XXVIII.

  Jacques de Boiscoran went straight to Mautrec Street. But he knew withwhat horror he was looked upon by the population; and in order to avoidbeing recognized, and perhaps arrested, he did not take the most directroute, nor did he choose the more frequented streets. He went a long wayaround, and well-nigh lost himself in the winding, dark lanes of theold town. He walked along in Feverish haste, turning aside from therare passers-by, pulling his felt hat down over his eyes, and, for stillgreater safety, holding his handkerchief over his face. It was nearlyhalf-past nine when he at last reached the house inhabited by Count andCountess Claudieuse. The little gate had been taken out, and the greatdoors were closed.

  Never mind! Jacques had his plan. He rang the bell.

  A maid, who did not know him, came to the door.

  "Is the Countess Claudieuse in?" he asked.

  "The countess does not see anybody," replied the girl. "She is sittingup with the count, who is very ill to-night."

  "But I must see her."

  "Impossible."

  "Tell her that a gentleman who has been sent by M. Galpin desires to seeher for a moment. It is the Boiscoran affair."

  "Why did you not say so at once?" said the servant. "Come in." Andforgetting, in her hurry, to close the gates again, she went beforeJacques through the garden, showed him into the vestibule, and thenopened the parlor-door, saying,--

  "Will you please go in here and sit down, while I go to tell thecountess?"

  After lighting one of the candles on the mantelpiece, she went out.So far, every thing had gone well for Jacques, and even better than hecould have expected. Nothing remained now to be done, except to preventthe countess from going back and escaping, as soon as she should haverecognized Jacques. Fortunately the parlor-door opened into the room. Hewent and put himself behind the open half, and waited there.

  For twenty-four hours he had prepared himself for this interview, andarranged in his head the very words he would use. But now, at the lastmoment, all his ideas flew away, like dry leaves under the breath of atempest. His heart was beating with such violence, that he thought itfilled the whole room with the noise. He imagined he was cool, and, infact, he possessed that lucidity which gives to certain acts of madmenan appearance of sense.

  He was surprised at being kept waiting so long, when, at last, lightsteps, and the rustling of a dress, warned him that the countess wascoming.

  She came in, dressed in a long, dark, undress robe, and took a few stepsinto the room, astonished at not seeing the person who was waiting forher.

  It was exactly as Jacques had foreseen.

  He pushed to, violently, the open half of the door; and, placing himselfbefore her, he said,--

  "We are alone!"

  She turned round at the noise, and cried,--

  "Jacques!"

  And terrified, as if she had seen a ghost, she looked all around, hopingto see a way out. One of the tall windows of the room, which went downto the ground, was half open, and she rushed towards it; but Jacquesanticipated her, and said,--

  "Do not attempt to escape; for I swear I should pursue you into yourhusband's room, to the foot of his bed."

  She looked at him as if she did not comprehend.

  "You," she stammered,--"you here!"

  "Yes," he replied, "I am here. You are astonished, are you? You said toyourself, 'He is in prison, well kept under lock and key: I can sleep inpeace. No evidence can be found. He will not speak. I have committed thecrime, and he will be punished for it. I am guilty; but I shall escape.He is innocent, and he is lost.' You thought it was all settled? Well,no, it is not. I am here!"

  An expression of unspeakable horror contracted the beautiful features ofthe countess. She said,--

  "This is monstrous!"

  "Monstrous indeed!"

  "Murderer! Incendiary!"

  He burst out laughing, a strident, convulsive, terrible laughter.

  "And you," he said, "you call me so?"

  By one great effort the Countess Claudieuse recovered her energy.

  "Yes," she replied, "yes, I do! You cannot deny your crime to me. Iknow, I know the motives which the judges do not even guess. You thoughtI would carry out my threats, and you were frightened. When I left youin such haste, you said to yourself, 'It is all over: she will tell herhusband.' And then you kindled that fire in order to draw my husbandout of the house, you incendiary! And then you fired at my husband, youmurderer!"

  He was still laughing.

  "And that is your plan?" he broke in. "Who do you think will believesuch an absurd story? Our letters were burnt; and, if you deny havingbeen my mistress, I can just as well deny having been your lover. And,besides, would the exposure do me any harm? You know very well it wouldnot. You are perfectly aware, that, as society is with us, the samething which disgraces a woman rather raises a man in the estimate of theworld. And as to my being afraid of Count Claudieuse, it is well knownthat I am afraid of nobody. At the time when we were concealing our lovein the house in Vine Street, yes, at that time, I might have been afraidof your husband; for he might have surprised us there, the code in onehand, a revolver in the other, and have availed himself of that stupidand savage law which makes the husband the judge of his own case, andthe executor of the sentence which he himself pronounces. But settingaside such a case, the case of being taken in the act, which allowsa man to kill like a dog another man, who can not or will not defendhimself, what did I care for Count Claudieuse? What did I care for yourthreats or for his hatred?" He said these words with perfect calmness,but with that cold, cutting tone which is as sharp as a sword, and withthat positiveness which enters irresistibly into the mind. The countesswas tottering, and stammered almost inaudibly,--

  "Who would imagine such a thing? Is it possible?"

  Then, suddenly raising her head, she said,--

  "But I am losing my senses. If you are innocent, who, then, could be theguilty man?"

  Jacques seized her hands almost madly, and pressing them painfully, andbending over her so closely that she felt his hot breath like a flametouching her face, he hissed into her ear,--

  "You, wretched creature, you!"

  And then pushing her from him with such violence that she fell into achair, he continued,--

  "You, who wanted to be a widow in order to prevent me from breaking thechains in which you held me. At our last meeting, when I thought youwere crushed by grief, and felt overcome by your hypocritical tears,I was weak enough, I was stupid enough, to say that I married Dionysiaonly because you were not free. Then you cried, 'O God, how happy Iam that that idea did not occur to me before!' What idea was that,Genevieve? Come, answer me and confess, that it occurred to you too soonafter all, since you have carried it out?"

  And repeating with crushing irony the words just uttered by thecountess, he said,--

  "If you are innocent, who, then, would be the guilty man?"

  Quite beside herself, she sprang up from her chair, and casting atJacques one of those glances which seem to enter through our eyes intothe very heart of our hearts, she asked,--

  "Is it really possible that you have not committed this abominablecrime?"

  He shrugged his shoulders.

  "But then," she repeated, almost panting, "is it true, can it really betrue, that you think I have committed it?"

  "Perhaps you have only ordered it to be committed."

  With a wild gesture she raised her arms to heaven, and cried in aheart-rending voice,--

  "O God, O God! He believes it! he really believes it!"

  There followed great silence, dismal, formidable silence, such as innature follows the crash of the thunderbolt.

  Standing face to face, Jacques and the Countess Claudieuse looked ateach other madly, feeling that the fatal hour in their lives had come atlast.

  Each felt a growing, a sure conviction of the other. There was no needof explanations. They had been misled by appearances: they acknowledgedit; they were sure of it.

  And thi
s discovery was so fearful, so overwhelming, that neither thoughtof who the real guilty one might be.

  "What is to be done?" asked the countess.

  "The truth must be told," replied Jacques.

  "Which?"

  "That I have been your lover; that I went to Valpinson by appointmentwith you; that the cartridge-case which was found there was used byme to get fire; that my blackened hands were soiled by the half-burntfragment of our letters, which I had tried to scatter."

  "Never!" cried the countess.

  Jacques's face turned crimson, as he said with an accent of mercilessseverity,--

  "It shall be told! I will have it so, and it must be done!"

  The countess seemed to be furious.

  "Never!" she cried again, "never!"

  And with convulsive haste she added,--

  "Do you not see that the truth cannot possibly be told. They would neverbelieve in our innocence. They would only look upon us as accomplices."

  "Never mind. I am not willing to die."

  "Say that you will not die alone."

  "Be it so."

  "To confess every thing would never save you, but would most assuredlyruin me. Is that what you want? Would your fate appear less cruel toyou, if there were two victims instead of one?"

  He stopped her by a threatening gesture, and cried,--

  "Are you always the same? I am sinking, I am drowning; and shecalculates, she bargains! And she said she loved me!"

  "Jacques!" broke in the countess.

  And drawing close up to him, she said,--

  "Ah! I calculate, I bargain? Well, listen. Yes, it is true. I did valuemy reputation as an honest woman more highly, a thousand times more,than my life; but, above my life and my reputation, I valued you. Youare drowning, you say. Well, then, let us flee. One word from you, and Ileave all,--honor, country, family, husband, children. Say one word,and I follow you without turning my head, without a regret, without aremorse."

  Her whole body was shivering from head to foot; her bosom rose and fell;her eyes shone with unbearable brilliancy.

  Thanks to the violence of her action, her dress, put on in great haste,had opened, and her dishevelled hair flowed in golden masses overher bosom and her shoulders, which matched the purest marble in theirdazzling whiteness.

  And in a voice trembling with pent-up passion, now sweet and soft like atender caress, and now deep and sonorous like a bell, she went on,--

  "What keeps us? Since you have escaped from prison, the greatestdifficulty is overcome. I thought at first of taking our girl, yourgirl, Jacques; but she is very ill; and besides a child might betray us.If we go alone, they will never overtake us. We will have money enough,I am sure, Jacques. We will flee to those distant countries whichappear in books of travels in such fairy-like beauty. There, unknown,forgotten, unnoticed, our life will be one unbroken enjoyment. You willnever again say that I bargain. I will be yours, entirely, and solelyyours, body and soul, your wife, your slave."

  She threw her head back, and with half-closed eyes, bending with herwhole person toward him, she said in melting tones,--

  "Say, Jacques, will you? Jacques!"

  He pushed her aside with a fierce gesture. It seemed to him almost asacrilege that she also, like Dionysia, should propose to him to flee.

  "Rather the galleys!" he cried.

  She turned deadly pale; a spasm of rage convulsed her features; anddrawing back, stiff and stern, she said,--

  "What else do you want?"

  "Your help to save me," he replied.

  "At the risk of ruining myself?"

  He made no reply.

  Then she, who had just now been all humility, raised herself to her fullheight, and in a tone of bitterest sarcasm said slowly,--

  "In other words, you want me to sacrifice myself, and at the same timeall my family. For your sake? Yes, but even more for Miss Chandore'ssake. And you think that it is quite a simple thing. I am the past toyou, satiety, disgust: she is the future to you, desire, happiness. Andyou think it quite natural that the old love should make a footstool ofher love and her honor for the new love? You think little of my beingdisgraced, provided she be honored; of my weeping bitterly, if she butsmile? Well, no, no! it is madness in you to come and ask me to saveyou, so that you may throw yourself into the arms of another. It ismadness, when in order to tear you from Dionysia, I am ready to ruinmyself, provided only that you be lost to her forever."

  "Wretch!" cried Jacques.

  She looked at him with a mocking air, and her eyes beamed with infernalaudacity.

  "You do not know me yet," she cried. "Go, speak, denounce me! M. Folgatno doubt has told you how I can deny and defend myself."

  Maddened by indignation, and excited to a point where reason loses itspower over us, Jacques de Boiscoran moved with uplifted hand towards thecountess, when suddenly a voice said,--

  "Do not strike that woman!"

  Jacques and the countess turned round, and uttered, both at the sameinstant, the same kind of sharp, terrible cry, which must have beenheard a great distance.

  In the frame of the door stood Count Claudieuse, a revolver in his hand,and ready to fire.

  He looked as pale as a ghost; and the white flannel dressing-gown whichhe had hastily thrown around him hung like a pall around his lean limbs.The first cry uttered by the countess had been heard by him on the bedon which he lay apparently dying. A terrible presentiment had seizedhim. He had risen from his bed, and, dragging himself slowly along,holding painfully to the balusters, he had come down.

  "I have heard all," he said, casting crushing looks at both the guiltyones.

  The countess uttered a deep, hoarse sigh, and sank into a chair. ButJacques drew himself up, and said,--

  "I have insulted you terribly, sir. Avenge yourself."

  The count shrugged his shoulders.

  "Great God! You would allow me to be condemned for a crime which I havenot committed. Ah, that would be the meanest cowardice."

  The count was so feeble that he had to lean against the door-post.

  "Would it be cowardly?" he asked. "Then, what do you call the act ofthat miserable man who meanly, disgracefully robs another man of hiswife, and palms off his own children upon him? It is true you areneither an incendiary nor an assassin. But what is fire in my house incomparison with the ruin of all my faith? What are the wounds in my bodyin comparison with that wound in my heart, which never can heal? I leaveyou to the court, sir."

  Jacques was terrified; he saw the abyss opening before him that was toswallow him up.

  "Rather death," he cried,--"death."

  And, baring his breast, he said,--

  "But why do you not fire, sir? Why do you not fire? Are you afraid ofblood? Shoot! I have been the lover of your wife: your youngest daughteris my child."

  The count lowered his weapon.

  "The courts of justice are more certain," he said. "You have robbed meof my honor: now I want yours. And, if you cannot be condemned withoutit, I shall say, I shall swear, that I recognized you. You shall go tothe galleys, M. de Boiscoran."

  He was on the point of coming forward; but his strength was exhausted,and he fell forward, face downward, and arms outstretched.

  Overcome with horror, half mad, Jacques fled.