THE STUDENT'S STORY.
"When I was in Rome, I lodged in the Via Margutta, which, for the benefit of those who have not been there, may be described as a street of studios and stables, crossed at one end by a little roofed gallery with a single window, like a shabby 'Bridge of Sighs,' A gutter runs down the middle, interrupted occasionally by heaps of stable-litter; and the perspective is damaged by rows of linen suspended across the street at uncertain intervals. The houses in this agreeable thoroughfare are dingy, dilapidated, and comfortless, and all which are not in use as stables, are occupied by artists. However, it was a very jolly place, and I never was happier anywhere in my life. I had but just touched my little patrimony, and I was acquainted with plenty of pleasant fellows who used to come down to my rooms at night from the French Academy where they had been studying all day. Ah, what evenings those were! What suppers we used to have in from the Lepre! What lots of Orvieto we drank! And what a mountain of empty wicker bottles had to be cleared away from the little square yard with the solitary lemon-tree at the back of the house!"
"Come, Müller--no fond memories!" cried a student in a holland blouse. "Get on with the story."
"Ay, get on with the story!" echoed several voices.
To which Müller, who took advantage of the interruption to finish his grog au vin, deigned no reply.
"Well," he continued, "like a good many other fellows who, having everything to learn and nothing to do, fancy themselves great geniuses only because they are in Rome, I put a grand brass plate on the door, testifying to all passers-by that mine was the STUDIO DI HERR FRANZ MULLER; and, having done this, I believed, of course, that my fortune was to be made out of hand. Nothing came of it, however. People in search of Dessoulavy's rooms knocked occasionally to ask their way, and a few English and Americans dropped in from time to time to stare about them, after the free-and-easy fashion of foreigners in Rome; but, for all this, I found no patrons. Thus several months went by, during which I studied from the life, worked hard at the antique, and relieved the monotony of study with occasional trips to Frascati, or supper parties at the Café Greco."
"The story! the story!" interrupted a dozen impatient voices.
"All in good time," said Müller, with provoking indifference. "We are now coming to it."
And assuming an attitude expressive of mystery, he dropped his voice, looked round the table, and proceeded:--
"It was on the last evening of the Carnival. It had been raining at intervals during the day, but held up for a good hour just at dusk, as if on purpose for the moccoli. Scarcely, however, had the guns of St. Angelo thundered an end to the frolic, when the rain came down again in torrents, and put out the last tapers that yet lingered along the Corso. Wet, weary, and splashed from head to foot with mud and tallow, I came home about seven o'clock, having to dine and dress before going to a masked-ball in the evening. To light my stove, change my wet clothes, and make the best of a half-cold trattore dinner, were my first proceedings; after which, I laid out my costume ready to put on, wrapped myself in a huge cloak, swallowed a tumbler full of hot cognac and water, and lay down in front of the fire, determined to have a sound nap and a thorough warming, before venturing out again that night. I fell asleep, of course, and never woke till roused by a tremendous peal upon the studio-bell, about two hours and a half afterwards. More dead than alive, I started to my feet. The fire had gone out in the stove; the room was in utter darkness; and the bell still pealed loud enough to raise the neighborhood.
"'Who's there?' I said, half-opening the door, through which the wind and rain came rushing. 'And what, in the name of ten thousand devils, do you want?"
"'I want an artist,' said my visitor, in Italian. 'Are you one?'
"'I flatter myself that I am,' replied I, still holding the door tolerably close.
"'Can you paint heads?'
"'Heads, figures, landscapes--anything,' said I, with my teeth chattering like castanets.
"The stranger pushed the door open, walked in without further ceremony, closed it behind him, and said, in a low, distinct voice:--
"'Could you take the portrait of a dead man?'
"'Of a dead man?' I stammered. 'I--I ... Suppose I strike a light?'
"The stranger laid his hand upon my arm.
"'Not till you have given me an answer,' said he. 'Yes or no? Remember, you will be paid well for your work.'
"'Well, then--yes,' I replied.
"'And can you do it at once?'
"'At once?'
"'Ay, Signore, will you bring your colors, and come with me this instant--or must I seek some other painter?'
"I thought of the masked-ball, and sighed; but the promise of good payment, and, above all, the peculiarity of the adventure determined me.
"'Nay, if it is to be done,' said I, 'one time is as good as another. Let me strike a light, and I will at once pack up my colors and come with you.'
"'Bene!' said the stranger. 'But be as quick as you can, Signore, for time presses.'
"I was quick, you may be sure, and yet not so quick but that I found time to look at my strange visitor. He was a dark, elderly man, dressed in a suit of plain black, and might have been a clerk, or a tradesman, or a confidential servant. As soon as I was ready, he took the lead; conducted me to a carriage which was waiting at the corner of a neighboring street; took his place respectfully on the opposite seat; pulled down both the blinds, and gave the word to drive on. I never knew by what streets we went, or to what part of Rome he took me; but the way seemed long and intricate. At length, we stopped and alighted. The night was pitch-dark, and still stormy. I saw before me only the outline of a large building, indistinct and gloomy, and a small open door dimly lighted-from within. Hurried across the strip of narrow pavement, and shut in immediately, I had no time to identify localities--no choice, except to follow my conductor and blindly pursue the adventure to its close. Having entered by a back door, we went up and down a labyrinth of staircases and passages, for the mere purpose, as it seemed, of bewildering me as much as possible--then paused before an oaken door at the end of the corridor. Here my conductor signified by a gesture that I was to precede him.
"It was a large, panelled chamber, richly furnished. A wood fire smouldered on the hearth--a curtained alcove to the left partly concealed a bed--a corresponding alcove to the right, fitted with altar and crucifix, served as an oratory. In the centre of the room stood a table covered with a cloth. It needed no second glance to tell me what object lay beneath that cloth, uplifting it in ghastly outline! My conductor pointed to the table, and asked if there was anything I needed. To this I replied that I must have more light and more fire, and so proceeded to disembarrass myself of my cloak, and prepare my palette. In the meantime, he threw on a log and some pine-cones, and went to fetch an additional lamp.
"Left alone with the body and impelled by an irresistible impulse, I rolled back the cloth and saw before me the corpse of a young man in fancy dress--a magnificent fellow cast in the very mould of strength and grace, and measuring his six feet, if an inch. The features were singularly handsome; the brow open and resolute; the hair dark, and crisp with curls. Looking more closely, I saw that a lock had been lately cut from the right temple, and found one of the severed hairs upon the cheek, where it had fallen. The dress was that of a jester of the middle ages, half scarlet and half white, with a rich belt round the waist. In this belt, as if in horrible mockery of the dead, was stuck a tiny baton surmounted by a fool's cap, and hung with silver bells. Looking down thus upon the body--so young, so beautiful, so evidently unprepared for death--a conviction of foul play flashed upon me with all the suddenness and certainty of revelation. Here were no appearances of disease and no signs of strife. The expression was not that of a man who had fallen weapon in hand. Neither, however, was it that of one who had died in the agony of poison. The longer I looked, the more mysterious it seemed; yet the more I felt assured that there was guilt at the bottom of the mystery.
"While I was yet under the first confused and shuddering impression of this doubt, my guide came back with a powerful solar lamp, and, seeing me stand beside the body, said sharply:--
"'Well, Signore, you look as if you had never seen a dead man before in all your life!'
"'I have seen plenty,' I replied, 'but never one so young, and so handsome.'
"'He dropped down quite suddenly,' said he, volunteering the information, 'and died in a few minutes. 'Then finding that I remained silent, added:--
"'But I am told that it is always so in cases of heart-disease.'
"'I turned away without replying, and, having placed the lamp to my satisfaction, began rapidly sketching in my subject. My instructions were simple. I was to give the head only; to produce as rapid an effect with as little labor as possible; to alter nothing; to add nothing; and, above all, to be ready to leave the house before daybreak. So I set steadily to work, and my conductor, establishing himself in an easy-chair by the fire, watched my progress for some time, and then, as the night advanced, fell profoundly asleep. Thus, hour after hour went by, and, absorbed in my work, I painted on, unconscious of fatigue-- might almost say with something of a morbid pleasure in the task before me. The silence within; the raving of the wind and rain without; the solemn mystery of death, and the still more solemn mystery of crime which, as I followed out train after train of wild conjectures, grew to still deeper conviction, had each and all their own gloomy fascination. Was it not possible, I asked myself, by mere force of will to penetrate the secret? Was it not possible to study that dead face till the springs of thought so lately stilled within the stricken brain should vibrate once more, if only for an instant, as wire vibrates to wire, and sound to sound! Could I not, by long studying of the passive mouth, compel some sympathetic revelation of the last word that it uttered, though that revelation took no outward form, and were communicable to the apprehension only? Pondering thus, I lost myself in a labyrinth of fantastic reveries, till the hand and the brain worked independently of each other--the one swiftly reproducing upon canvas the outer lineaments of the dead; the other laboring to retrace foregone facts of which no palpable evidence remained. Thus my work progressed; thus the night waned; thus the sleeper by the fireside stirred from time to time, or moaned at intervals in his dreams.
"At length, when many hours had gone by, and I began to be conscious of the first languor of sleeplessness, I heard, or fancied I heard, a light sound in the corridor without. I held my breath, and listened. As I listened, it ceased--was renewed--drew nearer--paused outside the door. Involuntarily, I rose and looked round for some means of defence, in case of need. Was I brought here to perpetuate the record of a crime, and was I, when my task was done, to be silenced in a dungeon, or a grave? This thought flashed upon me almost before I was conscious of the horror it involved. At the same moment, I saw the handle of the door turned slowly and cautiously--then held back--and then, after a brief pause, the door itself gradually opening."
Here the student paused as if overcome by the recollection of that moment, and passed his hand nervously across his brow. I took the liberty of pushing our bottle of Chablis towards him, for which he thanked me with a nod and a smile, and filled his glass to the brim.
"Well?" cried two or three voices eagerly; my own being one of them. "The door opened--what then?"
"And a lady entered," he continued. "A lady dressed in black from head to foot, with a small lamp in her hand. Seeing me, she laid her finger significantly on her lip, closed the door as cautiously as she had opened it, and, with the faltering, uncertain steps of one just risen from a sick-bed, came over to where I had been sitting, and leaned for support against my chair. She was very pale, very calm, very young and beautiful, with just that look of passive despair in her face that one sees in Guido's portrait of Beatrice Cenci. Standing thus, I observed that she kept her eyes turned from the corpse, and her attention concentrated on the portrait. So several minutes passed, and neither of us spoke nor stirred. Then, slowly, shudderingly, she turned, grasped me by the arm, pointed to the dead form stretched upon the table, and less with her breath than by the motion of her lips, shaped out the one word:--'Murdered!'
"Stunned by this confirmation of my doubts, I could only clasp my hands in mute horror, and stare helplessly from the lady to the corpse, from the corpse to the sleeper. Wildly, feverishly, with all her calmness turned to eager haste, she then bent over the body, tore open the rich doublet, turned back the shirt, and, without uttering one syllable, pointed to a tiny puncture just above the region of the heart--a spot so small, so insignificant, such a mere speck upon the marble, that but for the pale violet discoloration which spread round it like a halo, I could scarcely have believed it to be the cause of death. The wound had evidently bled inwardly, and, being inflicted with some singularly slender weapon, had closed again so completely as to leave an aperture no larger than might have been caused by the prick of a needle. While I was yet examining it, the fire fell together, and my conductor stirred uneasily in his sleep. To cover the body hastily with the cloth and resume my seat, was, with me, the instinctive work of a moment; but he was quiet again the next instant, and breathing heavily. With trembling hands, my visitor next re-closed the shirt and doublet, replaced the outer covering, and bending down till her lips almost touched my ear, whispered:--
"'You have seen it. If called upon to do so, will you swear it?'
"I promised.
"'You will not let yourself be intimidated by threats? nor bribed by gold? nor lured by promises?
"'Never, so help me Heaven!'
"She looked into my eyes, as if she would read my very soul; then, before I knew what she was about to do, seized my hand, and pressed it to her lip.
"'I believe you,' she said. 'I believe, and I thank you. Not a word to him that you have seen me'--here she pointed to the sleeper by the fire. 'He is faithful; but not to my interests alone. I dare tell you no more--at all events, not now. Heaven bless and reward you. In this portrait you give me the only treasure--the only consolation of my future life!'
"So saying, she took a ring from her finger, pressed it, without another word, into my unwilling hand; and, with the same passive dreary look that her face had worn on first entering took up her lamp again, and glided from the room.
"How the next hour, or half hour, went by, I know not--except that I sat before the canvas like one dreaming. Now and then I added a few touches; but mechanically, and, as it were, in a trance of wonder and dismay. I had, however, made such good progress before being interrupted, that when my companion woke and told me it would soon be day and I must make haste to be gone, the portrait was even more finished than I had myself hoped to make it in the time. So I packed up my colors and palette again, and, while I was doing so, observed that he not only drew the cloth once more over the features of the dead, but concealed the likeness behind the altar in the oratory, and even restored the chairs to their old positions against the wall. This done, he extinguished the solar lamp; put it out of sight; desired me once more to follow him; and led the way back along the same labyrinth of staircases and corridors by which he brought me. It was gray dawn as he hurried me into the coach. The blinds were already down--the door was instantly closed--again we seemed to be going through an infinite number of streets--again we stopped, and I found myself at the corner of the Via Margutta.
"'Alight, Signore,' said the stranger, speaking for the first time since we started. 'Alight--you are but a few yards from your own door. Here are a hundred scudi; and all that you have now to do, is to forget your night's work, as if it had never been.'
"With this he closed the carriage-door, the horses dashed on again, and, before I had time even to see if any arms were blazoned on the panels, the whole equipage had disappeared.
"And here, strange to say, the adventure ended. I never was called upon for evidence. I never saw anything more of the stranger, or the lady. I never heard of any sudden death, or accident, or disappearance having taken place about that time; and I never even obtained any clue to the neighborhood of the house in which these things took place. Often and often afterwards, when I was strolling by night along the streets of Rome, I lingered before some old palazzo, and fancied that I recognised the gloomy outline that caught my eye in that hurried transit from the carriage to the house. Often and often I paused and started, thinking that I had found at last the very side-door by which I entered. But these were mere guesses after all. Perhaps that house stood in some remote quarter of the city where my footsteps never went again--perhaps in some neighboring street or piazza, where I passed it every day! At all events, the whole thing vanished like a dream, and, but for the ring and the hundred scudi, a dream I should by this time believe it to have been. The scudi, I am sorry to say, were spent within a month--the ring I have never parted from, and here it is."
Hereupon the student took from his finger a superb ruby set between two brilliants of inferior size, and allowed it to pass from hand to hand, all round the table. Exclamations of surprise and admiration, accompanied by all sorts of conjectures and comments, broke from every lip.
"The dead man was the lady's lover," said one. "That is why she wanted his portrait."
"Of course, and her husband had murdered him," said another.
"Who, then, was the man in black?" asked a third.
"A servant, to be sure. She said, if you remember, that he was faithful; but not devoted to her interests alone. That meant that he would obey to the extent of procuring for her the portrait of her lover; but that he did not choose to betray his master, even though his master was a murderer."
"But if so, where was the master?" said the first speaker. "Is it likely that he would have neglected to conceal the body during all these hours?"
"Certainly. Nothing more likely, if he were a man of the world, and knew how to play his game out boldly to the end. Have we not been told that it was the last night of the Carnival, and what better could he do, to avert suspicion, than show himself at as many balls as he could visit in the course of the evening? But really, this ring is magnificent!"
"Superb. The ruby alone must be worth a thousand francs."
"To say nothing of the diamonds, and the setting," observed the next to whom it was handed.
At length, after having gone nearly the round of the table, the ring came to a little dark, sagacious-looking man, just one seat beyond Dalrymple's, who peered at it suspiciously on every side, breathed upon it, rubbed it bright again upon his coat-sleeve, and, finally, held the stones up sideways between his eyes and the light.
"Bah!" said he, sending it on with a contemptuous fillip of the forefinger and thumb. "Glass and paste, mon ami. Not worth five francs of anybody's money."
Müller, who had been eyeing him all the time with an odd smile lurking about the corners of his mouth, emptied his last drop of Chablis, turned the glass over on the table, bottom upwards, and said very coolly:--
"Well, I'm sorry for that; because I gave seven francs for it myself this morning, in the Palais Royal."
"You!"
"Seven francs!"
"Bought in the Palais Royal!"
"What does he mean?"
"Mean?" echoed the student, in reply to this chorus of exclamations. "I mean that I bought it this morning, and gave seven francs for it. It is not every morning of my life, let me tell you, that I have seven francs to throw away on my personal appearance."
"But then the ring that the lady took from her finger?"
"And the murder?"
"And the servant in black?"
"And the hundred scudi?"
"One great invention from beginning to end, Messieurs les Chicards, and being got up expressly for your amusement, I hope you liked it. Garçon?--another grog au vin, and sweeter than the last!"
It would be difficult to say whether the Chicards were most disappointed or delighted at this dénoûment--disappointed at its want of fact, or delighted with the story-weaving power of Herr Franz Müller. They expressed themselves, at all events, with a tumultuous burst of applause, in the midst of which we rose and left the room. When we once more came out into the open air, the stars had disappeared and the air was heavy with the damps of approaching daybreak. Fortunately, we caught an empty fiacre in the next street and, as we were nearer the Rue du Faubourg Montmartre than the Chaussée d' Antin, Dalrymple set me down first.
"Adieu, Damon," he said, laughingly, as we shook hands through the window. "If we don't meet before, come and dine with me next Sunday at seven o'clock--and don't dream of dreadful murders, if you can help it!"
I did not dream of dreadful murders. I dreamt, instead, of Madame de Marignan, and never woke the next morning till eleven o'clock, just two hours later than the time at which I should have presented myself at Dr. Chéron's.