So he had met Monsignore—with difficulty, for, as it turned out, the night was terrible: he had met him, and was already proceeding with him down the moraine, when he, Target, had slipped and fallen. Monsignore was very furious at that, and had cursed him for a drunken sot, which was quite untrue. They had proceeded, however, and were actually on the glacier, when by great ill-fortune he had fallen a second time. On each occasion the lantern he carried had been extinguished, and had had to be relighted. Monsignore, on the repetition of his mishap, had flown into an ungovernable rage, snatched the light from him, and, driving him from his presence with blows and curses, had bade him seek his own way to the rocks, for that he would trust himself to his guidance no longer. The man was a demon in fact, and he had fled from him. Instinct had guided him to his cabin by the moraine, where he had crouched, waiting for Monsignore to follow. While he dwelt there, there had broken over the glacier one of those furious storms of hail and wind, which for a time had made thought impossible. Its cessation was not followed by the arrival of Monsignore: in fact Monsignore never followed at all. Knowing the resolute cruelty of his passions, he, Target, had not been long in guessing at the reason. He must have foundered in that terrific blast—have wandered astray, with quenched light, and pitched into some crevasse.
Long he had waited for him; and, at last, in an interval of calm, had sought back, so far as he might dare, across the glacier. He had peered, he had shouted. He had left at last no boulder or familiar crack unsearched when the first weak wash of dawn had come to his aid. It was all unavailing. The glacier, it was as morally certain as anything circumstantial could be, had bolted Monsignore; and there was an end of him.
So Le Prieuré agreed, awake at last to the full significance of the shadow which had been stealing in step by step to overwhelm it. Its verdict was untraversable, as plain as reason: Monsignore had perished.
There was no need to question the essential truth of the drunkard’s story. Target could have had no possible interest in committing or leading his patron to destruction. A just retribution had overtaken an illustrious sinner against his word. Di Rocco, the monster, the miser, was a thing of the past. Heaven, in its own stupendous way, had decreed the manner of his death and burial.
Moral certainties are, however, by no means legal. A man is not dead in law without proof of witness, even though his carcase lies on the table before it. Much remained to challenge, to certify, to cite and answer by default, before the widow could come into her own. In the meanwhile the Chevalier de France was not backward in righteous and indignant denunciation of his dead son-in-law’s abuse of faith. At the same time he was even extravagantly exacting in the question of the acknowledgments due to himself in his position of natural guardian to the Marquess’s august “relict.”
The village, perhaps, did not at the outset take him quite so seriously as he expected. It was more curious to learn how M. Saint-Péray accepted this provisional change in his fortunes. But there Martha Paccard proved herself a very Cerberus in guarding the approaches to her charge. She was agitated, but quite resolute about it all. Only between her and young Balmat was there ever an interchange of meaning glances, and once or twice, in moments of emotion, some fearful comment. She cried, too, in private a good deal, however brave a face she might turn to the world. For, as a fact, none but these two knew how Louis-Marie had slipped out alone on the night of the tragedy, and had returned home as secretly by-and-by, death white and drenched to the skin.
Then the next thing Le Prieuré heard about him was that he had left the village and gone none knew whither.
At that, for the first time, men and women united in putting him on one side as an irreclaimable faint-heart.
But, for all the rest, Vogue la galère! Di Rocco was dead, dead, dead!
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