CHAPTER IX.
WHICH IS SATISFACTORY TO EVERYBODY BUT THE
GUILTY.
s soon as Madame de la Grenouillère learned how Moumouth had been recovered, she ordered young Faribole to be brought before her.
"I’ll go and look him up," said Father Lustucru, with alacrity. He was very anxious to warn his accomplice, and sought an excuse to steal off.
"No, remain! You have admitted him to the mansion, you shall see him turned away, and will learn to bestow your confidence more wisely in future."
Lustucru remained, and, recovering from his first stupor, resolved to boldly deny everything, if Faribole should dare to accuse him.
Introduced into the parlor, Faribole did not wait to be interrogated.
Faribole Explains.
"Madame the Countess," said he, "the presence of your cat tells me why you have called me; but I am less guilty than I appear; permit me to explain."
"It is useless," replied Madame de la Grenouillère; "your justification is impossible."
The steward, believing it best to play a bold game, said with irony:—
"I am curious to know what unlikely story this rogue has to tell," and in accenting these words slowly he gave Faribole a glance which signified: "If you accuse me, woe to you!’"
Without allowing himself to be confused, Faribole commenced in these terms:—
"It is necessary to avow it, madame; I entered into your service with the intention of stealing your cat; the fortune-teller wished to have him, to make him play the part of the devil Astaroth; and she had seduced me by the promise of a crown of six livres and a pair of shoes. They treated me so well, and Moumouth appeared to me so charming, that I renounced my wicked plans; I never, no, never would have put them into execution, if I had not found it was necessary to get Moumouth out of the way in order to rescue him from the attacks of an enemy all the more terrible because he was hidden."
"Of whom does he wish to speak?" demanded Lustucru.
"Of you! of you who have said to me, ’Kill Moumouth, or I chase you from the house!’"
"I, I have said that! what an impudent falsehood! Ah, Madame the Countess, you know me well enough not to hesitate between the declarations of this fellow and my flat denial."
"Faribole," said the Countess severely, "your charge is grave; can you bring any proof to support it?"
"Proof, alas! no, madame; but I am ready to swear to you"—
"Enough," interrupted the Countess; "do not add calumny to the theft of the cat, but deliver me of your presence."
Faribole is treated Roughly on the Staircase.
The miserable Faribole wished to protest, but at a sign from Madame de la Grenouillère, Lustucru seized him by the arm, led him through the door without further ceremony, and treated him in so rough a manner on the staircase as to quite relieve him of any idea of asking for his personal effects.
However, the iniquities of the steward were not to remain long unpunished; that same day, Mother Michel, in arranging the closet in the antechamber, was very much astonished at finding the bodies of several dead rats and mice; she was wondering what had caused their death, when she recognized the famous hash that the cat had refused to eat, and which had been left there by mistake. Two mice were dead in the plate itself, so powerful and subtile was the poison!
This discovery tore away the veil which covered the past of Lustucru. Mother Michel, divining that the charges of Faribole were well founded, hastened to inform Madame de la Grenouillère, who recommended her to keep silent, and sent for the steward.
"Have you still the ’Death to Rats?’" she asked him.
"Yes, madame, I think I have a little left."
"Some should be placed in the antechamber; you have not thought of that before?"
"Never, madame; I did not know there were rats in that part of the house."
"Very well; you can retire."
A Celebrated Chemist analyzes the Hash.
Madame de la Grenouillère wrote to a celebrated chemist, who, after having analyzed the hash, declared that it contained a prodigious quantity of poison.
The crime of Lustucru was then evident; but other proofs were not long in rising against him. The adventure of Groquemouche and Guignolet was talked about among the boatmen; Faribole heard the story from one of them, and discovered a person who had seen Lustucru throw Moumouth from the bridge of Notre Dame.
The Fate of the Steward.
The steward, confounded, did not wait to be discharged; he fled, and, to escape the vengeance of Madame de la Grenouillère, embarked as cook on board of a merchant vessel bound for Oceanica.
It was afterward learned that this ship had been wrecked upon the Sandwich Islands, and that the savages had eaten Lustucru. History records that at the moment of expiring he pronounced but a single word, the name of Moumouth!
Lustucru flies.
What was it that brought this name to the lips of the guilty man? Was it remorse? or was it the last explosion of an unforgiving hatred? This is what history has neglected to inform us.
The health of Madame de la Grenouillère had been altered by the heavy shocks she had experienced in losing her favorite animals. The tenderness and graces of Moumouth would perhaps have been sufficient to attach her to life; but the respectable lady had reached an age when sorrows press very heavily. Mother Michel had the grief, one morning, to find the Countess dead in her bed; her face was so calm and bore so plainly the impress of all her lovable qualities, that one would have believed she slept. She was nearly in her seventy-ninth year.
By her will, which she had deposited with her lawyer, she had left to Moumouth and Mother Michel an income of two thousand livres, to revert, in case of the death of either, to the survivor.
Mother Michel took up her residence near her sister, provided handsomely for all the children, and selected for her own retreat a pretty cottage situated in Low-Breton upon the banks of the river among the green trees.
Mother Michel’s Cottage.
Faribole, received again into the service of Madame de la Grenouillère, conducted himself so well that his transient error was forgotten. He would have been able to distinguish himself in the kitchen, but he preferred to serve the State, and enlisted at the age of sixteen in an infantry regiment. He took part in the expedition against Majorca under the command of Marshal Richelieu, and was named corporal after the capture of Port-Mahon, June the 29th, 1756. When he obtained his discharge, he returned to live near Mother Michel, for whom he had an affection truly filial. To the agitations of their existence succeeded calm and happy days, embellished by the constantly increasing graces of Moumouth.
Our cat henceforth was without an enemy; he won, on the contrary, the esteem and affection of all who knew him. His adventures had made him quite famous. Besides the ballad,—of which, unfortunately, only two couplets have been preserved,—the poets of the period wrote in his honor a large number of verses that have not come down to us. He received visits from the most distinguished men of the time, even from the King himself, who once, on his way to the Chateau of Bellevue, dropped in for a moment on Moumouth.
A grand lady of the court condescended to choose for Moumouth a very gentle and very pretty companion, whom he accepted with gratitude. In seeing himself a father Moumouth’s happiness was at its highest, as was also that of Mother Michel, who felt that she lived again in the posterity of her cat.
You wish to know what finally became of Moumouth? He died,—but it was not until after a long and joyous career. His eyes, in closing, looked with sweet satisfaction upon groups of weeping children and grandchildren. His mortal remains were not treated like those of ordinary cats. Mother Michel had built for him a magnificent mausoleum of white marble. Following a custom then adopted at the burial of all illustrious personages, they engraved upon the tomb of Moumouth an epitaph in Latin, composed by a learned professor of the University of Paris.
Moumouth and his Family.