CHAPTER LIV
A few lines of the article consecrated to Martial de Sairmeuse in the"General Biography of the Men of the Century," give the history of hislife after his marriage.
"Martial de Sairmeuse," it says there, "brought to the service of hisparty a brilliant intellect and admirable endowments. Called to thefront at the moment when political strife was raging with the utmostviolence, he had courage to assume the sole responsibility of the mostextreme measures.
"Compelled by almost universal opprobrium to retire from office, he leftbehind him animosities which will be extinguished only with life."
But what this article does not state is this: if Martial was wrong--andthat depends entirely upon the point of view from which his conductis regarded--he was doubly wrong, since he was not possessed of thoseardent convictions verging upon fanaticism which make men fools, heroes,and martyrs.
He was not even ambitious.
Those associated with him, witnessing his passionate struggle and hisunceasing activity, thought him actuated by an insatiable thirst forpower.
He cared little or nothing for it. He considered its burdens heavy; itscompensations small. His pride was too lofty to feel any satisfaction inthe applause that delights the vain, and flattery disgusted him.Often, in his princely drawing-rooms, during some brilliant fete, hisacquaintances noticed a shade of gloom steal over his features, andseeing him thus thoughtful and preoccupied, they respectfully refrainedfrom disturbing him.
"His mind is occupied with momentous questions," they thought. "Who cantell what important decisions may result from this revery?"
They were mistaken.
At the very moment when his brilliant success made his rivals pale withenvy--when it would seem that he had nothing left to wish for in thisworld, Martial was saying to himself:
"What an empty life! What weariness and vexation of spirit! To live forothers--what a mockery!"
He looked at his wife, radiant in her beauty, worshipped like a queen,and he sighed.
He thought of her who was dead--Marie-Anne--the only woman whom he hadever loved.
She was never absent from his mind. After all these years he saw heryet, cold, rigid, lifeless, in that luxurious room at the Borderie;and time, far from effacing the image of the fair girl who had won hisyouthful heart, made it still more radiant and endowed his lost idolwith almost superhuman grace of person and of character.
If fate had but given him Marie-Anne for his wife! He said this tohimself again and again, picturing the exquisite happiness which a lifewith her would have afforded him.
They would have remained at Sairmeuse. They would have had lovelychildren playing around them! He would not be condemned to thiscontinual warfare--to this hollow, unsatisfying, restless life.
The truly happy are not those who parade their satisfaction andgood fortune before the eyes of the multitude. The truly happy hidethemselves from the curious gaze, and they are right; happiness isalmost a crime.
So thought Martial; and he, the great statesman, often said to himself,in a sort of rage:
"To love, and to be loved--that is everything! All else is vanity."
He had really tried to love his wife; he had done his best to rekindlethe admiration with which she had inspired him at their first meeting.He had not succeeded.
Between them there seemed to be a wall of ice which nothing could melt,and which was constantly increasing in height and thickness.
"Why is it?" he wondered, again and again. "It is incomprehensible.There are days when I could swear that she loved me. Her character,formerly so irritable, is entirely changed; she is gentleness itself."
But he could not conquer his aversion; it was stronger than his ownwill.
These unavailing regrets, and the disappointments and sorrow thatpreyed upon him, undoubtedly aggravated the bitterness and severity ofMartial's policy.
But he, at least, knew how to fall nobly.
He passed, without even a change of countenance, from almost omnipotenceto a position so compromising that his very life was endangered.
On seeing his ante-chambers, formerly thronged with flatterers andoffice-seekers, empty and deserted, he laughed, and his laugh wasunaffected.
"The ship is sinking," said he; "the rats have deserted it."
He did not even pale when the noisy crowd came to hoot and curse andhurl stones at his windows; and when Otto, his faithful _valet dechambre_, entreated him to assume a disguise and make his escape throughthe gardens, he responded:
"By no means! I am simply odious; I do not wish to become ridiculous!"
They could not even dissuade him from going to a window and looking downupon the rabble in the street below.
A singular idea had just occurred to him.
"If Jean Lacheneur is still alive," he thought, "how much he would enjoythis! And if he is alive, he is undoubtedly there in the foremost rank,urging on the crowd."
And he wished to see.
But Jean Lacheneur was in Russia at that epoch. The excitement subsided;the Hotel de Sairmeuse was not seriously threatened. Still Martialrealized that it would be better for him to go away for a while, andallow people to forget him.
He did not ask the duchess to accompany him.
"The fault has been mine entirely," he said to her, "and to make yousuffer for it by condemning you to exile would be unjust. Remain here; Ithink it will be much better for you to remain here."
She did not offer to go with him. It would have been a pleasure to her,but she dared not leave Paris. She knew that she must remain in orderto insure the silence of her persecutors. Both times she had left Parisbefore, all came near being discovered, and yet she had Aunt Medea,then, to take her place.
Martial went away, accompanied only by his devoted servant, Otto.In intelligence, this man was decidedly superior to his position; hepossessed an independent fortune, and he had a hundred reasons--one, bythe way, was a very pretty one--for desiring to remain in Paris; but hismaster was in trouble, and he did not hesitate.
For four years the Duc de Sairmeuse wandered over Europe, everaccompanied by his _ennui_ and his dejection, and chafing beneath theburden of a life no longer animated by interest or sustained by hope.
He remained awhile in London, then he went to Vienna, afterward toVenice. One day he was seized by an irresistible desire to see Parisagain, and he returned.
It was not a very prudent step, perhaps. His bitterest enemies--personalenemies, whom he had mortally offended and persecuted--were in power;but he did not hesitate. Besides, how could they injure him, since hehad no favors to ask, no cravings of ambition to satisfy?
The exile which had weighed so heavily upon him, the sorrow, thedisappointments and loneliness he had endured had softened his natureand inclined his heart to tenderness; and he returned firmly resolved toovercome his aversion to his wife, and seek a reconciliation.
"Old age is approaching," he thought. "If I have not a beloved wife atmy fireside, I may at least have a friend."
His manner toward her, on his return, astonished Mme. Blanche. Shealmost believed she saw again the Martial of the little blue salon atCourtornieu; but the realization of her cherished dream was now onlyanother torture added to all the others.
Martial was striving to carry his plan into execution, when thefollowing laconic epistle came to him one day through the post:
"Monsieur le Duc--I, if I were in your place, would watch my wife."
It was only an anonymous letter, but Martial's blood mounted to hisforehead.
"Can it be that she has a lover?" he thought.
Then reflecting on his own conduct toward his wife since their marriage,he said to himself:
"And if she has, have I any right to complain? Did I not tacitly giveher back her liberty?"
He was greatly troubled, and yet he would not have degraded himselfso much as to play the spy, had it not been for one of those triflingcircumstances which so often decide a man's destiny.
He was returning from
a ride on horseback one morning about eleveno'clock, and he was not thirty paces from the Hotel de Sairmeuse whenhe saw a lady hurriedly emerge from the house. She was very plainlydressed--entirely in black--but her whole appearance was strikingly thatof the duchess.
"It is certainly my wife; but why is she dressed in such a fashion?" hethought.
Had he been on foot he would certainly have entered the house; as itwas, he slowly followed Mme. Blanche, who was going up the Rue Grenelle.She walked very quickly, and without turning her head, and kept her facepersistently shrouded in a very thick veil.
When she reached the Rue Taranne, she threw herself into one of the_fiacres_ at the carriage-stand.
The coachman came to the door to speak to her; then nimbly sprang uponthe box, and gave his bony horses one of those cuts of the whip thatannounce a princely _pourboire_.
The carriage had already turned the corner of the Rue du Dragon, andMartial, ashamed and irresolute, had not moved from the place where hehad stopped his horse, just around the corner of the Rue Saint Pares.
Not daring to admit his suspicions, he tried to deceive himself.
"Nonsense!" he thought, giving the reins to his horse, "what do I riskin advancing? The carriage is a long way off by this time, and I shallnot overtake it."
He did overtake it, however, on reaching the intersection of theCroix-Rouge, where there was, as usual, a crowd of vehicles.
It was the same _fiacre_; Martial recognized it by its green body, andits wheels striped with white.
Emerging from the crowd of carriages, the driver whipped up his horses,and it was at a gallop that they flew up the Rue du Vieux Columbier--thenarrowest street that borders the Place Saint Sulpice--and gained theouter boulevards.
Martial's thoughts were busy as he trotted along about a hundred yardsbehind the vehicle.
"She is in a terrible hurry," he said to himself. "This, however, isscarcely the quarter for a lover's rendezvous."
The carriage had passed the Place d'Italie. It entered the Rue duChateau-des-Rentiers and soon paused before a tract of unoccupiedground.
The door was at once opened, and the Duchesse de Sairmeuse hastilyalighted.
Without stopping to look to the right or to the left, she hurried acrossthe open space.
A man, by no means prepossessing in appearance, with a long beard, andwith a pipe in his mouth, and clad in a workman's blouse, was seatedupon a large block of stone not far off.
"Will you hold my horse a moment?" inquired Martial.
"Certainly," answered the man.
Had Martial been less preoccupied, his suspicions might have beenaroused by the malicious smile that curved the man's lips; and had heexamined his features closely, he would perhaps have recognized him.
For it was Jean Lacheneur.
Since addressing that anonymous letter to the Duc de Sairmeuse, he hadmade the duchess multiply her visits to the Widow Chupin; and each timehe had watched for her coming.
"So, if her husband decides to follow her I shall know it," he thought.
It was indispensable for the success of his plans that Mme. Blancheshould be watched by her husband.
For Jean Lacheneur had decided upon his course. From a thousand schemesfor revenge he had chosen the most frightful and ignoble that a brainmaddened and enfevered by hatred could possibly conceive.
He longed to see the haughty Duchesse de Sairmeuse subjected to thevilest ignominy, Martial in the hands of the lowest of the low. Hepictured a bloody struggle in this miserable den; the sudden arrivalof the police, summoned by himself, who would arrest all the partiesindiscriminately. He gloated over the thought of a trial in which thecrime committed at the Borderie would be brought to light; he saw theduke and the duchess in prison, and the great names of Sairmeuse and ofCourtornieu shrouded in eternal disgrace.
And he believed that nothing was wanting to insure the success of hisplans. He had at his disposal two miserable wretches who were capableof any crime; and an unfortunate youth named Gustave, made his willingslave by poverty and cowardice, was intended to play the part ofMarie-Anne's son.
These three accomplices had no suspicion of his real intentions. As forthe Widow Chupin and her son, if they suspected some infamous plot, thename of the duchess was all they really knew in regard to it. Moreover,Jean held Polyte and his mother completely under his control by thewealth which he had promised them if they served him docilely.
And if Martial followed his wife into the Poivriere, Jean had soarranged matters that the duke would at first suppose that she had beenled there by charity.
"But he will not go in," thought Lacheneur, whose heart throbbed wildlywith sinister joy as he held Martial's horse. "Monsieur le Duc is toofine for that."
And Martial did not go in. Though he was horrified when he saw his wifeenter that vile den, as if she were at home there, he said to himselfthat he should learn nothing by following her.
He, therefore, contented himself by making a thorough examination ofthe outside of the house; then, remounting his horse, he departed on agallop. He was completely mystified; he did not know what to think, whatto imagine, what to believe.
But he was fully resolved to fathom this mystery and as soon as hereturned home he sent Otto out in search of information. He couldconfide everything to this devoted servant; he had no secrets from him.
About four o'clock his faithful _valet de chambre_ returned, anexpression of profound consternation visible upon his countenance.
"What is it?" asked Martial, divining some great misfortune.
"Ah, sir, the mistress of that wretched den is the widow of Chupin'sson----"
Martial's face became as white as his linen.
He knew life too well not to understand that since the duchess had beencompelled to submit to the power of these people, they must be mastersof some secret which she was willing to make any sacrifice to preserve.But what secret?
The years which had silvered Martial's hair, had not cooled the ardor ofhis blood. He was, as he had always been, a man of impulses.
He rushed to his wife's apartments.
"Madame has just gone down to receive the Countess de Mussidan and theMarquise d'Arlange," said the maid.
"Very well; I will wait for her here. Retire."
And Martial entered the chamber of Mme. Blanche.
The room was in disorder, for the duchess, after returning from thePoivriere, was still engaged in her toilet when the visitors wereannounced.
The wardrobe-doors were open, the chairs were encumbered with wearingapparel, the articles which Mme. Blanche used daily--her watch, herpurse, and several bunches of keys--were lying upon the dressing-tableand mantel.
Martial did not sit down. His self-possession was returning.
"No folly," he thought, "if I question her, I shall learn nothing. Imust be silent and watchful."
He was about to retire, when, on glancing about the room, his eyes fellupon a large casket, inlaid with silver, which had belonged to his wifeever since she was a young girl, and which accompanied her everywhere.
"That, doubtless, holds the solution of the mystery," he said tohimself.
It was one of those moments when a man obeys the dictates of passionwithout pausing to reflect. He saw the keys upon the mantel; he seizedthem, and endeavored to find one that would fit the lock of the casket.The fourth key opened it. It was full of papers.
With feverish haste, Martial examined the contents. He had thrownaside several unimportant letters, when he came to a bill that read asfollows:
"Search for the child of Madame de Sairmeuse. Expenses for the thirdquarter of the year 18--."
Martial's brain reeled.
A child! His wife had a child!
He read on: "For services of two agents at Sairmeuse, ----. For expensesattending my own journey, ----. Divers gratuities, ----. Etc., etc." Thetotal amounted to six thousand francs. The bill was signed "Chelteux."
With a sort of cold rage, Martial continued his examination of thec
ontents of the casket, and found a note written in a miserable hand,that said: "Two thousand francs this evening, or I will tell the dukethe history of the affair at the Borderie." Then several more bills fromChelteux; then a letter from Aunt Medea in which she spoke of prisonand of remorse. And finally, at the bottom of the casket, he found themarriage-certificate of Marie-Anne Lacheneur and Maurice d'Escorval,drawn up by the Cure of Vigano and signed by the old physician andCorporal Bavois.
The truth was as clear as daylight.
Stunned, frozen with horror, Martial scarcely had strength to return theletters to the casket and restore it to its place.
Then he tottered back to his own room, clinging to the walls forsupport.
"It was she who murdered Marie-Anne," he murmured.
He was confounded, terror-stricken by the perfidy and baseness ofthis woman who was his wife--by her criminal audacity, by her coolcalculation and assurance, by her marvellous powers of dissimulation.
He swore he would discover all, either through the duchess or throughthe Widow Chupin; and he ordered Otto to procure a costume for him suchas was generally worn by the _habitues_ of the Poivriere. He did notknow how soon he might have use for it.
This happened early in February, and from that moment Mme. Blanche didnot take a single step without being watched. Not a letter reached herthat her husband had not previously read.
And she had not the slightest suspicion of the constant espionage towhich she was subjected.
Martial did not leave his room; he pretended to be ill. To meet hiswife and be silent, was beyond his powers. He remembered the oath ofvengeance which he had pronounced over Marie-Anne's lifeless form toowell.
But there were no new revelations, and for this reason: Polyte Chupinhad been arrested under charge of theft, and this accident caused adelay in the execution of Lacheneur's plans. But, at last, he judgedthat all would be in readiness on the 20th of February, Shrove Sunday.
The evening before the Widow Chupin, in conformance with hisinstructions, wrote to the duchess that she must come to the PoivriereSunday evening at eleven o'clock.
On that same evening Jean was to meet his accomplices at a ball at theRainbow--a public-house bearing a very unenviable reputation--and givethem their last instructions.
These accomplices were to open the scene; he was to appear only in the_denouement_.
"All is well arranged; the mechanism will work of its own accord," hesaid to himself.
But the "mechanism," as he styled it, failed to work.
Mme. Blanche, on receiving the Widow Chupin's summons, revolted for amoment. The lateness of the hour, the isolation of the spot designated,frightened her.
But she was obliged to submit, and on the appointed evening shefurtively left the house, accompanied by Camille, the same servant whohad witnessed Aunt Medea's last agony.
The duchess and her maid were attired like women of the very lowestorder, and felt no fear of being seen or recognized.
And yet a man was watching them, and he quickly followed them. It wasMartial.
Knowing of this rendezvous even before his wife, he had disguisedhimself in the costume Otto had procured for him, which was that of alaborer about the quays; and, as he was a man who did perfectlywhatever he attempted to do, he had succeeded in rendering himselfunrecognizable. His hair and beard were rough and matted; his hands weresoiled and grimed with dirt; he was really the abject wretch whose ragshe wore.
Otto had begged to be allowed to accompany him; but the duke refused,saying that the revolver which he would take with him would besufficient protection. He knew Otto well enough, however, to be certainhe would disobey him.
Ten o'clock was sounding when Mme. Blanche and Camille left the house,and it did not take them five minutes to reach the Rue Taranne.
There was one _fiacre_ on the stand--one only.
They entered it and it drove away.
This circumstance drew from Martial an oath worthy of his costume. Thenhe reflected that, since he knew where to find his wife, a slight delayin finding a carriage did not matter.
He soon obtained one; and the coachman, thanks to a _pourboire_ of tenfrancs, drove to the Rue du Chateau-des-Rentiers as fast as his horsescould go.
But the duke had scarcely set foot on the ground before he heardthe rumbling of another carriage which stopped abruptly at a littledistance.
"Otto is evidently following me," he thought.
And he started across the open space in the direction of the Poivriere.
Gloom and silence prevailed on every side, and were made still moreoppressive by a chill fog that heralded an approaching thaw. Martialstumbled and slipped at almost every step upon the rough, snow-coveredground.
It was not long before he could distinguish a dark mass in the midstof the fog. It was the Poivriere. The light within filtered through theheart-shaped openings in the blinds, looking at a distance like lurideyes gleaming in the darkness.
Could it really be possible that the Duchesse de Sairmeuse was there!
Martial cautiously approached the window, and clinging to the hinges ofone of the shutters, he lifted himself up so he could peer through theopening.
Yes, his wife was indeed there in that vile den.
She and Camille were seated at a table before a large punch-bowl, andin company with two ragged, leering scoundrels, and a soldier, quiteyouthful in appearance.
In the centre of the room stood the Widow Chupin, with a small glassin her hand, talking volubly and punctuating her sentences by copiousdraughts of brandy.
The impression produced upon Martial was so terrible that his holdrelaxed and he dropped to the ground.
A ray of pity penetrated his soul, for he vaguely realized the frightfulsuffering which had been the chastisement of the murderess.
But he desired another glance at the interior of the hovel, and he againlifted himself up to the opening and looked in.
The old woman had disappeared; the young soldier had risen from thetable and was talking and gesticulating earnestly. Mme. Blanche andCamille were listening to him with the closest attention.
The two men who were sitting face to face, with their elbows upon thetable, were looking at each other; and Martial saw them exchange asignificant glance.
He was not wrong. The scoundrels were plotting "a rich haul."
Mme. Blanche, who had dressed herself with such care, that to render herdisguise perfect she had encased her feet in large, coarse shoes thatwere almost killing her--Mme. Blanche had forgotten to remove her superbdiamond ear-rings.
She had forgotten them, but Lacheneur's accomplices had noticed them,and were now regarding them with eyes that glittered more brilliantlythan the diamonds themselves.
While awaiting Lacheneur's coming, these wretches, as had been agreedupon, were playing the part which he had imposed upon them. For this,and their assistance afterward, they were to receive a certain sum ofmoney.
But they were thinking that this sum was not, perhaps, a quarter part ofthe value of these jewels, and they exchanged glances that said:
"Ah! if we could only get them and make our escape before Lacheneurcomes!"
The temptation was too strong to be resisted.
One of them rose suddenly, and, seizing the duchess by the back of theneck, he forced her head down upon the table.
The diamonds would have been torn from the ears of Mme. Blanche had itnot been for Camille, who bravely came to the aid of her mistress.
Martial could endure no more. He sprang to the door of the hovel, openedit, and entered, bolting it behind him.
"Martial!"
"Monsieur le Duc!"
These cries escaping the lips of Mme. Blanche and Camille in the samebreath, changed the momentary stupor of their assailants into fury; andthey both precipitated themselves upon Martial, determined to kill him.
With a spring to one side, Martial avoided them. He had his revolver inhis hand; he fired twice and the wretches fell. But he was not yet safe,for the you
ng soldier threw himself upon him, and attempted to disarmhim.
Through all the furious struggle, Martial did not cease crying, in apanting voice:
"Fly! Blanche, fly! Otto is not far off. The name--save the honor of thename!"
The two women obeyed, making their escape through the back door, whichopened upon the garden; and they had scarcely done so, before a violentknocking was heard at the front door.
The police were coming! This increased Martial's frenzy; and with onesupreme effort to free himself from his assailant, he gave him sucha violent push that his adversary fell, striking his head against thecorner of the table, after which he lay like one dead.
But the Widow Chupin, who had come downstairs on hearing the uproar, wasshrieking upon the stairs. At the door someone was crying: "Open in thename of the law!"
Martial might have fled; but if he fled, the duchess might be captured,for he would certainly be pursued. He saw the peril at a glance, and hisdecision was made.
He shook the Widow Chupin violently by the arm, and said, in animperious voice:
"If you know how to hold your tongue you shall have one hundred thousandfrancs."
Then, drawing a table before the door opening into the adjoining room,he intrenched himself behind it as behind a rampart, and awaited theapproach of the enemy.
The next moment the door was forced open, and a squad of police, underthe command of Inspector Gevrol, entered the room.
"Surrender!" cried the inspector.
Martial did not move; his pistol was turned upon the intruder.
"If I can parley with them, and hold them in check only two minutes, allmay yet be saved," he thought.
He obtained the wished-for delay; then he threw his weapon to theground, and was about to bound through the back-door, when a policeman,who had gone round to the rear of the house, seized him about the body,and threw him to the floor.
From this side he expected only assistance, so he cried:
"Lost! It is the Prussians who are coming!"
In the twinkling of an eye he was bound; and two hours later he was aninmate of the station-house at the Place d'Italie.
He had played his part so perfectly, that he had deceived even Gevrol.The other participants in the broil were dead, and he could rely uponthe Widow Chupin. But he knew that the trap had been set for him by JeanLacheneur; and he read a whole volume of suspicion in the eyes of theyoung officer who had cut off his retreat, and who was called Lecoq byhis companions.