CHAPTER XXX.
The strange interview which I have described of course yielded my thoughts sufficient employment. Was it--could it really be, I asked myself, that I had spent the last hour in conversation with the greatest statesman in modern Europe? And in conversation about what? about Ovid--the task of a school-boy in an inferior class--when I could have afforded him minute information upon events on which the fate of nations depended.
Could he have received prior information? Impossible! Our vessel had sailed with the fairest wind, and the speed of our passage had been made a marvel of by the sailors; I had lost no time upon the road, and it was impossible--surely quite impossible--that he could have received tidings from Catalonia in a shorter space, without, indeed, the devil, as the vulgar did not scruple to say, sent him tidings from all parts of the world by especial couriers of his own.
One thing, however, is certain; I went to the Palais Cardinal a very important person in my own opinion, and I came away from it with my self-consequence very terribly diminished.
My next reflections turned to the minister's very unclerical dress, and I puzzled myself for some time in fancying the various errands which might have required such a disguise--for disguise it evidently was. Of course, I could conclude upon nothing, and was only obliged to end in supposing, with the boy who had guided me thither, that no one knew how, or why, he did anything.
My way home was easily found; and retiring to bed, I dreamed all night, between sleeping and waking, of courts and prime ministers, and woke the next morning not at all refreshed for having passed the night in such company. I had more disagreeable society, however, before long; for when I had been up about an hour, and was preparing to go out and view the great and stirring bee-hive, whose hum reached me even in my own cell, the worthy host of the auberge bustled into the room with an appearance of great terror, begging a thousand pardons for his intrusion; but he hoped, he said, that if I had anything in my bags which I wished to conceal, I would put it away quickly, for that the officers of justice were in the house, and he had heard them inquire for a person very much resembling me.
Of course, I laughed at the idea; but the landlord had hardly concluded his tale, when in rushed two sergeants and a greffier, dressed in their black robes of office. One stationed himself at the door, one threw himself between me and the window, and then commanded me in the king's name to surrender myself.
I replied that I was very willing to surrender, but that there must be assuredly some mistake, for that I had not been in Paris sufficient time to commit any great crime.
"No mistake, sir! no mistake!" replied one of the sergeants. "People who have the knack, commit crimes as fast as I can eat oysters. You are accused, sir, of filching. They say, sir, you are guilty of appropriation. A good man, an excellent good man, Jonas Echimillia, of the persecuted race of Abraham, avers against you, sir, that last night, towards ten of the clock, you entered his dwelling, sir, wherein he gives shelter to old servants cast off by ungrateful masters--in other words, sir, his frippery--and notoriously and abominably seduced a white silk suit, laced with gold, to elope with you, to the identity of which suit he will willingly swear. So open your swallow-all, or trunk mail, and let us see what it contains."
Whilst the worthy sergeant thus proceeded, the warning of my good friend the grocer came across my mind, and I thought that there was an affectation about the voice of the respectable officer, which made me suspect that the whole business might be contrived to extort money; though how they could know that I had a white silk dress, laced with gold, in the valise before me, I could not divine. However, I affected to be very much alarmed; and while I examined well the countenances of my honest guests, I feigned a wish to bribe them into a connivance.
"Not for a hundred pistoles!" cried the principal sergeant.
"Nay, nay," said the landlord, who had remained in the room, "worthy sergeant, you must not be too severe upon my young lodger. Consider his youth and inexperience. Echimillia is a tender-hearted man, and would not wish you to be hard upon him. Take a hundred pistoles and let him off."
The sergeant began to show symptoms of a relenting disposition, and expressed his pity of my youth and ignorance of the ways of Paris with so much tender-heartedness, that it overcame my gravity, and sitting down upon a chair I laughed till I cried. The two sergeants looked rather confounded; but the greffier, a little man, whose risible organs were apparently somewhat irritable, could not resist the infectious nature of my laugh, but began a low sort of cachinnation, which he unsuccessfully tried either to drown in a cough or stifle in the sleeve of his robe. The sympathy next affected the landlord, who, after looking wistfully first to one and then to another, with one eyebrow raised, and one corner of his mouth in a grin while the other struggled for gravity for near a minute, was at length overpowered by the greffier's efforts to smother his laughter, and burst forth, shaking his fat sides till the room rang. The sergeant at the door tittered; but the principal officer affected a fury that soon brought me to myself, though in a very different manner from that which he expected.
Starting upon my feet, I caught him by the collar, and knocking his bonnet off his head, exposed to view the very identical person of my hectoring guide of the night before, though he had ingeniously contrived to change completely the shape of his face, by cutting his immense beard into a small peak, shaving each of his cheeks, and leaving nothing but a light moustache upon his upper lip. "Scoundrel!" cried I, giving him a shake that almost tore his borrowed plumes to pieces, "what, in the name of the devil, tempted you to think you could impose on me with a stale trick like this?"
"Because you dined at a table d'hote in Flemish lace," replied the other sergeant, continuing to chuckle at his companion's misfortune. "But come, young sir, you must let him go, though you have found him out." And thereupon he threw back his robe, and grasped the sword which it concealed.
As I had imagined, my man of war was as arrant a coward as ever swore a big oath, and he trembled violently under my hands, till he saw his more valiant comrade begin to espouse his cause so manfully. He then, however, thought it was his cue to bully, and exclaimed, in his natural voice, "Unhand me, or, by the heart of my father, I'll dash you to atoms!"
"The devil you will!" said I, seizing the foot he had raised in an attitude calculated to menace me with a severe kick. The window was near and open; underneath it was a savoury dunghill from the stables at the side; the height about twelve feet from the ground; so, without farther ceremony, I pitched the valiant soldado out head foremost, and drew my sword upon his companion, who ventured one or two passes, in the course of which he got a scratch in his arm, and then ran downstairs as fast as he could after the landlord and the greffier, who had already led the way. Running to the window, however, from which I could see over the gate of the court into the street, I shouted aloud to the passengers to stop the sham sergeants.
The first, who, with my assistance, had gone out the shortest way--whether he was used to being thrown out of window and did not mind it, or whether the dunghill was as soft as a bed of down, I know not; but--by this time had gained his feet, and was half way down the street. Where the greffier had slunk to I cannot say; but the more pugnacious personage, who had drawn his sword upon me, was caught by the people attracted by my cries, as he was in the act of making the best use of his legs, after his arms had failed him. It would have given me pleasure, I own, to bring even one of such a set of impostors to justice, but I was disappointed; for, just as a porter and a vinegar seller were bringing him back to the inn, he suddenly shook them off, slipped the sergeant's gown over his head, and scampered away through a dozen turnings and windings, with a rapidity and address which smacked singularly of much practice in running off in a hurry.
After a hot chase, the porter returned to tell me that he could not catch the nimble-limbed cheat; and calling him up to my chamber, I bade him take up my packages, and prepared to leave the house, after examining the contents of each valise, from which I found nothing missing, though sufficiently disarranged to show that they had afforded amusement to others during my absence the night before. Had they met with the diamonds, it is probable that they would have spared themselves and me the trouble of the somewhat operose contrivance to which they had recourse; but these, fortunately placed in the very bottom of the valise, with several things of less consequence, had escaped their search.
As we were passing into the court, the respectable landlord presented himself cap in hand, delivered his account, and hoped I had been satisfied with my entertainment, and would recommend his house to my friends; while all the time he spoke there was a meaning sort of grin upon his countenance, as if he could hardly help laughing at his own impudence.
I answered him somewhat in his own strain, that the entertainment was what the reputation of his house might lead one to expect; and in regard to recommending it to my friends, that it was very possible I should have occasion to visit shortly the criminal lieutenant, when I would take care to commend it to his notice in the most particular manner, and point out its deserts to him with care.
"I' faith," answered the host, calmly, "I am afraid that the worshipful gentleman of whom you speak will find but poor accommodation at my house; and therefore, feeling myself incompetent to entertain him as he deserves, I would fain decline the honour of his company."
After having paid my reckoning, I betook myself to the shop of the honest grocer, who heard my story without surprise; and in answer to my inquiry for a lodging, he replied that he knew of one nearly opposite to his own house, but that he doubted whether it would suit a person of my condition, for it was small, and kept by an old widow, who, though very respectable, was anything but rich.
I need not say this was the very sort of situation I desired; for after having paid mine host of the Rue des Prouvaires, my purse offered nothing but a long and lamentable vacuity, with three louis d'ors at the bottom, looking as lank and empty, when I drew it out of my pocket, as an eel-skin just stripped off one of those luckless aquatic St. Bartholomews. I was soon, then, installed in my new apartment; and being left to myself, gazed upon my scanty stock of riches, as many an unfortunate wretch has doubtless often gazed before me, calculating how long each several piece would keep life and soul together. And when they were expended, what then? I asked myself. Must I then write to my parents--confess my attachment to Helen--own that I murdered her brother--take from her mind any blessed doubt that might still remain upon it--snap each lingering affection that might still bind her to me in twain at once, and at the same time encounter the angry expostulation of my father for loving below my degree; as well as the calm reproaches of my mother, for having blinded her to that love--expostulations and reproaches which for Helen's sake I could have encountered, while there remained a chance of her being mine, but which now I felt no strength to bear, no motive to call upon my head? Oh! no, no! I could not write--poverty, beggary, wretchedness, anything sooner than that; and starting up, I proceeded into the street, hoping to drive away thought amongst all the gay sights I had heard of in Paris.
As I passed along the Rue St. Jacques, a beggar asked me for charity; and instinctively I put my hand in my pocket, when suddenly the thought of my own beggary came upon my mind, and with a sickness of heart impossible to describe, I drew my hand back, saying I had nothing for him. "Do! my good lord, do!" cried the mendicant; "may you never suffer such poverty as mine; and if you should--for who can tell in this uncertain life--and if you should, may you never be refused by those you beg of!"
I could refuse no longer. It came so painfully home to my own bosom, that I gave him a small piece which I had received in change, and then walked on, feeling as if I had just cast away a fortune, instead of giving a piece of a few sols to a beggar. Oh, circumstance! circumstance! thou art like a juggler at a fair, making us see the same object with a thousand different hues as thou offerest thy many-coloured glasses to our eyes.
Passing on, I found my way to the Palais Cardinal, where, after having gazed for a moment or two at the enormous pile of building before me, the thousand minute beauties of which the darkness had hidden from me the night before, I mounted the steps to leave my address, as I had been commanded. The doors of the palace, far from being guarded as I had previously found them, now seemed open to every one. Crowds of people of all classes were going in and coming out; and every sort of dress was there, from the princely justaucorps, whose arabesqued embroidery left scarcely an inch of the original stuff visible, to the threadbare pourpoint, whose long experience in the ways of the world had rendered it as polished and as smooth as the tongue of an old courtier. All was whisper, and smiles, and hurry, and bustle; and though every here and there an anxious face might be seen, giving shade to the picture, no one would have imagined that through those gates issued forth each day a thousand orders of death, of misery, and of despair.
I entered with the rest; and as the way seemed open to every one, was walking on, when I soon found that all who passed were known; for hardly had I taken two steps across the vestibule, when an attendant placed himself in my way, asking my business. It was easily explained; and leading me into a small cabinet adjoining the hall, he took down a ponderous folio, and desired me to write my address. When I opened it I found it quite full; and the page took down another, wherein, at the end of many thousands of names, I wrote my own, with ink that I doubted not would prove true Lethe, and turned away even more hopeless than I came.
Spare time now became my curse, and, joining with a restless and excited spirit, drove me through everything that was to be seen in Paris with an eagerness which soon exhausted its object. Day passed by after day, and the minister took no notice of me. I spun out my meagre funds, like the thread of a spider; but still every hour I saw them diminish. Twice each day I sent to the auberge where I had lodged, to inquire whether little Achilles had yet arrived; and still my disappointment was renewed. Nor was this disappointment one of the least painful of my feelings, for in the solitariness of my being in that great city I would have given worlds for his company, even although I could neither respect nor esteem him. And yet let me not do him injustice; mean qualities were so mingled in him with great ones--his folly was so strangely mixed with shrewdness, and his love of himself so singularly contrasted with the generous attachment which he had conceived towards me, that I hardly knew whether to look upon him with regard or contempt. Yet certainly I longed for his coming; and as the days went by and he came not, even while I smiled at remembering his poltroonery, I could not help hoping that the little coward had met with no obstruction in the road.
In the meanwhile, my frugality served to prolong the sojourn of my three louis in my purse far longer than I could have expected, and perhaps my pain with it, at seeing them daily decrease. It was like the handfuls of couscousou that they give in Morocco to persons dying of impalement, the means only of extending moments of misery. One day, however, in passing along the Rue St. Jacques, I saw lying on a book-stall two treatises upon very different subjects; one relating to military tactics, and the other entitled "The Sure Way of Winning; or, Hazard not Chance." The price of each was but a trifle, and in a fit of extravagance I bought them both. I had now wherewithal to employ my time, and I studied each of these two books with an ardour which, had it been employed continuously on any great or important subject, might have changed the face of my fortune for ever. The treatise on strategy, though perhaps not the best that ever was written, was, at all events, no detrimental employment; and on it I bestowed one half of my time. The other half was given to "The Sure Way of Winning," which was neither more nor less than an elaborate treatise upon gaming; with all the profound calculations of chances necessary to qualify a complete gambler. Thank God, I was not by nature a lover of play, or by such a study I should have been irretrievably lost. As it was, I soon began to look upon the gaming-table as the only resource which fortune held out to me; and with indescribable assiduity and application, I went through every calculation in the book, working them out in my mind hundreds and hundreds of times, till their results became no longer matters of arithmetic, but of memory.
Three weeks elapsed before I deemed myself qualified to encounter the well-experienced Parisians; and by this time I had but one louis remaining. This I changed into crowns, and with an anxious heart proceeded as soon as it was dark to a house, where I was informed that the minor sort of gambling, in which alone I could indulge, was carried on every night.
A narrow dirty passage conducted to a small staircase, at the bottom of which I began to hear the voices of the throng above. At the top were two men wrangling in no very measured terms; and passing on, I entered a large room, where about twenty tables were set out, and most of them occupied. A crown was demanded for admission, which I paid; and then proceeded to examine the various groups that were scattered through the room. Squalid misery, devouring passion, and debasing vice, were written in every countenance I beheld.
Of course, the whole assembly were divided between losers and winners. Of the first, some were talking high and angrily; some were blaspheming with the insanity of disappointment; some were gazing with the silent stupefaction of despair, and some were laughing with that wringing, soulless mockery of mirth, with which vanity sometimes strives to hide the bitterest pangs of the human heart. Of the winners, some were amassing their gains with greedy satisfaction; some were smiling with a sneering triumph at the poor fools they plundered; and some, with the eager falcon eye of avarice, were gazing keenly at the rolling dice or turning cards, as if they feared that chance might yet snatch their prey from out their talons.
The whole scene came upon my heart with a sickening faintness that had nearly made me turn and fly it all; but at that moment a very polite personage, seeing a stranger, approached, and invited me in courteous terms to sit at one of the vacant tables, and try a throw of the dice; or, if I loved better the more scientific games, we would open a pack of cards, he said. I agreed to the latter proposal, and we sat down to piquet. He played a bold and more hazardous game, I the quiet and more certain one; and though some fortunate runs of the cards made him eventually the winner, my loss was but two crowns.
"One throw with these for what you have lost," said my adversary, before we rose, offering me the dice at the same time. We threw, and I lost two crowns more. We threw again, and I was penniless.
I bore it more calmly than I had expected; but I believe it was more the calmness of despair, than anything else, which supported me. However wishing my adversary good night as politely as I could, I walked away, hearing him say in a whisper to one who stood near, "He plays very well at piquet, that young gentleman. It was as much as I could do to beat him."
Beyond a doubt this was meant for my hearing, and if so, it had its effect; for my first thought was what article of my scanty stock I could part with, to yield the means of recovering that night's loss. The diamonds which Achilles had entrusted to me instantly suggested themselves to my mind; and the tempter, who still lies hid in the bottom of man's heart till passion calls him forth, did not fail to suggest a thousand excellent and plausible motives for using them. "Achilles," said the devil, "had himself voluntarily given them to me; and even if he had not done so, I had just as much a right to them as he had--but if my conscience forbade me to take them ultimately, it would be very easy to repay the value, either when I should have recovered my losses at the gaming-table, or when I was restored to the bosom of my family."
Thank Heaven, however, I had honour enough left not to violate a trust reposed in me. I had still a diamond ring of my own. My mother had given it to me, it is true; but necessity more strong than feeling required me to part with it, and I determined to do so the next morning. In looking for it, for I had ceased to wear it since I set out for Marseilles, I met with the packet of papers regarding the Count de Bagnols, which I had almost always kept about me; and looking over them, I was tempted again to read some of the letters. I went on from one to another, through the whole correspondence between the Count, then a very young man, and the rebellious Rochellois, and I found throughout that fine discrimination between right and wrong which is the chivalry of the mind. It was a lesson and a reproach; but as I had passed to the brink of vice, not by the short and flowery path of pleasure, but by a road where every step was upon thorns--as I had been driven by errors and by accidents, rather than led by indulgence, the road back seemed not so long as to those who have followed every maze of enjoyment in their course from virtue to vice. With me it wanted but one effort of the mind--but the moral courage to communicate my true situation to those I loved, and I should at once free myself of the enthralment of circumstances. Such reflections passed rapidly through my mind, and I resolved to do what I should have done. But what are resolutions?--Air.
The next morning I carried my diamond ring to a most respectable jeweller, who bought it of me for one-fifth of its worth, and vowed all the while that he should lose by his bargain. Six louis, however, now swelled my purse; and as night came, my good resolutions faded like the waning sunshine. The cursed book of games found its way into my hands, and at seven o'clock I stood before the same house where I had left my money the night before.
Like the gates of Dis, the doors stood ever open, and those feet which had once trod that magic path could hardly cross it without again turning in the same direction.
On entering the room, the society which it contained struck me as even more ruffianly than the night before, and I fancied that many eyes turned upon me, as on one whose appearance there on the former evening had been remarked. My polite adversary was looking on at one of the tables, where the parties were playing for louis; but the moment his eye fell upon me, he came forward and offered me my revenge. "They are playing too high at that table," said he, as we sat down. "To my mind, it takes away all the pleasure of the game to have such a stake upon it as would pain one to lose. No gentleman ever plays for the sake of winning a great deal of other people's money, and therefore he ought to take care that he does not part with too much of his own. I play for amusement alone, and therefore let us begin with crowns, as we did last night."
His moderation pleased me, and, opening the cards, we again commenced our evening with piquet. He again played boldly, and I even more cautiously than before; but the cards were no longer favourable to my adversary,--he lost everything, and in an hour I had fifty crowns lying beside me. Half-a-dozen persons had now crowded round us, and all joined in praises of my skilful play.
"Too skilful for me, I am afraid," said my adversary, maintaining his good temper admirably, though I thought I discovered a little vexation in his tone. "I own, fair sir, that you are my master with the cards; but you will not refuse me an opportunity of mending my luck with these;" and he took up the dice-boxes.
The spirit had now seized me; I had gained enough to wish to gain more. Bright hopes of turning Fortune's frowns to smiles, of freeing myself of all difficulties, of rising superior to my oppressive fate, began to swim before my eyes; and I willingly agreed to his proposal, never doubting that my ascendancy would still continue.
We played on rapidly, and soon the pile of coin by my side diminished--vanished--grew higher and higher on his; and with agony of mind beyond all that I had ever felt, my golden hopes passed away, and despair began to come fast upon me, as louis after louis of my last and only resource melted from my touch. With the cards all had been fair--that was evident enough; but now my suspicions began to be awakened in regard to the dice. I remembered those which I had split open at Luz, and as I threw I watched narrowly to see whether there was anything in those I played with which might show them to be loaded. But no! they rolled over and over, turning each side alternately as fairly as possible. I next fixed my eyes on my adversary, when suddenly I saw him, with the dexterity of a juggler, hold the dice he took up in the palm of his hand, and slip two others in from the frill round his hand. When about to throw again, I saw him prepare to perform the same trick, and springing up, I pinned his hand to the table.
A loud outcry instantly took place; "The man's mad!" "What is he about?" "Turn him out!" "Throw him out of the window!" cried a dozen voices.
"You shall do it, if you like, gentlemen," cried I, "provided this man has not two false dice under his hand."
As I spoke, I lifted his hand from the table, when, to my horror and surprise, there were no dice there.
I was dumb as if thunderstruck, and my adversary, with every feature convulsed with rage, lifted the hand I had liberated, and struck me a violent blow in the face. Instinctively I laid my hand upon my sword, when every one round threw themselves upon me, and in the midst of a thousand blows, I was hurried to the window, and though struggling violently to save myself, pitched over into the street.