he on the ground when the physician, dashing the rest of the poison from the furnace, darted on him like a beast of prey, and immediately drew forth the bag of money from his cloak and transferred it to his own pouch. He next tore away every ornament of any value that adorned Gaudin’s costly dress; finally taking the small gold heart which hung round his neck, enclosing the morsel of pink crystal which had attracted Exili’s attention the first night of his sojourn in the Bastille. As he opened it to look at the beryl, he observed a thin slip of vellum folded under it within the case, on which were traced some faint characters. By the light which Sainte-Croix had brought with him, and which was burning faintly in the subterraneous atmosphere, he read the following words with difficulty:—
‘Beatrice Spara to her child, on the eve of her execution. Rome, A.D. 1642. An amulet against an evil eye and poisons.’
A stifled exclamation of horror, yet intense to the most painful degree of mental anguish, escaped him as the meaning came upon him. For a few seconds his eyes were riveted on the crystal, as if they would start from his head; his lips were parted, and his breath suspended. Then another and another gasping cry followed; again he read the lines, as though he would have altered their import; but the simple words remained the same, and fearful was their revelation—until, covering his face with his hands, he fell on his knees beside the body. Gaudin de Sainte-Croix—the unknown adventurer—the soldier of fortune, whom nobody had ever dared to question respecting his parentage, was his own son!—the fruit of his intimacy with the Sicilian woman, from whom at Palermo he had learned the secrets of his hellish trade, in the first instance to remove those who were inimical to the liaison. The child was not above two years old when he himself had been compelled to fly from Italy, and he had imagined that, after the execution of Beatrice, the infant had perished unknown and uncared for in the streets of Rome.
For some minutes he remained completely stupefied, but was aroused at last by a violent knocking at the door of the vault; and immediately afterwards the man who owned the house in the Rue de la Harpe rushed in, and announced the presence of the guard, who, not finding Sainte-Croix to meet them as they expected, had made the cooper conduct them to Exili’s laboratory. He had scarcely uttered the words when their bristling halberds, mingling with torches, appeared behind him.
‘Back!’ screamed Exili as he saw the guard, ‘keep off! or I can slay you with myself, so that not one shall live to tell the tale.’
The officer in command told the men to enter; but one or two remembered the fate of those in the boat-mill whom the vapour had killed, and they hung back.
‘Your lives are in my hands,’ continued the physician, ‘and if you move one step they are forfeited. I am not yet captured.’
He darted through a doorway at the end of the room as he spoke, and disappeared. The guard directly pressed onward; but as Exili passed out at the arch, a mass of timber descended like a portcullis and opposed their further progress. A loud and fiendish laugh sounded in the souterrain, which grew fainter and fainter until they heard it no more.
CHAPTER XXVII.
MATTERS BECOME VERY SERIOUS FOR ALL PARTIES—THE DISCOVERY AND THE FLIGHT
‘Ah!’ said Maître Picard, with a long expression of comfortable fatigue, and the same shudder of extreme enjoyment which he would have indulged in had he just crept into a bed artificially warmed, ‘Ah! it is a great thing to enjoy yourself, having done your duty as a man and a Garde Bourgeois!’