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Mysteries of Paris, V3 by Eugene Sue

E >> Eugene Sue >> Mysteries of Paris, V3




"But these are frightful torments!"

"Frightful! ay, frightful! But death! but annihilation! but to lose forever
this remembrance, as vivid as reality; but to renounce these recollections,
which torture me, devour me, and consume me! No! no! no! Live! live--poor,
despised, scorned--live in the galleys, but live! so that thought
remains--since this infernal creature has all my thought--is all my
thought!"

"Jacques," said Polidori, in a grave tone, which strangely contrasted with
his habitual bitter irony, "I have seen much suffering, but never tortures
that approach yours. He who holds us in his power could not have been more
unmerciful. He has condemned you to live--to await death in terrible
agonies--for this avowal explains to me the alarming symptoms which every
day develop in you, and of which I sought in vain the cause."

"But these symptoms are nothing serious! It is exhaustion; it is the
reaction of my sorrows! I am not in danger. Is it not so?"

"No, no; but your position is a critical one; you must not make it worse.
Certain thoughts must be driven away, otherwise you run great risk."

"I will do what you wish so I may live, for I do not wish to die. Oh! the
priests talk of the damned! never could one imagine for them a punishment
equal to mine. Tortured by passion and avarice, I have two bleeding wounds
instead of one, and I feel both of them equally. The loss of my gold is
frightful to me, but death would be more frightful still. I wish to live;
my life may be a torture without end, and I dare not call upon death, for
death annihilates my fatal happiness, this phantom of my thoughts, in which
Cecily constantly appears."

"You have at least the consolation," said Polidori, resuming his usual
calmness, "of thinking upon the good that you have done in expiation of
your crimes."

"Yes, rail--you are right; turn me over on the burning coals. You know
well, wretch, that I hate humanity; you know well that these expiations
which are imposed upon me, only inspire me with hatred against those who
oblige me to act thus, and against those who profit by it. Thunder and
blood! To think that, while I drag along a frightful life, these men whom I
execrate have their misery solaced; that this widow and her daughter will
thank God for the fortune I restore them--that this Morel and his daughter
will live in ease and comfort--that this Germain will have an honorable
situation assured to him for life! And this priest! this priest, who
blessed me when my heart was swimming in gall and blood--I could have
stabbed him! Oh! it is too much! No! no!" he cried, covering his face with
his hands: "my head bursts--my ideas are confused--I cannot resist such
attacks of impotent rage! And all this for you! Cecily! Cecily! do you know
how much I suffer? do you know, Cecily--demon--brought up from below!"

Ferrand, exhausted by this frightful raving, fell back foaming on his
chair, and threw his arms wildly about, uttering hollow and inarticulate
sounds. This fit of convulsive and despairing rage by no means astonished
Polidori. Possessing a consummate medical experience, he at once saw that
Ferrand's anguish at seeing himself dispossessed of his fortune, joined to
his passion for Cecily, had lighted up the flames of a devouring fever.
Suddenly some one knocked hurriedly at the door of the cabinet.

"Jacques!" said Polidori, to the notary; "Jacques! recover yourself; here
is some one."

The notary did not hear him. Half lying on his desk, be writhed with
convulsive spasms. Polidori went to open the door, and saw the head clerk,
who, pale and alarmed, cried, "I must speak at once to M. Ferrand."

"Silence! he is at this moment lying ill; he cannot understand you," said
Polidori, in a whisper; and coming out from the cabinet, he closed the door
after him.

"Oh! sir," cried the clerk, "you are the best friend of M. Ferrand; come to
his assistance; there is not a moment to be lost."

"What do you mean?"

"I went, according to the orders of M. Ferrand, to tell the Countess
M'Gregor that he could not visit her to-day as she desired."

"Well?"

"This lady, who appears to be now out of danger, made me come into her
room. She cried, in a threatening tone, 'Return, and tell M. Ferrand that
if he is not here in an hour he shall be arrested for forgery, for the
child which he pretended was dead is yet alive. I know to whom he delivered
her--I know where she is.'"

[Footnote: The reader will remember that the countess thought
Fleur-de-Marit was still at Saint Lazare, according to La Chouette's
account. ]

"The woman is crazy," answered Polidori, coldly, shrugging his shoulders.

"You think so, sir."

"I am sure of it."

"I thought so at first; but the assertions of her ladyship."

"Her head, doubtless, has been weakened by illness, and visionaries always
believe in their visions."

"I ought to tell you also, sir, that at the moment when I left the chamber
of the countess, one of her women, entered precipitately, saying, 'His
highness will be here in an hour!'"

"It is the prince!" thought Polidori. "He at the house of the Countess
Sarah, whom he was never to see again! I do not know wherefore, but I do
not like this meeting; it may make our position worse." Then, turning to
the clerk, he said, "Once more I repeat that this is nothing. I will,
however, inform M. Ferrand of what you have just related to me."




CHAPTER XIV.

RUDOLPH AND SARAH.


We will conduct the reader to the countess's, whom a salutary crisis had
snatched from the delirium and sufferings which, during several days, had
caused the most serious fears for her life. The day began to close. Sarah,
seated in a large arm-chair, and supported by her brother, Thomas Seyton,
was attentively surveying herself in a mirror, which was held by one of her
women kneeling before her. This scene passed in the saloon where La
Chouette had made her murderous attempt. The countess was as pale as
marble, which gave a bolder relief to her dark eyes and hair; an ample
white muslin wrapper completely concealed her form.

"Give me the coral coronet," she said to one of her women, in a weak but
imperious voice.

"Betty will fasten it," said Thomas Seyton; "you will fatigue yourself; you
are already so imprudent."

"The coral!" repeated she, impatiently, as she took the jewel and placed it
on her brow. "Now fasten it, and leave me," she added, to her women.

As they were retiring, she said,

"Let them show M. Ferrand into the little blue saloon; and," she continued,
with an expression of ill-concealed pride, "as soon as his Serene Highness
the Grand Duke of Gerolstein arrives, he must be ushered in here. At
length," said Sarah, throwing herself back in her chair as soon as she was
alone with her brother, "at length I touch this crown--the dream of my
life! The prediction is about to be accomplished!"

"Sarah, calm your emotion," said her brother, earnestly. "Yesterday they
still despaired of your life; disappointment now might cause a relapse."

"You are right, Tom. The fall would be dreadful, for my hopes have never
been nearer being realized than now! I am certain that what has prevented
me from sinking under my sufferings has been my constant hope to profit by
the important revelation which this woman made me at the moment when she
stabbed me."

"Even during your delirium you constantly referred to this idea."

"Because this idea alone sustained my flickering life. What a hope!
Sovereign princess! almost a queen," she added, with rapture.

"Once more, Sarah; no mad dreams; the awakening will be terrible!"

"Mad dreams? How! when Rudolph shall know that this young girl, now a
prisoner at Saint Lazare, is our child, do you think that---"

Seyton interrupted his sister.

"I believe," he replied, with bitterness, "that princes place reasons of
state and political proprieties before natural ties."

"Do you count so little on my address?"

"The prince is not the same fond and enamored youth whom you seduced in
days gone by."

"Do you know why I have wished to ornament my hair with this band of coral?
and why I have put on this white robe? It is because, the first time
Rudolph saw me at the court of Gerolstein, I was dressed in white, and I
wore the same band of coral in my hair."

"How?" said Thomas Seyton, looking at his sister with surprise: "you wish
to evoke these memories; do you not, on the contrary, dread their
influence?"

"I know Rudolph better than you. Doubtless, my features, now changed by age
and sufferings, are no longer those of the young girl of sixteen he so
wildly loved--whom he has alone loved--for I was his first love. And this
love, unique in the life of man, leaves always in his heart ineffaceable
traces. Believe me, brother, the sight of this ornament will awaken in
Rudolph, not only the memories of his love, but also those of his youth;
and to men the recollection of their first emotions is always sweet and
precious."

"But to these soft memories are joined others of terrible import. Do you
forget the fatal termination of your love? The conduct of the prince's
father toward you? Your obstinate silence when Rudolph, after your marriage
with Earl M'Gregor, demanded your child, then quite an infant? your
daughter, of whose death, ten years before, you informed him in a cold
letter? Do you forget that since that time the prince has only felt for you
contempt--hatred?"

"Pity has taken the place of hatred. Since he has known that I was in a
dying state, each day has he sent Baron de Graun to make inquiries."

"From humanity."

"Just now he answered my note; said that he would come here. This
concession is immense, my brother."

"He believes you dying. He supposes that he is coming to take a last
farewell. You were wrong not to write to him what you are now about to
disclose."

[Illustration: THE LITTLE MENDICANT]

"I know why I act thus. This revelation will fill him with surprise and
joy, and I shall be present to profit by his first burst of tenderness.
To-day, or never, he shall say to me, 'A marriage would make the birth of
our child legitimate.' If he says so, his word is sacred, and the hope of
all my life will at length be realized."

"If he makes you this promise--yes."

At this moment was heard the noise of a carriage, which entered the
court-yard. "It is he--it is Rudolph!" cried Sarah.

"Yes, it is the prince, he is getting out of the carriage."

"Leave me alone--this is the decisive moment," said Sarah, with immovable
self-control; for a towering ambition and unbounded selfishness had always
been and still were the ruling motives of this woman.

After a momentary hesitation, Thomas Seyton drew near to his sister and
said, "It is I who will inform the prince how your daughter has been saved;
this interview will be too dangerous for you; a violent emotion would kill
you."

"Your hand, my brother," said Sarah.

Then, placing on her impassable heart the hand of Seyton, she added, with a
forced and icy smile, "Am I agitated?"

"No, in truth, not at all," said Seyton, with surprise; "I know what
command you have over yourself. But at such a moment--where for you will be
decided--a crown--or death--your calmness absolutely confounds me."

"Why this astonishment, my brother? did you not know that nothing--no,
nothing has ever caused this marble heart to quicken its pulsations? It
will only palpitate when I shall feel placed on my brow the sovereign
crown. I hear Rudolph--leave me."

"But--"

"Leave me!" cried Sarah, in a tone so imperious, so resolute, that her
brother left the apartment some moments before the prince was introduced.
When Rudolph entered the saloon, his countenance expressed pity; but seeing
the countess seated in the chair decked with her jewels, he drew back with
surprise, and his physiognomy became immediately somber and suspicious.

The countess, divining his thoughts, said to him in a soft and feeble
voice, "You thought to find me dying; you came to receive my last
farewell!"

"I have always regarded as sacred the last wishes of the dying, but it
appears I have been deceived."

"Reassure yourself," said Sarah, interrupting Rudolph. "I have not deceived
you; there remain for me but a few hours to live. Pardon me a last act of
coquetry; I wished to spare you the usual attendants of a death-bed. I
wished to die dressed as I was the first time I saw you. Alas! after ten
years of separation, I see you again! Thanks--oh, thanks! But in your
turn, render thanks to heaven for having moved you to come to listen to my
last prayer. If you had refused me, I had carried with me to the tomb a
secret which is going to make the joy, the happiness of your life. Joy
mixed with some tears, like all other human felicity; but this felicity!
you would buy it at the price of half the remaining days of your life!"

"What do you mean to say?" demanded the prince, with surprise.

"Yes, Rudolph, if you had not come, this secret would have followed me to
the tomb--it had been my sole vengeance; and yet--no, no, I should not have
had this terrible courage. Although you would have caused me much
suffering, I should have divided with you this supreme happiness, which,
more fortunate than I, you will a long time enjoy."

"But, once more, madame, what means all this?"

"When you know it, you will comprehend my delay in informing you, for you
will regard this revelation as a miracle from heaven. But, strange
thought--I, who with one word can cause you the greatest happiness that you
have ever experienced--I feel, although now the minutes of my life are
counted--I feel an indescribable satisfaction in prolonging your suspense;
and, besides, I know your heart, and, in spite of the firmness of your
character, I should fear to announce to you, without preparation, a
discovery so incredible. The emotions of sudden joy have also their
dangers."

"Your pallor increases--you with difficulty restrain a violent agitation,"
said Rudolph; "all this proves that something grave and important----"

"Grave and important!" repeated Sarah, in a faltering voice, for,
notwithstanding her habitual immobility, in reflecting upon the immense
importance of the revelation she was about to make to Rudolph, she felt
herself more agitated than she could have thought possible. After a
moment's silence, Sarah, no longer able to restrain herself, cried,
"Rudolph, our child is not dead."

"Our child!"

"I tell you she lives!" These words, the accent of truth with which they
were pronounced, moved the prince to the very bottom of his heart.

"Our child!" he repeated, advancing hastily toward Sarah; "our child! my
daughter!"

"She is not dead; I have certain proofs; I know where she is--to-morrow you
shall see her."

"My daughter! my child!" repeated Rudolph, as if in a dream; "can it be
possible? is she alive?"

Then, suddenly reflecting on the great improbability of this relation, and
fearing to be the dupe of Sarah, he cried, "No, no; it is a dream! it is
impossible, you deceive me; it is some unworthy deceit!"

"Rudolph, listen to me!"

"No, I know your ambition--I know of what you are capable; I can fathom the
object of this fabrication!"

"Well! you speak the truth. I am capable of everything. Yes, I did wish to
deceive you. Yes, some days before I received my mortal wound I did wish to
find a young girl, whom I would have presented to you in the place of our
child whom you regret so bitterly."

"Enough--oh! enough, madame."

"After this confession you will believe me, perhaps; or, rather, you will
be forced to give credence to the proofs."

"To the proofs?"

"Yes, Rudolph; I repeat it, I have wished to deceive you, to substitute an
obscure girl in the place of her we mourn; but Heaven willed that, at the
moment when I was about to carry the project into execution, I should be
stricken down."

"You! at this moment!"

"Heaven has also willed that they should propose to me to play this
part--do you know whom? our daughter."

"Are you delirious? In the name of heaven---"

"I am not delirious, Rudolph. In this casket, among some papers and a
portrait, which will prove to you the truth of what I say, you will find a
paper stained with my blood."

"With your blood?"

"The woman who informed me that our child was still living dictated to me
this revelation--then I was stabbed by a poniard."

"And who was she? how did she know?"

"It was to her our child was delivered--quite an infant--after having
falsely reported her death."

"But this woman--her name? can she be believed? where did you become
acquainted with her?"

"I tell you, Rudolph, that all this is fate--providential. Some months
since, you rescued a poor girl from poverty, to send her to the country--is
it not so?"

"Yes, to Bouqueval."

"Jealousy and hatred drove me wild. I caused this young girl to be carried
off by the woman of whom I have spoken."

"And she took the unhappy child to Saint Lazare?"

"Where she yet is."

"She is there no longer. Ah! you do not know, madame, the frightful evil
you have caused by tearing this poor child from the retreat where I had
placed her; but--"

"The girl no longer at Saint Lazare?" cried the lady in alarm; "and you
speak of a frightful evil!"

"A monster of cupidity had an interest in her death. They have drowned her,
madame; but answer, you say--"

"My daughter!" cried Sarah, interrupting Rudolph, and rising on her feet,
immovable as a marble statue.

"What does she say? good heavens!" cried Rudolph.

"My child!" repeated Sarah, whose face became livid and frightful from
despair; "they have killed my child!"

"The Goualeuse your child!" repeated Rudolph, recoiling with horror.

"The Goualeuse! yes! that is the name the woman mentioned--this woman
called La Chouette. Dead--dead!" cried Sarah, still motionless, her eyes
fixed and glaring; "they have killed her!"

"Sarah!" replied Rudolph, as pale and alarmed as she, "calm yourself--
answer me--La Goualeuse--this girl whom you caused to be carried off by
La Chouette from Bouqueval, was--"

"Our child!"

"She!"

"And they have killed her."

"Oh!--no, no--you rave--this cannot be. You know not, no, you know not how
frightful this is. Sarah! compose yourself; speak to me tranquilly. Seat
yourself--calm yourself. Often there are appearances--resemblances which
deceive; one is inclined to believe what one desires. It is not a reproach
I make you; but explain to me well--tell me all the reasons you have to
credit this, for it cannot be--no, no; it must not be!--it is not so!"

After a moment's pause, the countess collected her thoughts, and said to
Rudolph in an expiring voice, "Hearing of your marriage, thinking to be
married myself, I could not keep our daughter with me; she was then four
years old."

"But at this epoch I asked you for her with prayers," cried Rudolph, in a
heartrending tone, "and my letters remained unanswered. The only one you
wrote me announced her death."

"I wished to avenge myself for your contempt by refusing you your child.
That was unworthy; but listen to me: I feel it--my life is drawing to a
close; this last blow has overwhelmed me."

"No, no! I do not believe you--I do not wish to believe you! La Goualeuse
my child! Oh, you would not have this so!"

"Listen to me, I say. When she was four years old my brother commissioned
Madame Seraphin, widow of one of his old servants, to bring up the child
until she was old enough to be placed at school. The sum destined for her
future support was placed by my brother with a notary renowned for his
probity. The letters of this man, and of Madame Seraphin, addressed at this
period to me and my brother, are there, in that casket. At the end of a
year they wrote me that the health of my child failed; eight months after,
that she was dead; and they sent me the official notification of her
decease. At this time, Madame Seraphin entered the service of Jacques
Ferrand, after having delivered our child to La Chouette by the hands of a
wretch now in the galleys at Rochefort. I began to write this confession of
La Chouette when she wounded me. This paper is there, with a portrait of
our daughter at the age of four years. Examine all--letters, confessions,
portrait--and you, who have seen her--this unfortunate child--judge."

At these words, which exhausted her strength, Sarah fell back almost
lifeless in her chair. Rudolph was thunderstruck at this revelation. There
are some misfortunes so unlooked for, so horrible, that we are unwilling to
believe them until compelled by overwhelming evidence. Rudolph, persuaded
of the death of Fleur-de-Marie, had but one hope left, which was to
convince himself that she was not his child. With a frightful calmness,
which alarmed Sarah, he approached the table, opened the casket, and fell
to reading the letters one by one, and examining, with scrupulous
attention, the papers which accompanied them. These letters, stamped at the
post-office, written to Sarah and her brother by the notary and by Madame
Seraphin, related to the childhood of Fleur-de-Marie, and to the investment
of the funds destined for her support. Rudolph could not doubt the
authenticity of this correspondence. The confession of La Chouette was
confirmed by the information obtained (of which we have spoken at the
commencement of this story) by order of Rudolph, which pointed out a man
named Pierre Tournemine, a prisoner at Rochefort, as the man who had
received Fleur-de-Marie from Madame Seraphin to deliver her to La
Chouette--to La Chouette, whom the unfortunate child herself had recognized
before Rudolph, at the tapis-franc of the Ogress. Rudolph could no longer
doubt the identity of these persons and of the Goualeuse. The official
notice concerning her death appeared in conformity to law; but Ferrand had
himself acknowledged to Cecily that this forged notice had served for the
spoliation of a considerable sum formerly settled as an annuity on the girl
whom he had caused to be drowned by Nicholas Martial, by the Ravageurs'
Island.

It was, then, with growing and alarming anguish that Rudolph acquired, in
spite of himself, the terrible conviction that the Goualeuse was his
daughter, and that she was dead. Unfortunately for him, all seemed to
confirm this belief. Before condemning Jacques Ferrand on the proofs given
by the notary himself to Cecily, the prince, his deep interest for the
Goualeuse, having caused inquiries to be made at Asnieres, had learned
that, in fact, two women, one old and the other young, and dressed in a
peasant's costume, had been drowned in going to Ravageurs' Island, and that
rumor accused the Martials of this new crime. Here we must state that, in
spite of the attention of Dr. Griffon, of the Count de Saint Remy, and of
La Louve, Fleur-de-Marie, for a long time in a desperate situation, had
hardly become convalescent, and that her weakness, mental and physical, was
such, that she had not been able up to this time to inform Madame George or
Rudolph of her position. This concourse of circumstances could not leave
the slightest hope to the prince. A last proof was reserved for him. At
length he cast his eyes on the miniature, which he had almost feared to
look at. The blow was frightful. In this infantine and charming face,
already radiant with that divine beauty which belongs to the cherubim, he
recognized in a striking manner the features of Fleur-de-Marie; her Grecian
nose, her noble forehead, her little mouth; already slightly serious. For,
said Madame Seraphin to Sarah, in one of her letters which Rudolph had just
read, "The child asks always for its mother, and is very sad."

There were her large blue eyes, of a blue so pure and soft--the bluebell's
blue, as La Chouette had said to Sarah on recognizing in this miniature the
features of the unfortunate child whom she had persecuted, in her infancy,
under the name of LaPegriotte, and as a young girl under the name of La
Goualeuse.

At the sight of this miniature, Rudolph's tumultuous and violent feelings
were stifled by his tears. He fell back, heartbroken, on a chair, and
concealed his face in his hands, sobbing convulsively.




CHAPTER XV.

VENGEANCE.


While Rudolph wept bitterly, the features of Sarah changed perceptibly. At
the moment when she thought she was about to realize the dream of her
ambitious life, the last hope, which had until now sustained her, was
crushed forever. This dreadful disappointment could not fail to have on her
health, momentarily ameliorated, a mortal reaction. Fallen back in her
chair, trembling with a feverish agitation, her hands crossed and clasped
on her knees, her eyes fixed, the countess awaited with alarm the first
word from Rudolph. Knowing the impetuous character of the prince, she
feared that the sad grief, which drew so many tears from this inflexible
and resolute man, would be succeeded by some terrible transports of
passion. Suddenly Rudolph raised his head, wiped away his tears, arose, and
approached Sarah, his arms crossed on his bosom, his manner menacing and
without pity. He looked at her for some moments in silence; then he said,
in a hollow voice: "This ought to be. I have drawn the sword against my
father; I am stricken in my child. Just punishment of the parricide. Listen
to me, madame---"

Alex Ross: Winner of the Guardian first book award
Stuart Evers: They made a real difference to Britain's literary culture, and it would be a terrible shame if they got forgotten in the age of Amazon

Congratulations to Alex Ross, winner of the Guardian first book award
One of only seven copies of The Tales of Beedle the Bard handwritten by JK Rowling is unveiled at the New York Public Library as the mass market edition goes on sale around the world

The arcane first book that's also a bestseller

Congratulations to Alex Ross, the deserving winner of the 2008 Guardian first book award. There's been a massed chorus of appreciation for this work already, so I shan't add much, except to say that what I particular enjoy about it is the connections it makes between musics and musicians. I'm the sort of person who goes to a lot of concerts, plays the violin, has some kind of grasp of how the history of music works – but frankly, it's all a bit fragmented and vague, since I have never studied the history of music properly and I can't really do the textbook musicological stuff. As I was reading Ross's book, it dawned on me that most of my knowledge of 20th-century music was based on reading the occasional Grove essay – and mostly, reading programme notes. What Ross's book does brilliantly is knit all these odd and isolated bits of knowledge together, so that everything starts to synthesise rather wonderfully, and you get to know what Sibelius thought of Stravinsky, say (not much – "stillborn affectations" was the phrase employed); or that Alban Berg was lionised by George Gershwin; or that David Bowie referenced Philip Glass and vice versa. That, and then the material is set against its historical and political background, such that this is a book for history-lovers as much as music-lovers.

By the way, there's a pungent criticism of the new-music scene by Hans Eisler in 1928, as quoted by Ross. How much have things changed, I wonder?

"The big music festivals have become downright stock exchanges, where the value of the works is assessed and contracts for the coming season are settled. Yet all this noise is carried out in the vacuum of a bell glass, so to speak, so that not a sound can be heard outside. An empty officiousness celebrates orgies of inbreeding, while there is a complete lack of interest or participation of a public of any kind."

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