and tenors, with impossible noses and spindle legs. Seated at a deal table is a group of young men, shabbily dressed, playing at dominoes, while others look on and bet upon the game. They are all smoking tiny cigarettes which look like damp curl-papers, and which last about two minutes each. + 

“Pardon me, Monsieur Moucée,” says the porter, addressing one of the domino players, a good-looking young man, with a pale dark face and black hair⁠—“pardon me that I disturb your pleasant game; but I bring a gentleman who wishes to make your acquaintance.” + 

The chorus-singer rises, gives a lingering look at a double-six he was just going to play, and advances to where Monsieur Marolles is standing. + 

“At monsieur’s service,” he says, with an unstudied but graceful bow. + 

Raymond Marolles, with an ease of manner all his own passes his arm through that of the young man, and leads him out into the passage. + 

“I have heard, Monsieur Moucée, that you possess a talent for mimicry which is of a very superior order. Are you willing to assist with this talent in a little farce I am preparing for the amusement of a lady? If so you will have a claim (which I shall not forget) on my gratitude and on my purse.” + 

This last word makes Paul Moucée prick up his ears. Poor fellow! his last coin has gone for the half-ounce of tobacco he has just consumed. He expresses himself only too happy to obey the commands of monsieur. + 

Monsieur suggests that they shall repair to an adjoining café, at which they can have half an hour’s quiet conversation. They do so; and at the end of the half-hour, Monsieur Marolles parts with Paul Moucée at the door of this café. As they separate Raymond looks at his watch⁠—“Half-past eleven; all goes better than I could have even hoped. This man will do very well for our friend Elvino, and the lady shall have ocular demonstration. Now for the rest of my work; and tonight, my proud and beautiful heiress, for you.” + 

As the clocks strike ten that night, a hackney-coach stops close to the entrance of the Bois de Boulogne; and as the coachman checks his horse, a gentleman emerges from the gloom, and goes up to the door of the coach, which he opens before the driver can dismount. This gentleman is Monsieur Raymond Marolles, and Valerie de Lancy is seated in the coach. + 

“Punctual, madame!” he says. “Ah, in the smallest matters you are superior to your sex. May I request you to step out and walk with me for some little distance?” + 

The lady, who is thickly veiled, only bows her head in reply; but she is by his side in a moment. He gives the coachman some directions, and the man drives off a few paces; he then offers his arm to Valerie. + 

“Nay, monsieur,” she says, in a cold, hard voice, “I can follow you, or I can walk by your side. I had rather not take your arm.” + 

Perhaps it is as well for this man’s schemes that it is too dark for his companion to see the smile that lifts his black moustache, or the glitter in his blue eyes. He is something of a physiologist as well as a mathematician, this man; and he can tell what she has suffered since last night by the change in her voice alone. It has a dull and monotonous sound, and the tone seems to have gone out of it forever. If the dead could speak, they might speak thus. + 

“This way, then, madame,” he says. “My first object is to convince you of the treachery of the man for whom you have sacrificed so much. Have you strength to live through the discovery?” + 

“I lived through last night. Come, monsieur, waste no more time in words, or I shall think you are a charlatan. Let me hear from his lips that I have cause to hate him.” + 

“Follow me, then, and softly.” + 

He leads her into the wood. The trees are very young as yet, but all is obscure tonight. There is not a star in the sky; the December night is dark and cold. A slight fall of snow has whitened the ground, and deadens the sound of footsteps. Raymond and Valerie might be two shadows, as they glide amongst the trees. After they have walked about a quarter of a mile, he catches her by the arm, and draws her hurriedly into the shadow of a group of young pine-trees. “Now,” he says, “now listen.” + 

She hears a voice whose every tone she knows. At first there is a rushing sound in her ears, as if all the blood were surging from her heart up to her brain; but presently she hears distinctly; presently too, her eyes grow somewhat accustomed to the gloom; and she sees a few paces from her the dim outline of a tall figure, familiar to her. It is Gaston de Lancy, who is standing with one arm round the slight waist of a young girl, his head bending down with the graceful droop she knows so well, as he looks in her face. + 

Marolles’ voice whispers in her ear, “The girl is a dancer from one of the minor theatres, whom he knew before he was a great man. Her name, I think, is Rosette, or something like it. She loves him very much; perhaps almost as much as you do, in spite of the quarterings on your shield.” + 

He feels the slender hand, which before disdained to lean upon his arm, now clasp his wrist, and tighten, as if each taper finger were an iron vice. + 

“Listen,” he says again. “Listen to the drama, madame. I am the chorus!” + 

It is the girl who is speaking. “But, Gaston, this marriage, this marriage, which has almost broken my heart.” + 

“Was a sacrifice to our love, my Rosette. For your sake alone would I have made such a sacrifice. But this haughty lady’s wealth will make us happy in a distant land. She little thinks, poor fool, for whose sake I endure her patrician airs, her graces of the old regime, her caprices, and her folly. Only be patient, Rosette, and trust me. The day that is to unite us forever is not far distant, believe me.” + 

It is the voice of Gaston de Lancy. Who should better know those tones than his wife? Who should better know them than she to whose proud heart they strike death? + 

The girl speaks again. “And you do not love this fine lady, Gaston? Only tell me that you do not love her!” + 

Again the familiar voice speaks. “Love her! Bah! We never love these fine ladies who give us such tender glances from opera-boxes. We never admire these great heiresses, who fall in love with a handsome face, and have not enough modesty to keep the sentiment a secret; who think they honour us by a marriage which they are ashamed to confess; and who fancy we must needs be devoted to them, because, after their fashion, they are in love with us.” + 

“Have you heard enough?” asked Raymond Marolles. + 

“Give me a pistol or a dagger!” she gasped, in a hoarse whisper; “let me shoot him dead, or stab him to the heart, that I may go away and die in peace!” + 

“So,” muttered Raymond, “she has heard enough. Come, madame. Yet⁠—stay, one last look. You are sure that is Monsieur de Lancy?” + 

The man and the girl are standing a few yards from them; his back is turned to Valerie, but she would know him amongst a thousand by the dark hair and the peculiar bend of the head. + 

“Sure!” she answers. “Am I myself?” + 

“Come, then; we have another place to visit tonight. You are satisfied, are you not, madame, now that you have had ocular demonstration?” + 

V + 

The King of Spades + 

When Monsieur Marolles offers his arm to lead Valerie de Cevennes back to the coach, it is accepted passively enough. Little matter now what new degradation she endures. Her pride can never fall lower than it has fallen. Despised by the man she loved so tenderly, the world’s contempt is nothing to her. + 

In a few minutes they are both seated in the coach driving through the Champs Élysées. + 

“Are you taking me home?” she asks. + 

“No, madame, we have another errand, as I told you.” + 

“And that errand?” + 

“I am going to take you where you will have your fortune told.” + 

“My fortune!” she exclaims, with a bitter laugh. + 

“Bah! madame,” says her companion. “Let us understand each other. I hope I have not to deal with a romantic and lovesick girl. I will not gall your pride by recalling to your recollection in what a contemptible position I have found you. I offer my services to rescue you from that contemptible position; but I do so in the firm belief that you are a woman of spirit, courage, and determination, and⁠—” + 

“And that I can pay you well,” she adds, scornfully. + 

“And that you can pay me well. I am no Don Quixote, madame; nor have I any great respect for that gentleman. Believe me, I intend that you shall pay me well for my services, as you will learn by-and-by.” + 

Again there is the cold glitter in the blue eyes, and the ominous smile which a moustache does well to hide. + 

“But,” he continues, “if you have a mind to break your heart for an opera-singer’s handsome face, go and break it in your boudoir, madame, with no better confidante than your lady’s-maid; for you are not worthy of the services of Raymond Marolles.” + 

“You rate your services very high, then, monsieur?” + 

“Perhaps. Look you, madame: you despise me because I am an adventurer. Had I been born in the purple⁠—lord, even in my cradle, of wide lands and a great name, you would respect me. Now, I respect myself because I am an adventurer; because by the force alone of my own mind I have risen from what I was, to be what I am. I will show you my cradle some day. It had no tapestried coverlet or embroidered curtains, I can assure you.” + 

They are driving now through a dark street, in a neighbourhood utterly unknown to the lady. + 

“Where are you taking me?” she asks again, with something like fear in her voice. + 

“As I told you before, to have your fortune told. Nay, madame, unless you trust me, I cannot serve you. Remember, it is to my interest to serve you well: you can therefore have no cause for fear.” + 

As he speaks they stop before a ponderous gateway in the blank wall of a high dark-looking house. They are somewhere in the neighbourhood of Notre Dame, for the grand old towers loom dimly in the darkness. Monsieur Marolles gets out of the coach and rings a bell, at the sound of which the porter opens the door. Raymond assists Valerie to dismount, and leads her across a courtyard into a little hall, and up a stone staircase to the fifth story of the house. At another time her courage might have failed her in this strange house, at so late an hour, with this man, of whom she knows nothing; but she is reckless tonight. + 

There is nothing very alarming in the aspect of the room into which Raymond leads her. It is a cheerful little apartment lighted with gas. There is a small stove, near a table, before which is seated a gentlemanly-looking man, of some forty years of age. He has a very pale face, a broad forehead, from which the hair is brushed away behind the ears: he wears blue spectacles, which entirely conceal his eyes, and in a manner shade his face. You cannot tell what he is thinking of; for it is a peculiarity of this man that the mouth, which with other people is generally the most expressive feature, has with him no expression whatever. It is a thin, straight line, which opens and shuts as he speaks, but which never curves into a smile, or contracts when he frowns. + 

He is deeply engaged, bending over a pack of cards spread out on the green cloth which covers the table, as if he were playing écarté without an opponent, when Raymond opens the door; but he rises at the sight of the lady, and bows low to her. He has the air of a student rather than of a man of the world. + 

“My good Blurosset,” says Raymond, “I have brought a lady to see you, to whom I have been speaking very highly of your talents.” + 

“With the pasteboard or the crucible?” asks the impassible mouth. + 

“Both, my dear fellow; we shall want both your talents. Sit down, madame; I must do the honours of the apartment, for my friend Laurent Blurosset is too much a man of science to be a man of gallantry. Sit down, madame; place yourself at this table⁠—there, opposite Monsieur Blurosset, and then to business.” + 

This Raymond Marolles, of whom she knows absolutely nothing, has a strange influence over Valerie; an influence against which she no longer struggles. She obeys him passively, and seats herself before the little green baize-covered table. + 

The blue spectacles of Monsieur Laurent Blurosset look at her attentively for two or three minutes. As for the eyes behind the spectacles, she cannot even guess what might be revealed in their light. The man seems to have a strange advantage in looking at everyone as from behind a screen. His own face, with hidden eyes and inflexible mouth, is like a blank wall. + 

“Now then, Blurosset, we will begin with the pasteboard. Madame would like to have her fortune told. She knows of course that this fortune-telling is mere charlatanism, but she wishes to see one of the cleverest charlatans.” + 

“Charlatanism! Charlatan! Well, it doesn’t matter. I believe in what I read here, because I find it true. The first time I find a false meaning in these bits of pasteboard I shall throw them into that fire, and never touch a card again. They’ve been the hobby of twenty years, but you know I could do it, Englishman!” + 

“Englishman!” exclaimed Valerie, looking up with astonishment. + 

“Yes,” answered Raymond, laughing; “a surname which Monsieur Blurosset has bestowed upon me, in ridicule of my politics, which happened once to resemble those of our honest neighbour, John Bull.” + 

Monsieur Blurosset nods an assent to Raymond’s assertion, as he takes the cards in his thin yellow-white hands and begins shuffling them. He does this with a skill peculiar to himself, and you could almost guess in watching him that these little pieces of pasteboard have been his companions for twenty years. Presently he arranges them in groups of threes, fives, sevens, and nines, on the green baize, reserving a few cards in his hand; then the blue spectacles are lifted and contemplate Valerie for two or three seconds. + 

“Your friend is the queen of spades,” he says, turning to Raymond. + 

“Decidedly,” replies Monsieur Marolles. “How the insipid diamond beauties fade beside this gorgeous loveliness of the south!” + 

Valerie does not hear the compliment, which at another time she would have resented as an insult. She is absorbed in watching the groups of cards over which the blue spectacles are so intently bent. + 

Monsieur Blurosset seems to be working some abstruse calculations with these groups of cards, assisted by those he has in his hand. The spectacles wander from the threes to the nines; from the sevens to the fives; back again; across again; from five to nine, from three to seven; from five to three, from seven to nine. Presently he says⁠— + 

“The king of spades is everywhere here.” He does not look up as he speaks⁠—never raising the spectacles from the cards. His manner of speaking is so passionless and mechanical, that he might almost be some calculating automaton. + 

“The king of spades,” says Raymond, “is a dark and handsome young man.” + 

“Yes,” says Blurosset, “he’s everywhere beside the queen of spades.” + 

Valerie in spite of herself is absorbed by this man’s words. She never takes her eyes from the spectacles and the thin pale lips of the fortune-teller. + 

“I do not like his influence. It is bad. This king of spades is dragging the queen down, down into the very mire.” Valerie’s cheek can scarcely grow whiter than it has been ever since the revelation of the Bois de Boulogne, but she cannot repress a shudder at these words. + 

“There is a falsehood,” continues Monsieur Blurosset; “and there is a fair woman here.” + 

“A fair woman! That girl we saw tonight is fair,” whispers Raymond. “No doubt Monsieur Don Giovanni admires blondes, having himself the southern beauty.” + 

“The fair woman is always with the king of spades,” says the fortune-teller. “There is here no falsehood⁠—nothing but devotion. The king of spades can be true; he is true to this diamond woman; but for the queen of spades he has nothing but treachery.” + 

“Is there anything more on the cards?” asks Raymond. + 

“Yes! A priest⁠—a marriage⁠—money. Ah! this king of spades imagines that he is within reach of a great fortune.” + 

“Does he deceive himself?” + 

“Yes! Now the treachery changes sides. The queen of spades is in it now⁠—But stay⁠—the traitor, the real traitor is here; this fair man⁠—the knave of diamonds⁠—” + 

Raymond Marolles lays his white hand suddenly upon the card to which Blurosset is pointing, and says, hurriedly⁠— + 

“Bah! You have told us all about yesterday; now tell us of tomorrow.” And then he adds, in a whisper, in the ear of Monsieur Blurosset⁠— + 

“Fool! have you forgotten your lesson?” + 

“They will speak the truth,” mutters the fortune-teller. “I was carried away by them. I will be more careful.” + 

This whispered dialogue is unheard by Valerie, who sits immovable, awaiting the sentence of the oracle, as if the monotonous voice of Monsieur Blurosset were the voice of Nemesis. + 

“Now then for the future,” says Raymond. “It is possible to tell what has happened. We wish to pass the confines of the possible: tell us, then, what is going to happen.” + 

Monsieur Blurosset collects the cards, shuffles them, and rearranges them in groups, as before. Again the blue spectacles wander. From three to nine; from nine to seven; from seven to five; Valerie following them with bright and hollow eyes. Presently the fortune-teller says, in his old mechanical way⁠— + 

“The queen of spades is very proud.” + 

“Yes,” mutters Raymond in Valerie’s car. “Heaven help the king who injures such a queen!” + 

She does not take her eyes from the blue spectacles of Monsieur Blurosset; but there is a tightening of her determined mouth which seems like an assent to this remark. + 

“She can hate as well as love. The king of spades is in danger,” says the fortune-teller. + 

There is, for a few minutes, dead silence, while the blue spectacles shift from group to group of cards; Valerie intently watching them, Raymond intently watching her. + 

This time there seems to be something difficult in the calculation of the numbers. The spectacles shift hither and thither, and the thin white lips move silently and rapidly, from seven to nine, and back again to seven. + 

“There is something on the cards that puzzles you,” says Raymond, breaking the deathly silence. “What is it?” + 

“A death!” answers the passionless voice of Monsieur Blurosset. “A violent death, which bears no outward sign of violence. I said, did I not, that the king of spades was in danger?” + 

“You did.” + 

From three to five, from five to nine, from nine to seven, from seven to nine: the groups of cards form a circle: three times round the circle, as the sun goes; back again, and three times round the circle in a contrary direction: across the circle from three to seven, from seven to five, from five to nine, and the blue spectacles come to a dead stop at nine. + 

“Before twelve o’clock tomorrow night the king of spades will be dead!” says the monotonous voice of Monsieur Blurosset. The voices of the clocks of Paris seem to take up Monsieur Blurosset’s voice as they strike the hour of midnight. + 

Twenty-four hours for the king of spades! + 

Monsieur Blurosset gathers up his cards and drops them into his pocket. Malicious people say that he sleeps with them under his pillow; that he plays écarté by himself in his sleep; and that he has played piquet with a very tall dark gentleman, whom the porter never let either in or out, and who left a sulphureous and suffocating atmosphere behind him in Monsieur Blurosset’s little apartment. + 

“Good!” says Monsieur Raymond Marolles. “So much for the pasteboard. Now for the crucible.” + 

For the first time since the discovery of the treachery of her husband Valerie de Lancy smiles. She has a beautiful smile, which curves the delicate lips without distorting them, and which brightens in her large dark eyes with a glorious fire of the sunny south. But for all that, Heaven save the man who has injured her from the light of such a smile as hers of tonight. + 

“You want my assistance in some matters of chemistry?” asks Blurosset. + 

“Yes! I forgot to tell you, madame, that, my friend Laurent Blurosset⁠—though he chooses to hide himself in one of the most obscure streets of Paris⁠—is perhaps one of the greatest men in this mighty city. He is a chemist who will one day work a revolution in the chemical science; but he is a fanatic, madame, or, let me rather say, he is a lover, and his crucible is his mistress. This blind devotion to a science is surely only another form of the world’s great madness⁠—love! Who knows what bright eyes a problem in Euclid may have replaced? Who can tell what fair hair may not have been forgotten in the search after a Greek root?” + 

Valerie shivers. Heaven help that shattered heart! Every word that touches on the master-passion of her life is a wound that pierces it to the core. + 

“You do not smoke, Blurosset. Foolish man you do not know how to live. Pardon, madame.” He lights his cigar at the green-shaded gas-lamp, seats himself close to the stove, and smokes for a few minutes in silence. + 

Valerie, still seated before the little table, watches him with fixed eyes, waiting for him to speak. + 

In the utter shipwreck of her every hope this adventurer is the only anchor to which she can cling. Presently he says, in his most easy and indifferent manner⁠— + 

“It was the fashion at the close of the fifteenth and throughout the sixteenth century for the ladies of Italy to acquire a certain knowledge of some of the principles of chemistry. Of course, at the head of these ladies we must place Lucretia Borgia.” + 

Monsieur Blurosset nods an assent. Valerie looks from Raymond to the blue spectacles; but the face of the chemist testifies no shade of surprise at the singularity of Raymond’s observation. + 

“Then,” continued Monsieur Marolles, “if a lady was deeply injured or cruelly insulted by the man she loved; if her pride was trampled in the dust, or her name and her weakness held up to ridicule and contempt⁠—then she knew how to avenge herself and to defy the world. A tender pressure of the traitor’s hand; a flower or a ribbon given as a pledge of love; the leaves of a book hastily turned over with the tips of moistened fingers⁠—people had such vulgar habits in those days⁠—and behold the gentleman died, and no one was any the wiser but the worms, with whose constitutions Aqua Tofana at secondhand may possibly have disagreed.” + 

“Vultures have died from the effects of poisoned carrion,” muttered Monsieur Blurosset. + 

“But in this degenerate age,” continued Raymond, “what can our Parisian ladies do when they have reason to be revenged on a traitor? The poor blunderers can only give him half a pint of laudanum, or an ounce or so of arsenic, and run the risk of detection half an hour after his death! I think that time is a circle, and that we retreat as we advance, in spite of our talk of progress.” + 

His horrible words, thrice horrible when contrasted with the coolness of his easy manner, freeze Valerie to the very heart; but she does not make one effort to interrupt him. + 

“Now, my good Blurosset,” he resumes, “what I want of you is this. Something which will change a glass of wine into a death-warrant, but which will defy the scrutiny of a college of physicians. This lady wishes to take a lesson in chemistry. She will, of course, only experimentalise on rabbits, and she is so tenderhearted that, as you see, she shudders even at the thought of that little cruelty. For the rest, to repay you for your trouble, if you will give her pen and ink, she will write you an order on her banker for five thousand francs.” + 

Monsieur Blurosset appears no more surprised at this request than if he had been asked for a glass of water. He goes to a cabinet, which he opens, and after a little search selects a small tin box, from which he takes a few grains of white powder, which he screws carelessly in a scrap of newspaper. He is so much accustomed to handling these compounds that he treats them with very small ceremony. + 

“It is a slow poison,” he says. “For a full-grown rabbit use the eighth part of what you have there; the whole of it would poison a man; but death in either case would not be immediate. The operation of the poison occupies some hours before it terminates fatally.” + 

“Madame will use it with discretion,” says Raymond; “do not fear.” + 

Monsieur Blurosset holds out the little packet as if expecting Valerie to take it; she recoils with a ghastly face, and shudders as she looks from the chemist to Raymond Marolles. + 

“In this degenerate age,” says Raymond, looking her steadily in the face, “our women cannot redress their own wrongs, however deadly those wrongs may be; they must have fathers, brothers, or uncles to fight for them, and the world to witness the struggle. Bah! There is not a woman in France who is any better than a sentimental schoolgirl.” + 

Valerie stretches out her small hand to receive the packet. + 

“Give me the pen, monsieur,” says she; and the chemist presents her a half-sheet of paper, on which she writes hurriedly an order on her bankers, which she signs in full with her maiden name. + 

Monsieur Blurosset looked over the paper as she wrote. + 

“Valerie de Cevennes!” he exclaimed. “I did not know I was honoured by so aristocratic a visitor.” + 

Valerie put her hand to her head as if bewildered. “My name!” she muttered, “I forgot, I forgot.” + 

“What do you fear, madame?” asked Raymond, with a smile. “Are you not among friends?” + 

“For pity’s sake, monsieur,” she said, “give me your arm, and take me back to the carriage! I shall drop down dead if I stay longer in this room.” + 

The blue spectacles contemplated her gravely for a moment. Monsieur Blurosset laid one cold hand upon her pulse, and with the other took a little bottle from the cabinet, out of which he gave his visitor a few drops of a transparent liquid. + 

“She will do now,” he said to Raymond, “till you get her home; then see that she takes this,” he added, handing Monsieur Marolles another phial; “it is an opiate which will procure her six hours’ sleep. Without that she would go mad.” + 

Raymond led Valerie from the room; but, once outside, her head fell heavily on his shoulder, and he was obliged to carry her down the steep stairs. + 

“I think,” he muttered to himself as he went out into the courtyard with his unconscious burden, “I think we have sealed the doom of the king of spades!” + 

VI + 

A Glass of Wine + 

Upon a little table in the boudoir of the pavilion lay a letter. It was the first thing Valerie de Lancy beheld on entering the room, with Raymond Marolles by her side, half an hour after she had left the apartment of Monsieur Blurosset. This letter was in the handwriting of her husband, and it bore the postmark of Rouen. Valerie’s face told her companion whom the letter came from before she took it in her hand. + 

“Read it,” he said, coolly. “It contains his excuses, no doubt. Let us see what pretty story he has invented. In his early professional career his companions surnamed him Baron Munchausen.” + 

Valerie’s hand shook as she broke the seal; but she read the letter carefully through, and then turning to Raymond she said⁠— + 

“You are right; his excuse is excellent, only a little too transparent: listen. + 

“ ‘The reason of my absence from Paris’⁠—(absence from Paris, and tonight in the Bois de Boulogne)⁠—‘is most extraordinary. At the conclusion of the opera last night, I was summoned to the stage-door, where I found a messenger waiting for me, who told me he had come posthaste from Rouen, where my mother was lying dangerously ill, and to implore me, if I wished to see her before her death, to start for that place immediately. Even my love for you, which you well know, Valerie, is the absorbing passion of my life, was forgotten in such a moment. I had no means of communicating with you without endangering our secret. Imagine, then, my surprise on my arrival here, to find that my mother is in perfect health, and had of course sent no messenger to me. I fear in this mystery some conspiracy which threatens the safety of our secret. I shall be in Paris tonight, but too late to see you. Tomorrow, at dusk, I shall be at the dear little pavilion, once more to be blest by a smile from the only eyes I love.⁠—Gaston de Lancy.’ ” + 

“Rather a blundering epistle,” muttered Raymond. “I should really have given him credit for something better. You will receive him tomorrow evening, madame?” + 

She knew so well the purport of this question that her hand almost involuntarily tightened on the little packet given her by Monsieur Blurosset, which she had held all this time, but she did not answer him. + 

“You will receive him tomorrow; or by tomorrow night all Paris will know of this romantic but rather ridiculous marriage, it will be in all the newspapers⁠—caricatured in all the print-shops; Charivari will have a word or two about it, and little boys will cry it in the streets, a full, true, and particular account for only one sous. But then, as I said before, you are superior to your sex, and perhaps you will not mind this kind of thing.” + 

“I shall see him tomorrow evening at dusk,” she said, in a hoarse whisper not pleasant to hear; “and I shall never see him again after tomorrow.” + 

“Once more, then, good night,” says Raymond. “But stay, Monsieur begs you will take this opiate. Nay,” he muttered with a laugh as she looked at him strangely, “you may be perfectly assured of its harmlessness. Remember, I have not been paid yet.” + 

He bowed, and left the room. She did not lift her eyes to look at him as he bade her adieu. Those hollow tearless eyes were fixed on the letter she held in her left hand. She was thinking of the first time she saw this handwriting, when every letter seemed a character inscribed in fire, because his hand had shaped it; when the tiniest scrap of paper covered with the most ordinary words was a precious talisman, a jewel of more price than the diamonds of all the Cevennes. + 

The short winter’s day died out, and through the dusk a young man, in a thick greatcoat, walked rapidly along the broad quiet street in which the pavilion stood. Once or twice he looked round to assure himself that he was unobserved. He tried the handle of the little wooden door, found it unfastened, opened it softly, and went in. In a few minutes he was in the boudoir, and by the side of Valerie. The girl’s proud face was paler than when he had last seen it; and when he tenderly asked the reason of this change, she said⁠— + 

“I have been anxious about you, Gaston. You can scarcely wonder.” + 

“The voice too, even your voice is changed,” he said anxiously. “Stay, surely I am the victim of no juggling snare. It is⁠—it is Valerie.” + 

The little boudoir was only lighted by the wood fire burning on the low hearth. He drew her towards the blaze, and looked her full in the face. + 

“You would scarcely believe me,” he said; “but for the moment I half doubted if it were really you. The false alarm, the hurried journey, one thing and another have upset me so completely, that you seemed changed⁠—altered; I can scarcely tell you how, but altered very much.” + 

She seated herself in the easy-chair by the hearth. There was an embroidered velvet footstool at her feet, and he placed himself on this, and sat looking up in her face. She laid her slender hands on his dark hair, and looked straight into his eyes. Who shall read her thoughts at this moment? She had learnt to despise him, but she had never ceased to love him. She had cause to hate him; but she could scarcely have told whether the bitter anguish which rent her heart were nearer akin to love or hate. + 

“Pshaw, Gaston!” she exclaimed, “you are full of silly fancies tonight. And I, you see, do not offer to reproach you once for the uneasiness you have caused me. See how readily I accept your excuse for your absence, and never breathe one doubt of its truth. Now, were I a jealous or suspicious woman, I might have a hundred doubts. I might think you did not love me, and fancy that your absence was a voluntary one. I might even be so foolish as to picture you with another whom you loved better than me.” + 

“Valerie!” he said, reproachfully, raising her small hand to his lips. + 

“Nay,” she cried, with a light laugh, “this might be the thought of a jealous woman. But could I think so of you, Gaston?” + 

“Hark!” he said, starting and rising hastily; “did you not hear something?” + 

“What?” + 

“A rustling sound by that door⁠—the door of your dressing-room. Finette is not there, is she? I left her in the anteroom below.” + 

“No, no, Gaston; there is no one there; this is another of your silly fancies.” + 

He glanced uneasily towards the door, but reseated himself at her feet, and looked once more upward to the proudly beautiful face. Valerie did not look at her companion, but at the fire. Her dark eyes were fixed upon the blaze, and she seemed almost unconscious of Gaston de Lancy’s presence. What did she see in the red light? Her shipwrecked soul? The ruins of her hopes? The ghost of her dead happiness? The image of a long and dreary future, in which the love on whose foundation she had built a bright and peaceful life to come could have no part? What did she see? A warning arm stretched out to save her from the commission of a dreadful deed, which, once committed, must shut her out from all earthly sympathy, though not perhaps from heavenly forgiveness; or a stern finger pointing to the dark end to which she hastens with a purpose in her heart so strange and fearful to her she scarcely can believe it is her own, or that she is herself? + 

With her left hand still upon the dark hair⁠—which even now she could not touch without a tenderness, that, having no part in her nature of today, seemed like some relic of the wreck of the past⁠—she stretched out her right arm towards a table near her, on which there were some decanters and glasses that clashed with a silvery sound under her touch. + 

“I must try and cure you of your fancies, Gaston. My physician insists on my taking every day at luncheon a glass of that old Madeira of which my uncle is so fond. They have not removed the wine⁠—you shall take some; pour it out yourself. See, here is the decanter. I will hold the glass for you.” + 

She held the antique diamond-cut glass with a steady hand while Gaston poured the wine into it. The light from the wood fire flickered, and he spilt some of the Madeira over her dress. They both laughed at this, and her laugh rang out the clearer of the two. + 

There was a third person who laughed; but his was a silent laugh. This third person was Monsieur Marolles, who stood within the half-open door that led into Valerie’s dressing-room. + 

“So,” he says to himself, “this is even better than I had hoped. I feared his handsome face would shake her resolution. The light in those dark eyes is very beautiful, no doubt, but it has not long to burn.” + 

As the firelight flashed upon the glass, Gaston held it for a moment between his eyes and the blaze. + 

“Your uncle’s wine is not very clear,” he said; “but I would drink the vilest vinegar from the worst tavern in Paris, if you poured it out for me, Valerie.” + 

As he emptied the glass the little timepiece struck six. + 

“I must go, Valerie. I play Gennaro in Lucretia Borgia, and the King is to be at the theatre tonight. You will come? I shall not sing well if you are not there.” + 

“Yes, yes, Gaston.” She laid her hand upon her head as she spoke. + 

“Are you ill?” he asked, anxiously. + 

“No, no, it is nothing. Go, Gaston; you must not keep his Majesty waiting,” she said. + 

I wonder whether as she spoke there rose the image in her mind of a King who reigns in undisputed power over the earth’s wide face; whose throne no revolution ever shook; whose edict no creature ever yet set aside, and to whom all terrible things give place, owning in him the King of Terrors! + 

The young man took his wife in his arms and pressed his lips to her forehead. It was damp with a deadly cold perspiration. + 

“I am sure you are ill, Valerie,” he said. + 

She shivered violently, but pushing him towards the door, said, “No, no, Gaston; go, I implore you; you will be late; at the theatre you will see me. Till then, adieu.” + 

He was gone. She closed the door upon him rapidly, and with one long shudder fell to the ground, striking her head against the gilded moulding of the door. Monsieur Marolles emerged from the shadow, and lifting her from the floor, placed her in the chair by the hearth. Her head fell heavily back upon the velvet cushions, but her large black eyes were open. I have said before, this woman was not subject to fainting-fits. + 

She caught Raymond’s hand in hers with a convulsive grasp. + 

“Madame,” he said, “you have shown yourself indeed a daughter of the haughty line of the De Cevennes. You have avenged yourself most nobly.” + 

The large black eyes did not look at him. They were fixed on vacancy. Vacancy? No! there could be no such thing as vacancy for this woman. Henceforth for her the whole earth must be filled with one hideous phantom. + 

There were two wineglasses on the table which stood a little way behind the low chair in which Valerie was seated⁠—very beautiful glasses, antique, exquisitely cut, and emblazoned with the arms of the De Cevennes. In one of those glasses, the one from which Gaston de Lancy had drunk, there remained a few drops of wine, and a little white sediment. Valerie did not see Raymond, as with a stealthy hand he removed this glass from the table, and put it in the pocket of his greatcoat. + 

He looked once more at her as she sat with rigid mouth and staring eyes, and then he said, as he moved towards the door⁠— + 

“I shall see you at the opera, madame! I shall be in the stalls. You will be, with more than your wonted brilliancy and beauty, the centre of observation in the box next to the King’s. Remember, that until tonight is over, your play will not be played out. Au revoir, madame. Tomorrow I shall say mademoiselle! For tomorrow the secret marriage of Valerie de Cevennes with an opera-singer will only be a foolish memory of the past.” + 

VII + 

The Last Act of Lucretia Borgia + 

Two hours after this interview in the pavilion Raymond Marolles is seated in his old place in the front row of the stalls. Several times during the prologue and the first act of the opera his glass seeks the box next to that of the King, always to find it empty. But after the curtain has fallen on the finale to the first act, the quiet watcher raises his glass once more, and sees Valerie enter, leaning on her uncle’s arm. Her dark beauty loses nothing by its unusual pallor, and her eyes tonight have a brilliancy which, to the admiring crowd, who know so little and so little care to know the secrets of her proud soul, is very beautiful. She wears a high dress of dark green velvet, fastened at the throat with one small diamond ornament, which trembles and emits bright scintillations of rainbow light. This sombre dress, her deadly pallor, and the strange fire in her eyes, give to her beauty of tonight a certain peculiarity which renders her more than usually the observed of all observers. + 

She seats herself directly facing the stage, laying down her costly bouquet, which is one of pure white, being composed entirely of orange-flowers, snowdrops, and jasmine, a mixture of winter, summer, and hothouse blossoms for which her florist knows how to charge her. She veils the intensity which is the distinctive character of her face with a weary listless glance tonight. She does not once look round the house. She has no need to look, for it seems as if without looking she can see the pale face of Monsieur Marolles, who lounges with his back to the orchestra, and his opera-glass in his hand. + 

The Marquis de Cevennes glances at the programme of the opera, and throws it away from him with a dissatisfied air. + 

“That abominable poisoning woman!” he says; “when will the Parisians be tired of horrors?” + 

His niece raises her eyebrows slightly, but does not lift her eyelids as she says⁠—“Ah, when, indeed!” + 

“I don’t like these subjects,” continued the marquis. “Even the handling of a Victor Hugo cannot make them otherwise than repulsive: and then again, there is something to be said on the score of their evil tendency. They set a dangerous example. Lucretia Borgia, in black velvet, avenging an insult according to the rules of high art and to the music of Donizetti is very charming, no doubt; but we don’t want our wives and daughters to learn how they may poison us without fear of detection. What do you say, Rinval?” he asked, turning to a young officer who had just entered the box. “Do you think I am right?” + 

“Entirely, my dear marquis. The representation of such a hideous subject is a sin against beauty and innocence,” he said, bowing to Valerie. “And, though the music is very exquisite⁠—” + 

“Yes,” said Valerie, “my uncle cannot help admiring the music. How have they been singing tonight?” + 

“Why, strange to say, for once De Lancy has disappointed his admirers. His Gennaro is a very weak performance.” + 

“Indeed!” She takes her bouquet in her hand and plays with the drooping blossom of a snowdrop. “A weak performance? You surprise me really!” She might be speaking of the flowers she holds, from the perfect indifference of her tone. + 

“They say he is ill,” continues Monsieur Rinval. “He almost broke down in the ‘Pescator ignobile.’ But the curtain has risen⁠—we shall have the poison scene soon, and you can judge for yourself.” + 

She laughs. “Nay,” she says, “I have never been so enthusiastic an admirer of this young man as you are, Monsieur Rinval. I should not think the world had come to an end if he happened to sing a false note.” + 

The young Parisian bent over her chair, admiring her grace and beauty⁠—admiring, perhaps, more than all, the haughty indifference with which she spoke of the opera-singer, as if he were something too far removed from her sphere for her to be in earnest about him even for one moment. Might he not have wondered even more, if he had admired her less, could he have known that as she looked up at him with a radiant face, she could not even see him standing close beside her; that to her clouded sight the opera-house was only a confusion of waving lights and burning eyes; and that, in the midst of a chaos of blood and fire, she saw the vision of her lover and her husband dying by the hand that had caressed him? + 

“Now for the banquet scene,” exclaimed Monsieur Rinval. “Ah! there is Gennaro. Is he not gloriously handsome in ruby velvet and gold? That clubbed Venetian wig becomes him. It is a wig, I suppose.” + 

“Oh, no doubt. That sort of people owe half their beauty to wigs, and white and red paint, do they not?” she asked, contemptuously; and even as she spoke she was thinking of the dark hair which her white fingers had smoothed away from the broad brow so often, in that time which, gone by a few short days, seemed centuries ago to her. She had suffered the anguish of a lifetime in losing the bright dream of her life. + 

“See,” said Monsieur Rinval, “Gennaro has the poisoned goblet in his hand. He is acting very badly. He is supporting himself with one hand on the back of that chair, though he has not yet drunk the fatal draught.” + 

De Lancy was indeed leaning on an antique stage-chair for support. Once he passed his hand across his forehead, as if to collect his scattered senses, but he drank the wine, and went on with the music. Presently, however, every performer in the orchestra looked up as if thunderstruck. He had left off singing in the middle of a concerted piece; but the Maffeo Orsini took up the passage, and the opera proceeded. + 

“He is either ill, or he does not know the music,” said Monsieur Rinval. “If the last, it is really shameful; and he presumes on the indulgence of the public.” + 

“It is always the case with these favourites, is it not?” asked Valerie. + 

At this moment the centre of the stage was thrown open. There entered first a procession of black and shrouded monks singing a dirge. Next, pale, haughty, and vengeful, the terrible Lucretia burst upon the scene. + 

Scornful and triumphant she told the companions of Gennaro that their doom was sealed, pointing to where, in the ghastly background, were ranged five coffins, waiting for their destined occupants. The audience, riveted by the scene, awaited that thrilling question of Gennaro, “Then, madame, where is the sixth?” and as De Lancy emerged from behind his comrades every eye was fixed upon him. + 

He advanced towards Lucretia, tried to sing, but his voice broke on the first note; he caught with his hand convulsively at his throat, staggered a pace or two forward, and then fell heavily to the floor. There was immediate consternation and confusion on the stage; chorus and singers crowded round him; one of the singers knelt down by his side, and raised his head. As he did so, the curtain fell suddenly. + 

“I was certain he was ill,” said Monsieur Rinval, “I fear it must be apoplexy.” + 

“It is rather an uncharitable suggestion,” said the marquis; “but do you not think it just possible that the young man may be tipsy?” + 

There was a great buzz of surprise amongst the audience, and in about three minutes one of the performers came before the curtain, and announced that in consequence of the sudden and alarming illness of Monsieur de Lancy it was impossible to conclude the opera. He requested the indulgence of the audience for a favourite ballet which would commence immediately. + 

The orchestra began the overture of the ballet, and several of the audience rose to leave the house. + 

“Will you stop any longer, Valerie? or has this dismal finale dispirited you?” said the marquis. + 

“A little,” said Valerie; “besides, we have promised to look in at Madame de Vermanville’s concert before going to the duchess’s ball.” + 

Monsieur Rinval helped to muffle her in her cloak, and then offered her his arm. As they passed from the great entrance to the carriage of the marquis, Valerie dropped her bouquet. A gentleman advanced from the crowd and restored it to her. + 

“I congratulate you alike on your strength of mind, as on your beauty, mademoiselle!” he said, in a whisper too low for her companions to hear, but with a terrible emphasis on the last word. + 

As she stepped into the carriage, she heard a bystander say⁠—“Poor fellow, only seven-and-twenty! And so marvellously handsome and gifted!” + 

“Dear me,” said Monsieur Rinval, drawing up the carriage window, “how very shocking! De Lancy is dead!” + 

Valerie did not utter one exclamation at this announcement. She was looking steadily out of the opposite window. She was counting the lamps in the streets through the mist of a winter’s night. + 

“Only twenty-seven!” she cried hysterically, “only twenty-seven! It might have been thirty-seven, forty-seven, fifty-seven! But he despised her love; he trampled out the best feelings of her soul; so it was only twenty-seven! Marvellously handsome, and only twenty-seven!” + 

“For heaven’s sake open the windows and stop the carriage, Rinval!” cried the marquis⁠—“I’m sure my niece is ill.” + 

She burst into a long, ringing laugh. + 

“My dear uncle, you are quite mistaken. I never was better in my life; but it seems to me as if the death of this opera-singer has driven everybody mad.” + 

They drove rapidly home, and took her into the house. The maid Finette begged that her mistress might be carried to the pavilion, but the marquis overruled her, and had his niece taken into her old suite of apartments in the mansion. The first physicians in Paris were sent for, and when they came they pronounced her to be seized by a brain-fever, which promised to be a very terrible one. + 

VIII + 

Bad Dreams and a Worse Waking + 

The sudden and melancholy death of Gaston de Lancy caused a considerable sensation throughout Paris; more especially as it was attributed by many to poison. By whom administered, or from what motive, none could guess. There was one story, however, circulated that was believed by some people, though it bore very little appearance of probability. It was reported that on the afternoon preceding the night on which De Lancy died, a stranger had obtained admission behind the scenes of the opera-house, and had been seen in earnest conversation with the man whose duty it was to provide the goblets of wine for the poison scene in Lucretia Borgia. Some went so far as to say, that this stranger had bribed the man to put the contents of a small packet into the bottom of the glass given on the stage to De Lancy. But so improbable a story was believed by very few, and, of course, stoutly denied by the man in question. The doctors attributed the death of the young man to apoplexy. There was no inquest held on his remains; and at the wish of his mother he was buried at Rouen, and his funeral was no doubt a peculiarly quiet one, for no one was allowed to know when the ceremonial took place. Paris soon forgot its favourite. A few engravings of him, in one or two of his great characters, lingered for some time in the windows of the fashionable print-shops. Brief memoirs of him appeared in several papers, and in one or two magazines; and in a couple of weeks he was forgotten. If he had been a great general, or a great minister, it is possible that he would not have been remembered much longer. The new tenor had a fair complexion and blue eyes, and had two extra notes of falsetto. So the opera-house was as brilliant as ever, though there was for the time being a prejudice among opera-goers and opera-singers against Lucretia Borgia, and that opera was put on the shelf for the remainder of the season. + 

A month after the death of De Lancy the physician pronounced Mademoiselle de Cevennes sufficiently recovered to be removed from Paris to her uncle’s château in Normandy. Her illness had been a terrible one. For many days she had been delirious. Ah, who shall paint the fearful dreams of that delirium!⁠—dreams, of the anguish of which her disjointed sentences could tell so little? The face of the man she had loved had haunted her in every phase, wearing every expression⁠—now thoughtful, now sparkling with vivacity, now cynical, now melancholy; but always distinct and palpable, and always before her night and day. The scene of her first meeting with him; her secret marriage; the little chapel a few miles out of Paris; the old priest; the bitter discovery in the Bois de Boulogne⁠—the scene of his treachery; the lamp-lit apartment of Monsieur de Blurosset; the cards and the poisons. Every action of this dark period of her life she acted over in her disordered brain again and again a hundred times through the long day, and a hundred times more through the still longer night. So when at the expiration of a month, she was strong enough to walk from one room into another, it was but a wreck of his proud and lovely heiress which met her uncle’s eyes. + 

The château of the marquis, some miles from the town of Caen, was situated in a park which was as wild and uncultivated as a wood. A park full of old timber, and marshy reedy grounds dotted with pools of stagnant water, which in the good days of the old regime were beaten nightly by the submissive peasantry, that monseigneur, the marquis might sleep on his bedstead of ormolu and buhl à la Louis Quatorze, undisturbed by the croaking of the frogs. + 

Everything around was falling into ruin; the château had been sacked, and one wing of it burnt down, in the year 1793; and the present marquis, then a very little boy, had fled with his father to the hospitable shores of England, where for more than twenty years of his life he had lived in poverty and obscurity, teaching sometimes his native language, sometimes mathematics, sometimes music, sometimes one thing, sometimes another, for his daily bread. But with the restoration of the Bourbons came the restoration of the marquis to title and fortune. A wealthy marriage with the widow of a rich Bonapartist restored the house of De Cevennes to its former grandeur; and looking now at the proud and stately head of that house, it was a difficult thing to imagine that this man had ever taught French, music, and mathematics, for a few shillings a lesson, in the obscure academies of an English manufacturing town. + 

The dreary park, which surrounded the still more dreary and tumbledown château, was white with the fallen snow, through which the servants, or their servants the neighbouring peasantry, coming backwards and forwards with some message or commission from the village, waded knee-deep, or well nigh lost themselves in some unsuspected hollow where the white drifts had swept and lay collected in masses whose depth was dangerous. The dark oak-panelled apartments appropriated to Valerie looked out upon the snow-clad wilderness; and very dismal they seemed in the dying February day. + 

Grim pictures of dead and gone branches of this haughty house stared and frowned from their heavy frames at the pale girl, half seated, half reclining in a great easy-chair in the deep embayed window. One terrible mail-clad baron, who had fought and fallen at disastrous Agincourt, held an uplifted axe, and in the evening shadow it seemed to Valerie as if he raised it with a threatening glance beneath his heavy brows, which took a purpose and a meaning as the painted eyes met hers. And turn which way she would, the eyes of these dark portraits seemed to follow her; sometimes threateningly, sometimes reproachfully, sometimes with a melancholy look fraught with a strange and ominous sadness that chilled her to the soul. + 

Logs of wood burned on the great hearth, supported by massive iron dogs, and their flickering light falling now here, now there, left always the corners of the large room in shadow. The chill white night looking in at the high window strove with the fire light for mastery, and won it, so that the cheery beams playing bo-peep among the quaint oak carving of the panelled walls and ceiling hid themselves abashed before the chill stare of the cold steel-blue winter sky. The white face of the sick girl under this dismal light looked almost as still and lifeless as the face of her grandmother, in powder and patches, simpering down at her from the wall. She sat alone⁠—no book near her, no sign of any womanly occupation in the great chamber, no friend to watch or tend her (for she had refused all companionship); she sat with listless hands drooping upon the velvet cushions of her chair, her head thrown back, as if in utter abandonment of all things on the face of the wide earth, and her dark eyes staring straight before her out into the dead waste of winter snow. + 

So she has sat since early morning; so she will sit till her maid comes to her and leads her to her dreary bedchamber. So she sits when her uncle visits her, and tries every means in his power to awaken a smile, or bring one look of animation into that dead face. Yes, it is the face of a dead woman. Dead to hope, dead to love, dead to the past; still more utterly dead to a future, which, since it cannot restore the dead, can give her nothing. + 

So the short February days, which seem so long to her, fade into the endless winter nights; and for her the morning has no light, nor the darkness any shelter. The consolations of that holy Church, on which for ages past her ancestors have leant for succour as on a rock of mighty and eternal strength, she dare not seek. Her uncle’s chaplain, a white-haired old man who had nursed her in his arms a baby, and who resides at the château, beloved and honoured by all around, comes to her every morning, and on each visit tries anew to win her confidence; but in vain. How can she pour into the ears of this good and benevolent old man her dismal story? Surely he would cast her from him with contumely and horror. Surely he would tell her that for her there is no hope; that even a merciful Heaven, ready to hear the prayer of every sinner, would be deaf to the despairing cries of such a guilty wretch as she. + 

So, impenitent and despairing, she wears out the time, and waits for death. Sometimes she thinks of the arch tempter who smoothed the path of crime and misery in which she had trodden, and, who, in doing so seemed so much a part of herself, and so closely linked with her anguish and her revenge, that she often, in the weakness of her shattered mind, wondered if there were indeed such a person, or whether he might not be only the hideous incarnation of her own dark thoughts. He had spoken though of payment, of reward for his base services. If he were indeed human as her wretched self, why did he not come to claim his due? + 

As the lonely impenitent woman pondered thus in the wintry dusk, her uncle entered the chamber in which she sat. + 

“My dear Valerie,” he said, “I am sorry to disturb you, but a person has just arrived on horseback from Caen. He has travelled, he says, all the way from Paris to see you, and he knows that you will grant him an interview. I told him it was not likely you would do so, and that you certainly would not with my consent. Who can this person be who has the impertinence to intrude at such a time as this? His name is entirely unknown to me.” + 

He gave her a card. She looked at it, and read aloud⁠— + 

“ ‘Monsieur Raymond Marolles.’ The person is quite right, my dear uncle; I will see him.” + 

“But, Valerie⁠—!” remonstrated the marquis. + 

She looked at him, with her mother’s proud Spanish blood mantling in her pale cheek. + 

“My dear uncle,” she said quietly, “it is agreed between us, is it not, that I am in all things my own mistress, and that you have entire confidence in me? When you cease to trust me, we had better bid each other farewell, for we can then no longer live beneath the same roof.” + 

He looked with one imploring glance at the inflexible face, but it was fixed as death. + 

“Tell them,” she said, “to conduct Monsieur Marolles to this apartment. I must see him, and alone.” + 

The marquis left her, and in a few moments Raymond entered the room, ushered in by the groom of the chambers. + 

He had the old air of well-bred and fashionable indifference which so well became him, and carried a light gold-headed riding-whip in his hand. + 

“Mademoiselle,” he said, “will perhaps pardon my intrusion of this evening, which can scarcely surprise her, if she will be pleased to remember that more than a month has elapsed since a melancholy occurrence at the Royal Italian Opera House, and that I have some right to be impatient.” + 

She did not answer him immediately; for at this moment a servant entered, carrying a lamp, which he placed on the table by her side, and afterwards drew the heavy velvet curtains across the great window, shutting out the chill winter night. + 

“You are very much altered, mademoiselle,” said Raymond, as he scrutinized the wan face under the lamplight. + 

“That is scarcely strange,” she answered, in a chilling tone. “I am not yet accustomed to crime, and cannot wear the memory of it lightly.” + 

Her visitor was dusting his polished riding-boot with his handkerchief as he spoke. Looking up with a smile, he said⁠— + 

“Nay, mademoiselle, I give you credit for more philosophy. Why use ugly words? Crime⁠—poison⁠—murder!” He paused between each of these three words, as if every syllable had been some sharp instrument⁠—as if every time he spoke he stabbed her to the heart and stopped to calculate the depth of the wound. “There are no such words as those for beauty and high rank. A person far removed from our sphere offends us, and we sweep him from our path. We might as well regret the venemous insect which, having stung us, we destroy.” + 

She did not acknowledge his words by so much as one glance or gesture, but said coldly⁠— + 

“You were so candid as to confess, monsieur, when you served me, yonder in Paris, that you did so in the expectation of a reward. You are here, no doubt, to claim that reward?” + 

He looked up at her with so strange a light in his blue eyes, and so singular a smile curving the dark moustache which hid his thin arched lips, that in spite of herself she was startled into looking at him anxiously. He was determined that in the game they were playing she should hold no hidden cards, and he was therefore resolved to see her face stripped of its mask of cold indifference. After a minute’s pause he answered her question⁠— + 

“I am.” + 

“It is well, monsieur. Will you be good enough to state the amount you claim for your services?” + 

“You are determined, mademoiselle, it appears,” he said, with the strange light still glittering in his eyes, “you are determined to give me credit for none but the most mercenary sentiments. Suppose I do not claim any amount of money in repayment of my services?” + 

“Then, monsieur, I have wronged you. You are a disinterested villain, and, as such, worthy of the respect of the wicked. But since this is the case, our interview is at end. I am sorry you decline the reward you have earned so worthily, and I have the honour to wish you good evening.” + 

He gave a low musical laugh. “Pardon me, mademoiselle,” he said, “but really your words amuse me. ‘A disinterested villain!’ Believe me, when I tell you that disinterested villainy is as great an impossibility as disinterested virtue. You are mistaken, mademoiselle, but only as to the nature of the reward I come to claim. You would confine the question to one of money. Cannot you imagine that I have acted in the hope of a higher reward than any recompense your banker’s book could afford me?” + 

She looked at him with a puzzled expression, but his face was hidden. He was trifling with his light riding-whip, and looking down at the hearth. After a minute’s pause he lifted his head, and glanced at her with the same dangerous smile. + 

“You cannot guess, then, mademoiselle, the price I claim for my services yonder?” he asked. + 

“No.” + 

“Nay, mademoiselle, reflect.” + 

“It would be useless. I might anticipate your claiming half my fortune, as I am, in a manner, in your power⁠—” + 

“Oh, yes,” he murmured softly, interrupting her, “you are, in a manner, in my power certainly.” + 

“But the possibility of your claiming from me anything except money has never for a moment occurred to me.” + 

“Mademoiselle, when first I saw you I looked at you through an opera-glass from my place in the stalls of the Italian Opera. The glass, mademoiselle, was an excellent one, for it revealed every line and every change in your beautiful face. From my observation of that face I made two or three conclusions about your character, which I now find were not made upon false premises. You are impulsive, mademoiselle, but you are not farseeing. You are strong in your resolutions when once your mind is fixed; but that mind is easily influenced by others. You have passion, genius, courage⁠—rare and beautiful gifts which distinguish you from the rest of womankind; but you have not that power of calculation, that inductive science, which never sees the effect without looking for the cause, which men have christened mathematics. I, mademoiselle, am a mathematician. As such, I sat down to play a deep and dangerous game with you; and as such, now that the hour has come at which I can show my hand, you will see that I hold the winning cards.” + 

“I cannot understand, monsieur⁠—” + 

“Perhaps not, yet. When you first honoured me with an interview you were pleased to call me ‘an adventurer.’ You used the expression as a term of reproach. Strange to say, I never held it in that light. When it pleased Heaven, or Fate⁠—whichever name you please to give the abstraction⁠—to throw me out upon a world with which my life has been one long war, it pleased that Power to give me nothing but my brains for weapons in the great fight. No rank, no rent-roll, neither mother nor father, friend nor patron. All to win, and nothing to lose. How much I had won when I first saw you it would be hard for you, born in those great saloons to which I have struggled from the mire of the streets⁠—it would be very hard, I say, for you to guess. I entered Paris one year ago, possessed of a sum of money which to me was wealth, but which might, perhaps, to you, be a month’s income. I had only one object⁠—to multiply that sum a hundredfold. I became, therefore, a speculator, or, as you call it, ‘an adventurer.’ As a speculator, I took my seat in the stalls of the Opera House the night I first saw you.” + 

She looked at him in utter bewilderment, as he sat in his most careless attitude, playing with the gold handle of his riding-whip, but she did not attempt to speak, and he continued⁠— + 

“I happened to hear from a bystander that you were the richest woman in France. Do you know, mademoiselle, how an adventurer, with a tolerably handsome face and a sufficiently gentlemanly address, generally calculates on enriching himself? Or, if you do not know, can you guess?” + 

“No,” she muttered, looking at him now as if she were in a trance, and he had some strange magnetic power over her. + 

“Then, mademoiselle, I must enlighten you. The adventurer who does not care to grow grey and decrepit in making a fortune by that slow and uncertain mode which people call ‘honest industry,’ looks about him for a fortune ready made and waiting for him to claim it. He makes a wealthy marriage.” + 

“A wealthy marriage?” She repeated the words after him, as if mechanically. + 

“Therefore, mademoiselle, on seeing you, and on hearing the extent of your fortune, I said to myself, ‘That is the woman I must marry!’ ” + 

“Monsieur!” She started indignantly from her reclining attitude; but the effort was too much for her shattered frame, and she sank back exhausted. + 

“Nay, mademoiselle, I did not say ‘That is the woman I will marry,’ but rather, ‘That is the woman I must try to marry;’ for as yet, remember, I did not hold one card in the great game I had to play. I raised my glass, and looked long at your face. A very beautiful face, mademoiselle, as you and your glass have long decided between you. I was⁠—pardon me⁠—disappointed. Had you been an ugly woman, my chances would have been so much better. Had you been disfigured by a hump⁠—(if it had been but the faintest elevation of one white shoulder, prouder, perhaps, than its fellow)⁠—had your hair been tinged with even a suspicion of the ardent hue which prejudice condemns, it would have been a wonderful advantage to me. Vain hope to win you by flattery, when even the truth must sound like flattery. And then, again, one glance told me that you were no pretty simpleton, to be won by a stratagem, or bewildered by romantic speeches. And yet, mademoiselle, I did not despair. You were beautiful; you were impassioned. In your veins ran the purple blood of a nation whose children’s love and hate are both akin to madness! You had, in short, a soul, and you might have a secret!” + 

“Monsieur!” + 

“At any rate it would be no lost time to watch you. I therefore watched. Two or three gentlemen were talking to you; you did not listen to them; you were asked the same question three times, and on the second repetition of it you started, and replied as by an effort. You were weary, or indifferent. Now, as I have told you, mademoiselle, in the science of mathematics we acknowledge no effect without a cause; there was a cause, then, for this distraction on your part. In a few minutes the curtain rose. You were no longer absentminded. Elvino came on the stage⁠—you were all attention. You tried, mademoiselle, not to appear attentive; but your mouth, the most flexible feature in your face, betrayed you. The cause, then, of your late distraction was Elvino, otherwise the fashionable tenor, Gaston de Lancy.” + 

“Monsieur, for pity’s sake⁠—” she cried imploringly. + 

“This was card number one. My chances were looking up. In a few minutes I saw you throw your bouquet on the stage I also saw the note. You had a secret, mademoiselle, and I possessed the clue to it. My cards were good ones. The rest must be done by good play. I knew I was no bad player, and I sat down to the game with the determination to rise a winner.” + 

“Finish the recital of your villainy, monsieur, I beg⁠—it really becomes wearisome.” She tried as she spoke to imitate his own indifference of manner; but she was utterly subdued and broken down, and waited for him to continue as the victim might wait the pleasure of the executioner, and with as little thought of opposing him. + 

“Then, mademoiselle, I have little more to say, except to claim my reward. That reward is⁠—your hand.” He said this as if he never even dreamt of the possibility of a refusal. + 

“Are you mad, monsieur?” She had for some time anticipated this climax, and she felt how utterly powerless she was in the hands of an unscrupulous villain. How unscrupulous she did not yet know. + 

“Nay, mademoiselle, remember! A man has been poisoned. Easy enough to set suspicion, which has already pointed to foul play, more fully at work. Easy enough to prove a certain secret marriage, a certain midnight visit to that renowned and not too highly-respected chemist, Monsieur Blurosset. Easy enough to produce the order for five thousand francs signed by Mademoiselle de Cevennes. And should these proofs not carry with them conviction, I am the fortunate possessor of a wineglass emblazoned with the arms of your house, in which still remains the sediment of a poison well-known to the more distinguished members of the medical science. I think, mademoiselle, these few evidences, added to the powerful motive revealed by your secret marriage, would be quite sufficient to set every newspaper in France busy with the details of a murder unprecedented in the criminal annals of this country. But, mademoiselle, I have wearied you; you are pale, exhausted. I have no wish to hurry you into a rash acceptance of my offer. Think of it, and tomorrow let me hear your decision. Till then, adieu.” He rose as he spoke. + 

She bowed her head in assent to his last proposition, and he left her. + 

Did he know, or did he guess, that there might be another reason to render her acceptance of his hand possible? Did he think that even his obscure name might be a shelter to her in days to come? + 

O Valerie, Valerie, forever haunted by the one beloved creature gone out of this world never to return! Forever pursued by the image of the love which never was⁠—which at its best and brightest was⁠—but a false dream. Most treacherous when most tender, most cruel when most kind, most completely false when it most seemed a holy truth. Weep, Valerie, for the long years to come, whose dismal burden shall forever be, “Oh, never, never more!” + 

IX + 

A Marriage in High Life + 

A month from the time at which this interview took place, everyone worth speaking of in Paris is busy talking of a singular marriage about to be celebrated in that smaller and upper circle which forms the apex of the fashionable pyramid. The niece and heiress of the Marquis de Cevennes is about to marry a gentleman of whom the Faubourg St. Germain knows very little. But though the faubourg knows very little, the faubourg has, notwithstanding, a great deal to say; perhaps all the more from the very slight foundation it has for its assertions. Thus, on Tuesday the faubourg affirms that Monsieur Raymond Marolles is a German, and a political refugee. On Wednesday the faubourg rescinds: he is not a German, he is a Frenchman, the son of an illegitimate son of Philip Egalité, and, consequently, nephew to the king, by whose influence the marriage has been negotiated. The faubourg, in short, has so many accounts of Monsieur Raymond Marolles, that it is quite unnecessary for the Marquis de Cevennes to give any account of him whatever, and he alone, therefore, is silent on the subject. Monsieur Marolles is a very worthy man⁠—a gentleman, of course⁠—and his niece is very much attached to him; beyond this, the marquis does not condescend to enlighten his numerous acquaintance. How much more might the faubourg have to say if it could for one moment imagine the details of a stormy scene which took place between the uncle and niece at the château in Normandy, when, kneeling before the cross, Valerie swore that there was so dreadful a reason for this strange marriage, that, did her uncle know it, he would himself kneel at her feet and implore her to sacrifice herself to save the honour of her noble house. What might have been suggested to the mind of the marquis by these dark hints no one knew; but he ceased to oppose the marriage of the only scion of one of the highest families in France with a man who could tell nothing of himself, except that he had received the education of a gentleman, and had a will strong enough to conquer fortune. + 

The religious solemnization of the marriage was performed with great magnificence at the Madeleine. Wealth, rank, and fashion were equally represented at the dejeûner which succeeded the ceremonial, and Monsieur Marolles found himself the centre of a circle of the old nobility of France. It would have been very difficult, even for an attentive observer, to discover one triumphant flash in those light blue eyes, or one smile playing round the thin lips, by which a stranger might divine that the bridegroom of today was the winner of a deep-laid and villainous scheme. He bore his good fortune, in fact, with such well-bred indifference, that the faubourg immediately set him down as a great man, even if not one of the set which was the seventh heaven in that Parisian paradise. And it would have been equally difficult for any observer to read the secret of the pale but beautiful face of the bride. Cold, serene, and haughty, she smiled a stereotyped smile upon all, and showed no more agitation during the ceremony than she might have done had she been personating a bride in an acted charade. + 

It may be, that the hour when any event, however startling, however painful, could move her from this cold serenity, had forever passed away. It may be, that having outlived all the happiness of her life, she had almost outlived the faculty of feeling or of suffering, and must henceforth exist only for the world⁠—a distinguished actress in the great comedy of fashionable life. + 

She is standing in a window filled with exotics, which form a great screen of dark green leaves and tropical flowers, through which the blue spring sky looks in, clear, bright, and cold. She is talking to an elderly duchess, a languid and rather faded personage, dressed in ruby velvet, and equally distinguished for the magnificence of her lace and the artful composition of her complexion, which is as near an approach to nature as can be achieved by pearl-powder. “And you leave France in a month, to take possession of your estates in South America?” she asks. + 

“In a month, yes,” says Valerie, playing with the large dark leaf of a magnolia. “I am anxious to see my mother’s native country. I am tired of Paris.” + 

“Really? You surprise me!” The languid duchess cannot conceive the possibility of anyone being tired of a Parisian existence. She is deep in her thirty-fourth platonic attachment⁠—the object, a celebrated novelist of the transcendental school; and as at this moment she sees him entering the room by a distant door, she strolls away from the window, carrying her perfumed complexion through the delighted crowd. + 

Perhaps Monsieur Raymond Marolles, standing talking to an old Bonapartist general, whose breast is one constellation of stars and crosses, had only been waiting for this opportunity, for he advanced presently with soft step and graceful carriage towards the ottoman on which his bride had seated herself. She was trifling with her costly bridal bouquet as the bridegroom approached her, plucking the perfumed petals one by one, and scattering them on the ground at her feet in very wantonness. + 

“Valerie,” he said, bending over her, and speaking in tones which, by reason of the softness of their intonation, might have been tender, but for the want of some diviner melody from within the soul of the man; not having which, they had the false jingle of a spurious coin. + 

The spot in which the bride was seated was so sheltered by the flowers and the satin hangings which shrouded the window, that it formed a little alcove, shut out from the crowded room. + 

“Valerie!” he repeated; and finding that she did not answer, he laid his white ungloved hand upon her jewelled wrist. + 

She started to her feet, drawing herself up to her fullest height, and shaking off his hand with a gesture which, had he been the foulest and most loathsome reptile crawling upon the earth’s wide face, could not have bespoken a more intense abhorrence. + 

“There could not be a better time than this,” she said, “to say what I have to say. You may perhaps imagine that to be compelled to speak to you at all is so abhorrent to me, that I shall use the fewest words I can, and use those words in their very fullest sense. You are the incarnation of misery and crime. As such you can perhaps understand how deeply I hate you. You are a villain; and so mean and despicable a villain, that even in the hour of your success you are a creature to be pitied; since from the very depth of your degradation you lack the power to know how much you are degraded! As such I scorn and loathe you, as we loathe those venemous reptiles which, from their noxious qualities, defy our power to handle and exterminate them.” + 

“And as your husband, madame?” Her bitter words discomposed him so little, that he stooped to pick up a costly flower which in her passion she had thrown down, and placed it carefully in his buttonhole. “As your husband, madame? The state of your feelings towards me in that character is perhaps a question more to the point.” + 

“You are right,” she said, casting all assumption of indifference aside, and trembling with scornful rage. “That is the question. Your speculation has been a successful one.” + 

“Entirely successful,” he replied, still arranging the flower in his coat. + 

“You have the command of my fortune⁠—” + 

“A fortune which many princes might be proud to possess,” he interposed, looking at the blossom, not at her. He may possibly have been a brave man, but he was not distinguished for looking in people’s faces, and he did not care about meeting her eyes today. + 

“But if you think the words whose sacred import has been prostituted by us this day have any meaning for you or me; if you think there is a lackey or a groom in this vast city, a ragged mendicant standing at a church-door whom I would not sooner call my husband than the wretch who stands beside me now, you neither know me nor my sex. My fortune you are welcome to. Take it, squander it, scatter it to the winds, spend it to the last farthing on the low vices that are pleasure to such men as you. But dare to address me with but one word from your false lips, dare to approach me so near as to touch but the hem of my dress, and that moment I proclaim the story of our marriage from first to last. Believe me when I say⁠—and if you look me in the face you will believe me⁠—the restraining influence is very slight that holds me back from standing now in the centre of this assembly to proclaim myself a vile and cruel murderess, and you my tempter and accomplice. Believe me when I tell you that it needs but one look of yours to provoke me to blazon this hideous secret, and cry its details in the very marketplace. Believe this, and rest contented with the wages of your work.” + 

Exhausted by her passion, she sank into her seat. Raymond looked at her with a supercilious sneer. He despised her for this sudden outbreak of rage and hatred, for he felt how much his calculating brain and icy temperament made him her superior. + 

“You are somewhat hasty, madame, in your conclusions. Who said I was discontented with the wages of my work, when for those wages alone I have played the game in which, as you say, I am the conqueror? For the rest, I do not think I am the man to break my heart for love of any woman breathing, as I never quite understood what this same weakness of the brain, which men have christened love, really is; and even were the light of dark eyes necessary to my happiness, I need scarcely tell you, madame, that beauty is very indulgent to a man with such a fortune as I am master of today. There is nothing on earth to prevent our agreeing remarkably well; and perhaps this marriage, which you speak of so bitterly, may be as happy as many other unions, which, were I Asmodeus and you my pupil, we could look down on today through the housetops of this good city of Paris.” + 

I wonder whether Monsieur Marolles was right? I wonder whether this thrice-sacred sacrament, ordained by an Almighty Power for the glory and the happiness of the earth, is ever, by any chance, profaned and changed into a bitter mockery or a wicked lie? Whether, by any hazard, these holy words were ever used in any dark hour of this world’s history, to join such people as had been happier far asunder, though they had been parted in their graves; or whether, indeed, this solemn ceremonial has not so often united such people, with a chain no time has power to wear or lengthen, that it has at last, unto some ill-directed minds, sunk to the level of a pitiful and worn-out farce? + 

X + 

Animal Magnetism + 

Nearly a month has passed since this strange marriage, and Monsieur Blurosset is seated at his little green-covered table, the lamplight falling full upon the outspread pack of cards, over which the blue spectacles bend with the same intent and concentrated gaze as on the night when the fate of Valerie hung on the lips of the professor of chemistry and pasteboard. Every now and then, with light and careful fingers, Monsieur Blurosset changes the position of some card or cards. Sometimes he throws himself back in his chair and thinks deeply. The expressionless mouth, which betrays no secrets, tells nothing of the nature of his thoughts. Sometimes he makes notes on a long slip of paper; rows of figures, and problems in algebra, over which he ponders long. By-and-by, for the first time, he looks up and listens. + 

His little apartment has two doors. One, which leads out on to the staircase; a second, which communicates with his bedchamber. This door is open a very little, but enough to show that there is a feeble light burning within the chamber. It is in the direction of this door that the blue spectacles are fixed when Monsieur Blurosset suspends his calculations in order to listen; and it is to a sound within this room that he listens intently. + 

That sound is the laboured and heavy breathing of a man. The room is tenanted. + 

“Good,” says Monsieur Blurosset, presently, “the respiration is certainly more regular. It is really a most wonderful case.” + 

As he says this, he looks at his watch. “Five minutes past eleven⁠—time for the dose,” he mutters. + 

He goes to the little cabinet from which he took the drug he gave to Valerie, and busies himself with some bottles, from which he mixes a draught in a small medicine-glass; he holds it to the light, puts it to his lips, and then passes with it into the next room. + 

There is a sound as if the person to whom he gave the medicine made some faint resistance, but in a few minutes Monsieur Blurosset emerges from the room carrying the empty glass. + 

He reseats himself before the green table, and resumes his contemplation of the cards. Presently a bell rings. “So late,” mutters Monsieur Blurosset; “it is most likely someone for me.” He rises, sweeps the cards into one pack, and going over to the door of his bedroom, shuts its softly. When he has done so, he listens for a moment with his ear close to the woodwork. There is not a sound of the breathing within. + 

He has scarcely done so when the bell rings for the second time. He opens the door communicating with the staircase, and admits a visitor. The visitor is a woman, very plainly dressed, and thickly veiled. + 

“Monsieur Blurosset?” she says, inquiringly. + 

“The same, madame. Pray enter, and be good enough to be seated.” He hands her a chair at a little distance from the green table, and as far away as he can place it from the door of the bedchamber: she sits down, and as he appears to wait for her to speak, she says⁠— + 

“I have heard of your fame, monsieur, and come⁠—” + 

“Nay, madame,” he says, interrupting her, “you can raise your veil if you will. I perfectly remember you; I never forget voices, Mademoiselle de Cevennes.” + 

There is no shade of impertinence in his manner as he says this; he speaks as though he were merely stating a simple fact which it is as well for her to know. He has the air, in all he does or says, of a scientific man who has no existence out of the region of science. + 

Valerie⁠—for it is indeed she⁠—raises her veil. + 

“Monsieur,” she says, “you are candid with me, and it will be the best for me to be frank with you. I am very unhappy⁠—I have been so for some months past; and I shall be so until my dying day. One reason alone has prevented my coming to you long ere this, to offer you half my fortune for such another drug as that which you sold to me some time past. You may judge, then, that reason is a very powerful one, since, though death alone can give me peace, I yet do not wish to die. But I wish to have at my command a means of certain death. I may never use it at all: I swear never to use it on anyone but myself!” + 

All this time the blue spectacles have been fixed on her face, and now Monsieur Blurosset interrupts her⁠— + 

“And now for such a drug, mademoiselle, you would offer me a large sum of money?” he asks. + 

“I would, monsieur.” + 

“I cannot sell it you,” he says, as quietly as though he were speaking of some unimportant trifle. + 

“You cannot?” she exclaims. + 

“No, mademoiselle. I am a man absorbed entirely in the pursuit of science. My life has been so long devoted to science only, that perhaps I may have come to hold everything beyond the circle of my little laboratory too lightly. You asked me some time since for a poison, or at least you were introduced to me by a pupil of mine, at whose request I sold you a drug. I had been twenty years studying the properties of that drug. I may not know them fully yet, but I expect to do so before this year is out. I gave it to you, and, for all I know to the contrary, it may in your hands have done some mischief.” He pauses here and looks at her for a moment; but she has borne the knowledge of her crime so long, and it has become so much a part of her, that she does not flinch under his scrutiny. + 

“I placed a weapon in your hands,” he continues, “and I had no right to do so. I never thought of this at that time; but I have thought of it since. For the rest, I have no inducement to sell you the drug you ask for. Money is of little use to me except in the necessary expenses of the chemicals I use. These”⁠—he points to the cards⁠—“give me enough for those expenses; beyond those, my wants amount to some few francs a week.” + 

“Then you will not sell me this drug? You are determined?” she asks. + 

“Quite determined.” + 

She shrugs her shoulders. “As you please. There is always some river within reach of the wretched; and you may depend, monsieur, that they who cannot support life will find a means of death. I will wish you good evening.” + 

She is about to leave the room, when she stops, with her hand upon the lock of the door, and turns round. + 

She stands for a few minutes motionless and silent, holding the handle of the door, and with her other hand upon her heart. Monsieur Blurosset has the faintest shadow of a look of surprise in his expressionless countenance. + 

“I don’t know what is the matter with me tonight,” she says, “but something seems to root me to this spot. I cannot leave this room.” + 

“You are ill, mademoiselle, perhaps. Let me give you some restorative.” + 

“No, no, I am not ill.” + 

Again she is silent; her eyes are fixed, not on the chemist, but with a strange vacant gaze upon the wall before her. Suddenly she asks him⁠— + 

“Do you believe in animal magnetism?” + 

“Madame, I have spent half my lifetime in trying to answer that question, and I can only answer it now by halves. Sometimes no; sometimes yes.” + 

“Do you believe it possible for one soul to be gifted with a mysterious prescience of the emotions of another soul?⁠—to be sad when that is sad, though utterly unconscious of any cause for sadness; and to rejoice when that is happy, having no reason for rejoicing?” + 

“I cannot answer your question, madame, because it involves another. I never yet have discovered what the soul really is. Animal magnetism, if it ever become a science, will be a material science, and the soul escapes from all material dissection.” + 

“Do you believe, then, that by some subtle influence, whose nature is unknown to us, we may have a strange consciousness of the presence or the approach of some people, conveyed to us by neither the hearing nor the sight, but rather as if we felt that they were near?” + 

“You believe this possible, madame, or you would not ask the question.” + 

“Perhaps. I have sometimes thought that I had this consciousness; but it related to a person who is dead⁠—” + 

“Yes, madame.” + 

“And⁠—you will think me mad; Heaven knows, I think myself so⁠—I feel as if that person were near me tonight.” + 

The chemist rises, and, going over to her, feels her pulse. It is rapid and intermittent. She is evidently violently agitated, though she is trying with her utmost power to control herself. + 

“But you say that this person is dead?” he asks. + 

“Yes; he died some months since.” + 

“You know that there are no such things as ghosts?” + 

“I am perfectly convinced of that!” + 

“And yet⁠—?” he asks. + 

“And yet I feel as though the dead were near me tonight. Tell me⁠—there is no one in this room but ourselves?” + 

“No one.” + 

“And that door⁠—it leads⁠—” + 

“Into the room in which I sleep.” + 

“And there is no one there?” she asks. + 

“No one. Let me give you a sedative, madame: you are certainly ill.” + 

“No, no, monsieur; you are very good. I am still weak from the effects of a long illness. That weakness may be the cause of my silly fancies of tonight. Tomorrow I leave France, perhaps forever.” + 

She leaves him; but on the steep dark staircase she pauses for a moment, and seems irresolute, as if half determined to return: then she hurries on, and in a minute is in the street. + 

She takes a circuitous route towards the house in which she lives. So plainly dressed, and thickly veiled, no one stops to notice her as she walks along. + 

Her husband, Monsieur Marolles, is engaged at a dinner given by a distinguished member of the chamber of peers. Decidedly he has held winning cards in the game of life. And she, forever haunted by the past, with weary step goes onward to a dark and unknown future. + 