3.
The very next day M. le Marquis de Firmin-Latour called upon me at my office in the Rue Daunou. Theodore let him in, and the first thing that struck me about him was his curt, haughty manner and the look of disdain wherewith he regarded the humble appointments of my business premises. He himself was magnificently dressed, I may tell you. His bottle-green coat was of the finest cloth and the most perfect cut I had ever seen. His kerseymere pantaloons fitted him without a wrinkle. He wore gloves, he carried a muff of priceless zibeline, and in his cravat there was a diamond the size of a broad bean.
He also carried a malacca cane, which he deposited upon my desk, and a gold-rimmed spy-glass which, with a gesture of supreme affectation, he raised to his eye.
“Now, M. Hector Ratichon,” he said abruptly, “perhaps you will be good enough to explain.”
I had risen when he entered. But now I sat down again and coolly pointed to the best chair in the room.
“Will you give yourself the trouble to sit down, M. le Marquis?” I riposted blandly.
He called me names—rude names! but I took no notice of that . . . and he sat down.
“Now!” he said once more.
“What is it you desire to know, M. le Marquis?” I queried.
“Why you interfered in my affairs last night?”
“Do you complain?” I asked.
“No,” he admitted reluctantly, “but I don’t understand your object.”
“My object was to serve you then,” I rejoined quietly, “and later.”
“What do you mean by ‘later’?”
“To-day,” I replied, “to-morrow; whenever your present position becomes absolutely unendurable.”
“It is that now,” he said with a savage oath.
“I thought as much,” was my curt comment.
“And do you mean to assert,” he went on more earnestly, “that you can find a way out of it?”
“If you desire it—yes!” I said.
“How?”
He drew his chair nearer to my desk, and I leaned forward, with my elbows on the table, the finger-tips of one hand in contact with those of the other.
“Let us begin by reviewing the situation, shall we, Monsieur?” I began.
“If you wish,” he said curtly.
“You are a gentleman of refined, not to say luxurious tastes, who finds himself absolutely without means to gratify them. Is that so?”
He nodded.
“You have a wife and a father-in-law who, whilst lavishing costly treasures upon you, leave you in a humiliating dependence on them for actual money.”
Again he nodded approvingly.
“Human nature,” I continued with gentle indulgence, “being what it is, you pine after what you do not possess—namely, money. Houses, equipages, servants, even good food and wine, are nothing to you beside that earnest desire for money that you can call your own, and which, if only you had it, you could spend at your pleasure.”
“To the point, man, to the point!” he broke in impatiently.
“One moment, M. le Marquis, and I have done. But first of all, with your permission, shall we also review the assets in your life which we will have to use in order to arrive at the gratification of your earnest wish?”
“Assets? What do you mean?”
“The means to our end. You want money; we must find the means to get it for you.”
“I begin to understand,” he said, and drew his chair another inch or two closer to me.
“Firstly, M. le Marquis,” I resumed, and now my voice had become earnest and incisive, “firstly you have a wife, then you have a father-in-law whose wealth is beyond the dreams of humble people like myself, and whose one great passion in life is the social position of the daughter whom he worships. Now,” I added, and with the tip of my little finger I touched the sleeve of my aristocratic client, “here at once is your first asset. Get at the money-bags of papa by threatening the social position of his daughter.”
Whereupon my young gentleman jumped to his feet and swore and abused me for a mudlark and a muckworm and I don’t know what. He seized his malacca cane and threatened me with it, and asked me how the devil I dared thus to speak of Mme. la Marquise de Firmin-Latour. He cursed, and he stormed and he raved of his sixteen quarterings and of my loutishness. He did everything in fact except walk out of the room.
I let him go on quite quietly. It was part of his programme, and we had to go through the performance. As soon as he gave me the chance of putting in a word edgeways I rejoined quietly:
“We are not going to hurt Madame la Marquise, Monsieur; and if you do not want the money, let us say no more about it.”
Whereupon he calmed down; after a while he sat down again, this time with his cane between his knees and its ivory knob between his teeth.
“Go on,” he said curtly.
Nor did he interrupt me again whilst I expounded my scheme to him—one that, mind you, I had evolved during the night, knowing well that I should receive his visit during the day; and I flatter myself that no finer scheme for the bleeding of a parsimonious usurer was ever devised by any man.
If it succeeded—and there was no reason why it should not—M. de Firmin-Latour would pocket a cool half-million, whilst I, sir, the brain that had devised the whole scheme, pronounced myself satisfied with the paltry emolument of one hundred thousand francs, out of which, remember, I should have to give Theodore a considerable sum.
We talked it all over, M. le Marquis and I, the whole afternoon. I may tell you at once that he was positively delighted with the plan, and then and there gave me one hundred francs out of his own meagre purse for my preliminary expenses.
The next morning we began work.
I had begged M. le Marquis to find the means of bringing me a few scraps of the late M. le Comte de Naquet’s—Madame la Marquise’s first husband—handwriting. This, fortunately, he was able to do. They were a few valueless notes penned at different times by the deceased gentleman and which, luckily for us all, Madame had not thought it worth while to keep under lock and key.
I think I told you before, did I not? what a marvellous expert I am in every kind of calligraphy, and soon I had a letter ready which was to represent the first fire in the exciting war which we were about to wage against an obstinate lady and a parsimonious usurer.
My identity securely hidden under the disguise of a commissionnaire, I took that letter to Mme. la Marquise de Firmin-Latour’s sumptuous abode in the Rue de Grammont.
M. le Marquis, you understand, had in the meanwhile been thoroughly primed in the rôle which he was to play; as for Theodore, I thought it best for the moment to dispense with his aid.
The success of our first skirmish surpassed our expectations.
Ten minutes after the letter had been taken upstairs to Mme. la Marquise, one of the maids, on going past her mistress’s door, was startled to hear cries and moans proceeding from Madame’s room. She entered and found Madame lying on the sofa, her face buried in the cushions, and sobbing and screaming in a truly terrifying manner. The maid applied the usual restoratives, and after a while Madame became more calm and at once very curtly ordered the maid out of the room.
M. le Marquis, on being apprised of this mysterious happening, was much distressed; he hurried to his wife’s apartments, and was as gentle and loving with her as he had been in the early days of their honeymoon. But throughout the whole of that evening, and, indeed, for the next two days, all the explanation that he could get from Madame herself was that she had a headache and that the letter which she had received that afternoon was of no consequence and had nothing to do with her migraine.
But clearly the beautiful Rachel was extraordinarily agitated. At night she did not sleep, but would pace up and down her apartments in a state bordering on frenzy, which of course caused M. le Marquis a great deal of anxiety and of sorrow.
Finally, on the Friday morning it seemed as if Madame could contain herself no longer. She threw herself into her husband’s arms and blurted out the whole truth. M. le Comte de Naquet, her first husband, who had been declared drowned at sea, and therefore officially deceased by Royal decree, was not dead at all. Madame had received a letter from him wherein he told her that he had indeed suffered shipwreck, then untold misery on a desert island for three years, until he had been rescued by a passing vessel, and finally been able, since he was destitute, to work his way back to France and to Paris. Here he had lived for the past few months as best he could, trying to collect together a little money so as to render himself presentable before his wife, whom he had never ceased to love.
Inquiries discreetly conducted had revealed the terrible truth, that Madame had been faithless to him, had light-heartedly assumed the death of her husband, and had contracted what was nothing less than a bigamous marriage. Now he, M. de Naquet, standing on his rights as Rachel Mosenstein’s only lawful husband, demanded that she should return to him, and as a prelude to a permanent and amicable understanding, she was to call at three o’clock precisely on the following Friday at No. 96 Rue Daunou, where their reconciliation and reunion was to take place.
The letter announcing this terrible news and making this preposterous demand she now placed in the hands of M. le Marquis, who at first was horrified and thunderstruck, and appeared quite unable to deal with the situation or to tender advice. For Madame it meant complete social ruin, of course, and she herself declared that she would never survive such a scandal. Her tears and her misery made the loving heart of M. le Marquis bleed in sympathy. He did all he could to console and comfort the lady, whom, alas! he could no longer look upon as his wife. Then, gradually, both he and she became more composed. It was necessary above all things to make sure that Madame was not being victimized by an impostor, and for this purpose M. le Marquis generously offered himself as a disinterested friend and adviser. He offered to go himself to the Rue Daunou at the hour appointed and to do his best to induce M. le Comte de Naquet—if indeed he existed—to forgo his rights on the lady who had so innocently taken on the name and hand of M. le Marquis de Firmin-Latour. Somewhat more calm, but still unconsoled, the beautiful Rachel accepted this generous offer. I believe that she even found five thousand francs in her privy purse which was to be offered to M. de Naquet in exchange for a promise never to worry Mme. la Marquise again with his presence. But this I have never been able to ascertain with any finality. Certain it is that when at three o’clock on that same afternoon M. de Firmin-Latour presented himself at my office, he did not offer me a share in any five thousand francs, though he spoke to me about the money, adding that he thought it would look well if he were to give it back to Madame, and to tell her that M. de Naquet had rejected so paltry a sum with disdain.
I thought such a move unnecessary, and we argued about it rather warmly, and in the end he went away, as I say, without offering me any share in the emolument. Whether he did put his project into execution or not I never knew. He told me that he did. After that there followed for me, Sir, many days, nay, weeks, of anxiety and of strenuous work. Mme. la Marquise received several more letters from the supposititious M. de Naquet, any one of which would have landed me, Sir, in a vessel bound for New Caledonia. The discarded husband became more and more insistent as time went on, and finally sent an ultimatum to Madame saying that he was tired of perpetual interviews with M. le Marquis de Firmin-Latour, whose right to interfere in the matter he now wholly denied, and that he was quite determined to claim his lawful wife before the whole world.
Madame la Marquise, in the meanwhile, had passed from one fit of hysterics into another. She denied her door to everyone and lived in the strictest seclusion in her beautiful apartment of the Rue de Grammont. Fortunately this all occurred in the early autumn, when the absence of such a society star from fashionable gatherings was not as noticeable as it otherwise would have been. But clearly we were working up for the climax, which occurred in the way I am about to relate.