‘Let them say what they like, we won’t open.’
‘You’re a real Amazon, Eugénie!’
With a prodigious show of activity, the two girls began to throw everything they thought they would need on their journey into a trunk.
‘There,’ said Eugénie. ‘Now, while I get changed, you close the case.’
Louise pressed with all the strength of her little hands on the lid of the trunk. ‘I can’t do it,’ she said. ‘I’m not strong enough. You close it.’
‘Of course,’ Eugénie said with a laugh. ‘I was forgetting that I’m Hercules and you’re just a feeble Omphale.’1 And, putting her knee on the trunk, she stiffened her two white muscular arms until the two halves of the case met and Mlle d’Armilly had slid the bar of the padlock through the two hooks. When this was done, Eugénie opened a cupboard with a key she had on her and brought out a travelling cloak in quilted violet silk. ‘Here,’ she said. ‘You can see I’ve thought of everything. With this on, you won’t be cold.’
‘What about you?’
‘Oh, I don’t feel the cold, as you know. In any case, dressed as a man…’
‘Are you going to dress here?’
‘Certainly.’
‘But will you have time?’
‘Don’t worry, chicken-heart. No one is thinking of anything except the great affair. And what is there so surprising about my shutting myself in my room, when you think of how desperate I must be?’
‘No, that’s true. You’ve reassured me.’
‘Come on, give me a hand.’
And from the same drawer out of which she had taken the cloak that she had just given Mlle d’Armilly (and which the latter had put around her shoulders), she took a complete set of men’s clothes, from the boots to the frock-coat, with a supply of linen which included all the essentials, but nothing unnecessary.
Then, with a rapidity that showed this was surely not the first time that she had, for fun, put on the clothes of the other sex, Eugénie pulled on the boots, slipped into the trousers, rumpled her cravat, buttoned a high-necked waistcoat up to the top and got into a frock-coat that outlined her slender, well-turned waist.
‘Oh, that’s very good! It’s truly very good indeed!’ Louise said, looking admiringly at her. ‘But what about your lovely black hair, those splendid locks that were the envy of every woman: will they fit under a man’s hat like the one I see there?’
‘You’ll see,’ said Eugénie. And with her left hand she grasped the thick plait of hair which her slender fingers could barely reach around, while with the right she took a pair of long scissors. Very soon the steel blades were squeaking in the midst of the magnificent and luxuriant head of hair, which fell in tresses around the young woman’s feet as she bent backwards to prevent it covering her coat.
Then, when the hair on the crown of her head was cut, she turned to the sides, shearing them without the slightest sign of remorse. On the contrary, her eyes shone, more sparkling and joyful than usual under her ebony-black brows.
‘Oh, your lovely hair!’ said Louise, regretfully.
‘Don’t I look a hundred times better like this?’ Eugénie asked, smoothing down the few curls left on her now entirely masculine haircut. ‘Don’t you think I’m more beautiful as I am?’
‘Oh, you are beautiful, beautiful still,’ Louise cried. ‘Now, where are we going?’
‘To Brussels, if you like. It’s the nearest frontier. We’ll travel through Brussels, Liège and Aix-la-Chapelle, then up the Rhine to Strasbourg, across Switzerland and into Italy by the Saint Gothard pass. Agreed?’
‘Of course.’
‘What are you looking at?’
‘You. You truly are adorable like that. Anyone would say you were abducting me.’
‘By God, they’d be right!’
‘Oh, Eugénie! I think you swore!’
And the two girls, whom anyone would have expected to be plunged in misery, one on her own account, the other out of devotion to her friend, burst out laughing while they set about clearing up the most obvious signs of the mess that had naturally accompanied the preparations for their flight.
Then the two fugitives blew out their lights and, with eyes peeled, ears pricked and necks craned, they opened the door to a dressing-room which gave access to the service stairs leading down to the courtyard. Eugénie went first, holding the suitcase in one hand, while Mlle d’Armilly struggled with the opposite handle in both of hers.
The courtyard was empty. Midnight had just struck. The concierge was still on duty.
Eugénie crept up and saw the trusty guard asleep at the back of his lodge, spread out across a chair. She went back to Louise, picked up the case which she had put down for a moment, and the two of them, keeping to the shadow cast by the wall, reached the porch.
Eugénie got Louise to hide behind the door so that the concierge, if he should chance to wake up, would see only one person. Then, herself standing in the full glare of the lamp lighting the courtyard, she cried: ‘Door!’ in her finest contralto voice, knocking on the window.
The concierge got up, as Eugénie had anticipated, and even took a few steps to try to recognize the person who was going out but, seeing a young man impatiently tapping his trouser-leg with his cane, he opened immediately.
Louise at once slid like an adder through the half-open door and lightly bounded outside. Eugénie followed, apparently calm, though it is quite probable that her heart was beating faster than it usually did.
A delivery man was passing, so they asked him to take charge of the trunk, and the two young women told him they were going to the Rue de la Victoire and to Number 36 in that street; then they followed behind the man, whose presence Louise found reassuring. As for Eugénie, she was as strong as a Judith or a Delilah.
They arrived at the door of Number 36. Eugénie told the delivery man to put the trunk down, gave him a few small coins and, after knocking at the shutter, sent him on his way. The shutter on which Eugénie had tapped belonged to a little washerwoman who had been forewarned of their arrival. She had not yet gone to bed, so she opened up.
‘Mademoiselle,’ Eugénie said, ‘have the concierge bring the barouche out of the coachhouse and send him to fetch horses from the post. Here are five francs for his trouble.’
‘I do admire you,’ Louise said. ‘I might even say that I respect you.’
The washerwoman looked on in astonishment, but, as it was agreed that she should have 20 louis for herself, she did not pass any remark on the matter.
A quarter of an hour later, the concierge came back with the postilion and the horses. The latter were immediately harnessed to the carriage, on which the concierge fastened the trunk with a rope and a clasp.
‘Here’s the passport,’ said the postilion. ‘Which route does the young gentleman wish to take?’
‘To Fontainebleau,’ Eugénie replied in an almost masculine voice.
‘What did you say?’ Louise asked.
‘I’m putting them off the scent,’ Eugénie said. ‘That woman took twenty louis from us, but she could betray us for forty. When we reach the boulevard, we’ll change course.’ And, hardly touching the running board, she leapt into the britzka,2 which had been fitted out as an excellent sleeping compartment.
‘You are always right, Eugénie,’ the singing teacher said, taking her place next to her friend.
A quarter of an hour later, the postilion had been put back on the correct road and was cracking his whip as he drove through the barrier at Saint-Martin. ‘Ah,’ Louise said with a sigh. ‘We’re out of Paris!’
‘Yes, my sweet; and the abduction has been well and truly accomplished,’ Eugénie replied.
‘But without violence,’ said Louise.
‘I’ll offer that in mitigation,’ said Eugénie; but her words were drowned in the noise made by the carriage as it rumbled across the cobbles at La Villette.
Monsieur Danglars had a daughter no longer.
XCVIII
TH
E INN OF THE BELL AND BOTTLE
Let us leave Mlle Danglars and her friend bowling along the Brussels road, and return to poor Andrea Cavalcanti, who had been so inopportunely halted in his bid for fortune.
Despite his tender years, Monsieur Andrea Cavalcanti was a most adept and intelligent young man. So, as we saw, when the very first rumours began to filter into the drawing-room, he gradually made his way to the door, then through one or two rooms, and finally vanished.
One thing that we forgot to add, though it deserves to be mentioned, is that one of the rooms through which Cavalcanti passed was that in which the bride’s trousseau was exhibited: caskets of diamonds, cashmere shawls, lace from Valenciennes and English veils – in short, everything that goes to make up that mass of tempting objects, the wedding presents that are known as le corbeille: the word alone is enough to make a young girl’s heart flutter.
What shows that Andrea was not only a very intelligent and very adept, but also a most provident young man, is that, as he ran through the room, he seized the most valuable of the jewels on display. Then, with this provision for his journey, he felt himself lighter by half as he jumped out of the window and slipped between the fingers of the gendarmes.
Tall and well built like a Greek wrestler, muscular as a Spartan warrior, Andrea sped on for a quarter of an hour without knowing where he was heading, his one aim being to put as much distance as possible between himself and the place in which he had nearly been caught. He had set off from the Rue du Mont-Blanc and, with that instinct for barriers that thieves possess in the same way that a hare knows the way to its form, he found himself at the end of the Rue Lafayette. Here, panting for breath, he stopped.
He was entirely alone, with the vast desert of the Clos Saint-Lazare on his left and, on the right, the full extent of Paris itself.
‘Am I lost?’ he wondered. ‘No, not if I can achieve a greater burst of activity than my enemies. So my salvation boils down to a simple matter of kilometres.’
At that moment he observed a licensed cab coming up the Boulevard Poissonnière: its driver, glumly smoking his pipe, seemed bent on reaching the outer limits of the Faubourg Saint-Denis, which was no doubt the place where he was normally stationed.
‘Hello, my friend!’ Benedetto called.
‘What is it, my good sir?’ the coachman asked.
‘Is your horse tired?’
‘Tired? Very funny! He’s done nothing all day. Four miserable fares and twenty sous in tips; that’s seven francs in all, and I have to give ten to my boss.’
‘Would you like to add these twenty francs to the seven you have?’
‘Only too happy, sir. Twenty francs are not to be sniffed at. What do you want me to do for them?’
‘Something very simple, if your horse is not too tired.’
‘I tell you, he’ll go like the wind. All we need is to know which way he has to go.’
‘Towards Louvres.’
‘Yes, yes, I know: the place where the ratafia comes from?’
‘That’s it. All we have to do is to catch one of my friends with whom I’m due to go hunting tomorrow at La Chapelle-en-Serval. He was to have waited for me here with his cab until half-past eleven. It’s midnight now, so I suppose he got tired of waiting and set off on his own.’
‘Quite likely so.’
‘Well, can you try to catch him up?’
‘I’d be only too delighted.’
‘If we don’t catch him between here and Le Bourget, you’ll have twenty francs. If we don’t catch him before Louvres, thirty.’
‘And if we do catch him?’
‘Forty!’ Andrea said, after hesitating a moment, then realizing that he was quite safe in promising.
‘Done!’ said the driver. ‘Hop in and we’ll be off! Prroom!’
Andrea jumped into the cab and they sped rapidly across the Faubourg Saint-Denis, down the Faubourg Saint-Martin, through the barrier and into the endless suburbs of La Villette.
He made sure that they didn’t meet up with the mythical friend, but from time to time he would ask after a green cab with a piebald horse from late passers-by or at still-open cabarets. As there are a good number of carriages on the road to the Netherlands, and nine-tenths of cabs are green, there was no shortage of information: the coach had always just passed; it was 500 or 200 or a hundred yards ahead. Then they overtook it; it was the wrong one.
On one occasion their cab itself was overtaken – by a barouche swept along at a gallop by two post-horses. ‘Ah,’ Cavalcanti thought. ‘If only I had that barouche, those two good horses and, most of all, the passport one would need to obtain them.’ And he gave a deep sigh.
The barouche was the one carrying Mlle Danglars and Mlle d’Armilly.
‘Forward!’ Andrea said. ‘Keep going! We must catch him soon.’ And the poor horse resumed the furious trot that it had maintained since they left Paris and arrived, steaming, in Louvres.
‘Decidedly,’ said Andrea, ‘I can see that I am not going to catch up with my friend and that I shall kill your horse. Better stop now. Here are your thirty francs. I’ll sleep at the Cheval Rouge and take the first coach where I can find a spare seat. Good-night, friend.’
He pressed six five-franc pieces into the driver’s hand and jumped lightly on to the pavement.
The coachman joyfully put the money in his pocket and set off at a walk down the Paris road. Andrea pretended to go to the inn; but, after stopping for a moment by the door and hearing the sound of the cab fading into the distance, he carried on and, at a brisk trot, covered two leagues before stopping to rest. By this time he must have been very close to La Chapelle-en-Serval, where he had said he was going.
It was not tiredness that stopped Andrea. It was the need to take a decision, the need to fix on a plan.
It was impossible for him to get into a stagecoach, and equally impossible to take the mail: for either, a passport was essential.
It was also impossible, especially for a man as expert as Andrea was in criminal matters, to imagine staying in the département of the Oise, which is one of the most exposed and closely watched in France.
Andrea sat down on the edge of a ditch, put his head between his hands and thought.
Ten minutes later, he looked up. He had come to a decision.
He was wearing a sleeveless jacket which he had managed to seize from its hanger in the antechamber and button over his evening dress; and this he smeared with dust down one side. Then, marching into La Chapelle-en-Serval, he boldly went up to the door of the only inn in the village and knocked on the door. The landlord opened.
‘My friend,’ Andrea said, ‘I was on my way from Mortefontaine to Senlis when my horse, which is a troublesome beast, shied and threw me. I must get to Compiègne tonight or my family will be very worried about me. Do you have a horse I could hire?’
Good, bad or indifferent, an innkeeper always has a horse.
This particular one called his stableboy, ordered him to saddle ‘The Grey’ and woke up his son, a child of seven years old, who would mount up behind the gentleman and bring the animal back. Andrea gave the innkeeper twenty francs and, as he was taking them from his pocket, let fall a visiting card.
This card belonged to one of his friends from the Café de Paris. The result was that the innkeeper, when Andrea had gone and he picked up the card that had fallen from his pocket, was convinced he had hired his horse to Monsieur le Comte de Mauléon, of 25, Rue Saint-Dominique – this being the name and address on the card.
The Grey was not a fast mover but steady and conscientious. In three and a half hours Andrea had covered the nine leagues separating him from Compiègne. Four o’clock was striking on the town hall clock when he came into the square where the stagecoaches drew up.
There is an excellent hostelry in Compiègne which even those who have stayed there only once will remember.1
Andrea had stopped here on one of his excursions around Paris and he recalled the Bell and Bottle. He took his bea
rings, saw the inn sign by the light of a streetlamp and, after sending the boy away with all the small change he had on him, knocked at the door, rightly judging that he had two or three hours in front of him and that the best thing was to prepare for future exertions with a good sleep and a good supper.
A young lad opened the door. ‘My friend,’ Andrea said, ‘I have just come from Saint-Jean-au-Bois, where I had dinner. I was counting on taking the coach that goes through here at midnight but, like an idiot, I got lost and have been wandering around the woods for the past four hours. So, would you be kind enough to give me one of those pretty little rooms overlooking the courtyard and send up a cold chicken, with a bottle of claret.’
The boy was quite unsuspecting. Andrea’s voice was completely composed, he had a cigar in his mouth and his hands in the pockets of his jacket; his clothes were smart, his beard fresh and his boots beyond reproach. He looked like a gentleman up late, nothing more.
While the boy was preparing Andrea’s room, the hostess got up. Andrea greeted her with his most charming smile and asked if he might have Number 3, which he had occupied last time he was here in Compiègne. Unfortunately, Number 3 was already occupied, by a young man travelling with his sister.
Andrea seemed utterly downcast and was only consoled when the hostess assured him that Number 7, which was being got ready for him, had precisely the same outlook as Number 3. Warming his feet and chatting about the latest Chantilly races, he waited for them to announce that his room was ready.
Andrea had had good reason to talk of those pretty rooms overlooking the yard. The courtyard of the Bell and Bottle, with the three tiers of galleries which make it seem like a theatre, with the jasmine and clematis which lightly entwine its pillars like a natural decoration, is one of the most lovely inn yards anywhere in the world.
The chicken was fresh, the wine was old, the fire crackled brightly. Andrea was surprised to find himself dining as heartily as though nothing had happened. Then he went to bed and fell asleep almost immediately with that relentless sleep that a man always has at twenty years old, however much his conscience troubles him. Though we are forced to confess that while Andrea’s conscience had good reason to trouble him, it did nothing of the sort.