The Thirteen
“My name is Ida,” she said, “and if that’s Madame Jules to whom I have the advantage of speaking, I’ve come to tell her all I have in my heart against her. It is very wrong, when a woman is set up and in her furniture, as you are here, to come and take from a poor girl a man with whom I’m as good as married, morally, and who did talk of making it right by marrying me before the municipality. There’s plenty of handsome young men in the world – ain’t there, monsieur? – to take your fancy, without going after a man of middle age, who makes my happiness. Yah! I haven’t got a fine hotel like this, but I’ve got my love, I have. I hate handsome men and money; I’m all heart, and – ”
Madame Jules turned to her husband.
“You will allow me, monsieur, to hear no more of all this,” she said, retreating to her bedroom.
“If the lady lives with you, I’ve made a mess of it; but I can’t help that,” resumed Ida. “Why does she come after Monsieur Ferragus every day?”
“You are mistaken, mademoiselle,” said Jules, stupefied; “my wife is incapable – ”
“Ha! so you’re married, you two,” said the grisette showing some surprise. “Then it’s very wrong, monsieur, – isn’t it? – for a woman who has the happiness of being married in legal marriage to have relations with a man like Henri – ”
“Henri! who is Henri?” said Jules, taking Ida by the arm and pulling her into an adjoining room that his wife might hear no more.
“Why, Monsieur Ferragus.”
“But he is dead,” said Jules.
“Nonsense; I went to Franconi’s with him last night, and he brought me home – as he ought. Besides, your wife can tell you about him; didn’t she go there this very afternoon at three o’clock? I know she did, for I waited in the street, and saw her, – all because that good-natured fellow, Monsieur Justin, whom you know perhaps, – a little old man with jewelry who wears corsets, – told me that Madame Jules was my rival. That name, monsieur, sounds mighty like a feigned one; but if it is yours, excuse me. But this I say, if Madame Jules was a court duchess, Henri is rich enough to satisfy all her fancies, and it is my business to protect my property; I’ve a right to, for I love him, that I do. He is my first inclination; my happiness and all my future fate depends on it. I fear nothing, monsieur; I am honest; I never lied, or stole the property of any living soul, no matter who. If an empress was my rival, I’d go straight to her, empress as she was; because all pretty women are equals, monsieur – ”
“Enough! enough!” said Jules. “Where do you live?”
“Rue de la Corderie-du-Temple, number 14, monsieur, – Ida Gruget, corset-maker, at your service, – for we make lots of corsets for men.”
“Where does the man whom you call Ferragus live?”
“Monsieur,” she said, pursing up her lips, “in the first place, he’s not a man; he is a rich monsieur, much richer, perhaps, than you are. But why do you ask me his address when your wife knows it? He told me not to give it. Am I obliged to answer you? I’m not, thank God, in a confessional or a police-court; I’m responsible only to myself.”
“If I were to offer you ten thousand francs to tell me where Monsieur Ferragus lives, how then?”
“Ha! n, o, no, my little friend, and that ends the matter,” she said, emphasizing this singular reply with a popular gesture. “There’s no sum in the world could make me tell you. I have the honor to bid you good-day. How do I get out of here?”
Jules, horror-struck, allowed her to go without further notice. The whole world seemed to crumble beneath his feet, and above him the heavens were falling with a crash.
“Monsieur is served,” said his valet.
The valet and the footman waited in the dining-room a quarter of an hour without seeing master or mistress.
“Madame will not dine to-day,” said the waiting-maid, coming in.
“What’s the matter, Josephine?” asked the valet.
“I don’t know,” she answered. “Madame is crying, and is going to bed. Monsieur has no doubt got some love-affair on hand, and it has been discovered at a very bad time. I wouldn’t answer for madame’s life. Men are so clumsy; they’ll make you scenes without any precaution.”
“That’s not so,” said the valet, in a low voice. “On the contrary, madame is the one who – you understand? What times does monsieur have to go after pleasures, he, who hasn’t slept out of madame’s room for five years, who goes to his study at ten and never leaves it till breakfast, at twelve. His life is all known, it is regular; whereas madame goes out nearly every day at three o’clock, Heaven knows where.”
“And monsieur too,” said the maid, taking her mistress’s part.
“Yes, but he goes straight to the Bourse. I told him three times that dinner was ready,” continued the valet, after a pause. “You might as well talk to a post.”
Monsieur Jules entered the dining-room.
“Where is madame?” he said.
“Madame is going to bed; her head aches,” replied the maid, assuming an air of importance.
Monsieur Jules then said to the footmen composedly: “You can take away; I shall go and sit with madame.”
He went to his wife’s room and found her weeping, but endeavoring to smother her sobs with her handkerchief.
“Why do you weep?” said Jules; “you need expect no violence and no reproaches from me. Why should I avenge myself? If you have not been faithful to my love, it is that you were never worthy of it.”
“Not worthy?” The words were repeated amid her sobs and the accent in which they were said would have moved any other man than Jules.
“To kill you, I must love more than perhaps I do love you,” he continued. “But I should never have the courage; I would rather kill myself, leaving you to your – happiness, and with – whom! – ”
He did not end his sentence.
“Kill yourself!” she cried, flinging herself at his feet and clasping them.
But he, wishing to escape the embrace, tried to shake her off, dragging her in so doing toward the bed.
“Let me alone,” he said.
“No, no, Jules!” she cried. “If you love me no longer I shall die. Do you wish to know all?”
“Yes.”
He took her, grasped her violently, and sat down on the edge of the bed, holding her between his legs. Then, looking at that beautiful face now red as fire and furrowed with tears, —
“Speak,” he said.
Her sobs began again.
“No; it is a secret of life and death. If I tell it, I – No, I cannot. Have mercy, Jules!”
“You have betrayed me – ”
“Ah! Jules, you think so now, but soon you will know all.”
“But this Ferragus, this convict whom you go to see, a man enriched by crime, if he does not belong to you, if you do not belong to him – ”
“Oh, Jules!”
“Speak! Is he your mysterious benefactor? – the man to whom we owe our fortune, as persons have said already?”
“Who said that?”
“A man whom I killed in a duel.”
“Oh, God! one death already!”
“If he is not your protector, if he does not give you money, if it is you, on the contrary, who carry money to him, tell me, is he your brother?”
“What if he were?” she said.
Monsieur Desmarets crossed his arms.
“Why should that have been concealed from me?” he said. “Then you and your mother have both deceived me? Besides, does a woman go to see her brother every day, or nearly every day?”
His wife had fainted at his feet.
“Dead,” he said. “And suppose I am mistaken?”
He sprang to the bell-rope; called Josephine, and lifted Clemence to the bed.
“I shall die of this,” said Madame Jules, recovering consciousness.
“Josephine,” cried Monsieur Desmarets. “Send for Monsieur Desplein; send also to my brother and ask him to come here immediately.”
“Why your brother?” asked Clemence.
But Jules had already left the room.
CHAPTER IV. WHERE GO TO DIE?
For the first time in five years Madame Jules slept alone in her bed, and was compelled to admit a physician into that sacred chamber. These in themselves were two keen pangs. Desplein found Madame Jules very ill. Never was a violent emotion more untimely. He would say nothing definite, and postponed till the morrow giving any opinion, after leaving a few directions, which were not executed, the emotions of the heart causing all bodily cares to be forgotten.
When morning dawned, Clemence had not yet slept. Her mind was absorbed in the low murmur of a conversation which lasted several hours between the brothers; but the thickness of the walls allowed no word which could betray the object of this long conference to reach her ears. Monsieur Desmarets, the notary, went away at last. The stillness of the night, and the singular activity of the senses given by powerful emotion, enabled Clemence to distinguish the scratching of a pen and the involuntary movements of a person engaged in writing. Those who are habitually up at night, and who observe the different acoustic effects produced in absolute silence, know that a slight echo can be readily perceived in the very places where louder but more equable and continued murmurs are not distinct. At four o’clock the sound ceased. Clemence rose, anxious and trembling. Then, with bare feet and without a wrapper, forgetting her illness and her moist condition, the poor woman opened the door softly without noise and looked into the next room. She saw her husband sitting, with a pen in his hand, asleep in his arm-chair. The candles had burned to the sockets. She slowly advanced and read on an envelope, already sealed, the words, “This is my will.”
She knelt down as if before an open grave and kissed her husband’s hand. He woke instantly.
“Jules, my friend, they grant some days to criminals condemned to death,” she said, looking at him with eyes that blazed with fever and with love. “Your innocent wife asks only two. Leave me free for two days, and – wait! After that, I shall die happy – at least, you will regret me.”
“Clemence, I grant them.”
Then, as she kissed her husband’s hands in the tender transport of her heart, Jules, under the spell of that cry of innocence, took her in his arms and kissed her forehead, though ashamed to feel himself still under subjection to the power of that noble beauty.
On the morrow, after taking a few hours’ rest, Jules entered his wife’s room, obeying mechanically his invariable custom of not leaving the house without a word to her. Clemence was sleeping. A ray of light passing through a chink in the upper blind of a window fell across the face of the dejected woman. Already suffering had impaired her forehead and the freshness of her lips. A lover’s eye could not fail to notice the appearance of dark blotches, and a sickly pallor in place of the uniform tone of the cheeks and the pure ivory whiteness of the skin, – two points at which the sentiments of her noble soul were artlessly wont to show themselves.
“She suffers,” thought Jules. “Poor Clemence! May God protect us!”
He kissed her very softly on the forehead. She woke, saw her husband, and remembered all. Unable to speak, she took his hand, her eyes filling with tears.
“I am innocent,” she said, ending her dream.
“You will not go out to-day, will you?” asked Jules.
“No, I feel too weak to leave my bed.”
“If you should change your mind, wait till I return,” said Jules.
Then he went down to the porter’s lodge.
“Fouguereau, you will watch the door yourself to-day. I wish to know exactly who comes to the house, and who leaves it.”
Then he threw himself into a hackney-coach, and was driven to the hotel de Maulincour, where he asked for the baron.
“Monsieur is ill,” they told him.
Jules insisted on entering, and gave his name. If he could not see the baron, he wished to see the vidame or the dowager. He waited some time in the salon, where Madame de Maulincour finally came to him and told him that her grandson was much too ill to receive him.
“I know, madame, the nature of his illness from the letter you did me the honor to write, and I beg you to believe – ”
“A letter to you, monsieur, written by me!” cried the dowager, interrupting him. “I have written you no letter. What was I made to say in that letter, monsieur?”
“Madame,” replied Jules, “intending to see Monsieur de Maulincour to-day, I thought it best to preserve the letter in spite of its injunction to destroy it. There it is.”
Madame de Maulincour put on her spectacles, and the moment she cast her eyes on the paper she showed the utmost surprise.
“Monsieur,” she said, “my writing is so perfectly imitated that, if the matter were not so recent, I might be deceived myself. My grandson is ill, it is true; but his reason has never for a moment been affected. We are the puppets of some evil-minded person or persons; and yet I cannot imagine the object of a trick like this. You shall see my grandson, monsieur, and you will at once perceive that he is perfectly sound in mind.”
She rang the bell, and sent to ask if the baron felt able to receive Monsieur Desmarets. The servant returned with an affirmative answer. Jules went to the baron’s room, where he found him in an arm-chair near the fire. Too feeble to move, the unfortunate man merely bowed his head with a melancholy gesture. The Vidame de Pamiers was sitting with him.
“Monsieur le baron,” said Jules, “I have something to say which makes it desirable that I should see you alone.”
“Monsieur,” replied Auguste, “Monsieur le vidame knows about this affair; you can speak fearlessly before him.”
“Monsieur le baron,” said Jules, in a grave voice, “you have troubled and well-nigh destroyed my happiness without having any right to do so. Until the moment when we can see clearly which of us should demand, or grant, reparation to the other, you are bound to help me in following the dark and mysterious path into which you have flung me. I have now come to ascertain from you the present residence of the extraordinary being who exercises such a baneful effect on your life and mine. On my return home yesterday, after listening to your avowals, I received that letter.”
Jules gave him the forged letter.
“This Ferragus, this Bourignard, or this Monsieur de Funcal, is a demon!” cried Maulincour, after having read it. “Oh, what a frightful maze I put my foot into when I meddled in this matter! Where am I going? I did wrong, monsieur,” he continued, looking at Jules; “but death is the greatest of all expiations, and my death is now approaching. You can ask me whatever you like; I am at your orders.”
“Monsieur, you know, of course, where this man is living, and I must know it if it costs me all my fortune to penetrate this mystery. In presence of so cruel an enemy every moment is precious.”
“Justin shall tell you all,” replied the baron.
At these words the vidame fidgeted on his chair. Auguste rang the bell.
“Justin is not in the house!” cried the vidame, in a hasty manner that told much.
“Well, then,” said Auguste, excitedly, “the other servants must know where he is; send a man on horseback to fetch him. Your valet is in Paris, isn’t he? He can be found.”
The vidame was visibly distressed.
“Justin can’t come, my dear boy,” said the old man; “he is dead. I wanted to conceal the accident from you, but – ”
“Dead!” cried Monsieur de Maulincour, – “dead! When and how?”
“Last night. He had been supping with some old friends, and, I dare say, was drunk; his friends – no doubt they were drunk, too – left him lying in the street, and a heavy vehicle ran over him.”
“The convict did not miss him; at the first stroke he killed,” said Auguste. “He has had less luck with me; it has taken four blows to put me out of the way.”
Jules was gloomy and thoughtful.
“Am I to know nothing, then?” he cried, after a long pause. “Your valet seems to have been justly punished. Did he not exceed your orders in calumniating Madame Desmarets to a person named Ida, whose jealousy he roused in order to turn her vindictiveness upon us?”
“Ah, monsieur! in my anger I informed him about Madame Jules,” said Auguste.
“Monsieur!” cried the husband, keenly irritated.
“Oh, monsieur!” replied the baron, claiming silence by a gesture, “I am prepared for all. You cannot tell me anything my own conscience has not already told me. I am now expecting the most celebrated of all professors of toxicology, in order to learn my fate. If I am destined to intolerable suffering, my resolution is taken. I shall blow my brains out.”
“You talk like a child!” cried the vidame, horrified by the coolness with which the baron said these words. “Your grandmother would die of grief.”
“Then, monsieur,” said Jules, “am I to understand that there exist no means of discovering in what part of Paris this extraordinary man resides?”
“I think, monsieur,” said the old vidame, “from what I have heard poor Justin say, that Monsieur de Funcal lives at either the Portuguese or the Brazilian embassy. Monsieur de Funcal is a nobleman belonging to both those countries. As for the convict, he is dead and buried. Your persecutor, whoever he is, seems to me so powerful that it would be well to take no decisive measures until you are sure of some way of confounding and crushing him. Act prudently and with caution, my dear monsieur. Had Monsieur de Maulincour followed my advice, nothing of all this would have happened.”
Jules coldly but politely withdrew. He was now at a total loss to know how to reach Ferragus. As he passed into his own house, the porter told him that Madame had just been out to throw a letter into the post box at the head of the rue de Menars. Jules felt humiliated by this proof of the insight with which the porter espoused his cause, and the cleverness by which he guessed the way to serve him. The eagerness of servants, and their shrewdness in compromising masters who compromised themselves, was known to him, and he fully appreciated the danger of having them as accomplices, no matter for what purpose. But he could not think of his personal dignity until the moment when he found himself thus suddenly degraded. What a triumph for the slave who could not raise himself to his master, to compel his master to come down to his level! Jules was harsh and hard to him. Another fault. But he suffered so deeply! His life till then so upright, so pure, was becoming crafty; he was to scheme and lie. Clemence was scheming and lying. This to him was a moment of horrible disgust. Lost in a flood of bitter feelings, Jules stood motionless at the door of his house. Yielding to despair, he thought of fleeing, of leaving France forever, carrying with him the illusions of uncertainty. Then, again, not doubting that the letter Clemence had just posted was addressed to Ferragus, his mind searched for a means of obtaining the answer that mysterious being was certain to send. Then his thoughts began to analyze the singular good fortune of his life since his marriage, and he asked himself whether the calumny for which he had taken such signal vengeance was not a truth. Finally, reverting to the coming answer, he said to himself: —
“But this man, so profoundly capable, so logical in his every act, who sees and foresees, who calculates, and even divines, our very thoughts, is he likely to make an answer? Will he not employ some other means more in keeping with his power? He may send his answer by some beggar; or in a carton brought by an honest man, who does not suspect what he brings; or in some parcel of shoes, which a shop-girl may innocently deliver to my wife. If Clemence and he have agreed upon such means – ”
He distrusted all things; his mind ran over vast tracts and shoreless oceans of conjecture. Then, after floating for a time among a thousand contradictory ideas, he felt he was strongest in his own house, and he resolved to watch it as the ant-lion watches his sandy labyrinth.
“Fouguereau,” he said to the porter, “I am not at home to any one who comes to see me. If any one calls to see madame, or brings her anything, ring twice. Bring all letters addressed here to me, no matter for whom they are intended.”
“Thus,” thought he, as he entered his study, which was in the entresol, “I forestall the schemes of this Ferragus. If he sends some one to ask for me so as to find out if Clemence is alone, at least I shall not be tricked like a fool.”
He stood by the window of his study, which looked upon the street, and then a final scheme, inspired by jealousy, came into his mind. He resolved to send his head-clerk in his own carriage to the Bourse with a letter to another broker, explaining his sales and purchases and requesting him to do his business for that day. He postponed his more delicate transactions till the morrow, indifferent to the fall or rise of stocks or the debts of all Europe. High privilege of love! – it crushes all things, all interests fall before it: altar, throne, consols!
At half-past three, just the hour at which the Bourse is in full blast of reports, monthly settlements, premiums, etc., Fouguereau entered the study, quite radiant with his news.
“Monsieur, an old woman has come, but very cautiously; I think she’s a sly one. She asked for monsieur, and seemed much annoyed when I told her he was out; then she gave me a letter for madame, and here it is.”
Fevered with anxiety, Jules opened the letter; then he dropped into a chair, exhausted. The letter was mere nonsense throughout, and needed a key. It was virtually in cipher.
“Go away, Fouguereau.” The porter left him. “It is a mystery deeper than the sea below the plummet line! Ah! it must be love; love only is so sagacious, so inventive as this. Ah! I shall kill her.”
At this moment an idea flashed through his brain with such force that he felt almost physically illuminated by it. In the days of his toilsome poverty before his marriage, Jules had made for himself a true friend. The extreme delicacy with which he had managed the susceptibilities of a man both poor and modest; the respect with which he had surrounded him; the ingenious cleverness he had employed to nobly compel him to share his opulence without permitting it to make him blush, increased their friendship. Jacquet continued faithful to Desmarets in spite of his wealth.
Jacquet, a nobly upright man, a toiler, austere in his morals, had slowly made his way in that particular ministry which develops both honesty and knavery at the same time. A clerk in the ministry of Foreign Affairs, he had charge of the most delicate division of its archives. Jacquet in that office was like a glow-worm, casting his light upon those secret correspondences, deciphering and classifying despatches. Ranking higher than a mere bourgeois, his position at the ministry was superior to that of the other subalterns. He lived obscurely, glad to feel that such obscurity sheltered him from reverses and disappointments, and was satisfied to humbly pay in the lowest coin his debt to the country. Thanks to Jules, his position had been much ameliorated by a worthy marriage. An unrecognized patriot, a minister in actual fact, he contented himself with groaning in his chimney-corner at the course of the government. In his own home, Jacquet was an easy-going king, – an umbrella-man, as they say, who hired a carriage for his wife which he never entered himself. In short, to end this sketch of a philosopher unknown to himself, he had never suspected and never in all his life would suspect the advantages he might have drawn from his position, – that of having for his intimate friend a broker, and of knowing every morning all the secrets of the State. This man, sublime after the manner of that nameless soldier who died in saving Napoleon by a “qui vive,” lived at the ministry.
In ten minutes Jules was in his friend’s office. Jacquet gave him a chair, laid aside methodically his green silk eye-shade, rubbed his hands, picked up his snuff-box, rose, stretched himself till his shoulder-blades cracked, swelled out his chest, and said: —
“What brings you here, Monsieur Desmarets? What do you want with me?”
“Jacquet, I want you to decipher a secret, – a secret of life and death.”
“It doesn’t concern politics?”
“If it did, I shouldn’t come to you for information,” said Jules. “No, it is a family matter, about which I require you to be absolutely silent.”
“Claude-Joseph Jacquet, dumb by profession. Don’t you know me by this time?” he said, laughing. “Discretion is my lot.”
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