“My word, Monsieur le capitaine! What are you dreaming of? Badly indeed I must have expressed myself! Are you not taking me for some feu Cartouche of the good old days, for some Monsieur de Paris, perhaps? Hah! Hah!”
And this time, as he laughed, he shrugged his shoulders in affected resignation; and I found a certain ironic exaggeration in the sweep of the hand with which he again took out his snuff-box.
“Well,” he continued, “I can see there is no help for it. Another bit of glossing will be far from wasted here. Your pardon, Monsieur le capitaine, if I, who should not, remind you, that the three men you see before you are three of the most reputable gentlemen of the Kingdom of France. This right hand of mine was never soiled with a drop of blood. Count François here, born in 1770, grew up in the days of your Revolution and was a ‘philosopher’ of the Jean Jacques style in the days when Rousseau was all the rage. Believe me, what he saw of the France of that time, a nation gone entirely mad, and bent on turning into a slaughter-house, disgusted him forever with Samsons and guillotines. As for the Vicomte Antoine, he came into the world in season to figure among those enfants du siècle who borrowed the pen of Alfred de Musset to wring the hearts of an admiring world with words of tender lassitude and languishing despair. Poor makings for a cannibal, in truth, monsieur! No, I can see the effects of the reading people do in these modern days. Too many novels, too many novels! A bad diet, I take it, for impressionable, imaginative minds. Who said a word here about killing anybody? The idea of putting you—or Madame de X....—to death had not occurred to us in the remotest degree. Count François, as I may have intimated, has a bit of the moralist under his skin. Give him half a chance and he starts preaching at you! Well, he will explain, if you choose to ask him, and have the patience to bear the consequences, how wholly improper it would be for men possessing the Secret of Long Life, for Men who really know what Living means, to deprive simple ordinary people of any portion of that brief course which leads them unfailingly and miserably to the Hereafter. We have the Powers Above to thank, Monsieur, that our Secret, the Secret, makes (barring a few chance exceptions, so infrequent as to be negligible), no cruel demands upon us. So far, Monsieur le capitaine, I have added a full century to my appointed years. Believe me, none of those additional days have I stolen from the lives of others. No, we are not of those who kill! Can you, Monsieur, a soldier, say as much? Many young people, to be sure, boys and girls alike, have passed through our laboratory. That I cannot deny. Nor could I swear that they departed thence without leaving something of their ultimate vitality. But, at the worst, their loss was a very slight, a very unappreciable one, Monsieur le capitaine; and this loss I might condone with the reflection that a single extra day of life for an ancient sage like me ought surely be worth some sacrifice—a sacrifice, I repeat, quite exceptional in point of fact, since all of the contributors on whom we draw, having once accomplished their generous task, return safe, sound and happy to their normal pursuits. Your friend, for instance, Madame de X...., is by no means so far gone as you imagine. When, tomorrow evening, she goes back to her home from another trip to ... Beaulieu, no one will take the trouble to observe that she is lighter by some pounds than at the time she went away—a relatively few ounces of blood, and bone, and flesh, which we have claimed from her youthful substance. Concede the fact yourself, Monsieur le capitaine: your indignation was a bit excessive. So now, I suppose, we are at the end of our misunderstandings. From what you have just said I gather simply that you have no particular desires except, I dare say, an early solution of your Adventure. In the latter case, Monsieur, we might proceed. What do you say? Shall we look for such a solution in a friendly spirit ... together?”
Again the iron grasp upon my being was loosened for the fraction of a second; I was permitted to nod in acquiescence.
XXI
The Marquis Gaspard hitched about in his chair; and, as his body lay back in the deep cushions, I noticed, on either of the arms of gilded wood, a small withered hand, the desiccated skin of which, faultlessly manicured, was as glossy as ancient ivory. The Count François and the Vicomte Antoine, whether of their own accord or in imitation of their respective parent and grand-parent, relaxed into similar comfortable positions, their hands also, broader and less wasted, likewise resting on their carved chair-arms—which they quite encircled, what with fingers and palm. I could not help observing these details; for a clear, definite conviction mysteriously seized upon my mind that those talons, of such innocent and genteel exteriors, had their nails somehow buried in every part of my tortured flesh.
The marquis was again speaking: “Monsieur le capitaine, I consider you an intelligent man; and I will not do you the injustice of supposing for an instant that you have failed to divine the nature of the restriction which I have always been careful to introduce expressly into all my offers of service and hospitality. The time has come—believe me, I am more pained than you thereat—for us to touch more directly upon this restriction. As I have repeatedly assured you, Monsieur le capitaine, our house is wholly, entirely, absolutely at your disposal; but you will understand, knowing what you know, that you will never be allowed to depart from it. Everything here is yours for the asking, everything! Everything save one single thing: your freedom!
“In thus detaining you against your will, our sorrow, Monsieur le capitaine, knows no bounds, no bounds whatever. I say that in behalf of the three of us; for I know that the count here, and the vicomte, feel the same regret as I. But what else can we do? In our heart of hearts, we regard ourselves as absolutely not responsible for any of the consequences that may result from your visit to our abode. Chance, and your own—very pardonable—curiosity, are to blame. A thousand to one chance—and it went against you! It was your ridiculously unreasonable misfortune to have seen last evening something that no mortal man could be allowed to see: Madame de X.... on the Col de la Mort de Gauthier. But your bad luck did not end even there. In your rambling search for your lady, it was your second mischance to come dangerously near our refuge. From that point on we were helpless. Knowing, perhaps, that we exist, knowing perhaps where we live, knowing perhaps the kind of visits we are occasionally obliged to receive, you know far too much, Monsieur le capitaine; for the Secret preserves its efficacy only so long as it remains a Secret. It must, by nature, be the exclusive appanage of a few Living Men. Let the generality of Mortals even suspect its existence, and it is finished. Our Secret, you see, Monsieur, is an essentially aristocratic one. Its exercise presupposes the subservience of a great number of inferior creatures, who must endure labor, suffering and fatigue for the profit and welfare of a few master beings. I need not remind you that the humanitarian prejudices, the democratic sentimentality, of the present age would not take kindly to such a notion. Your politicians, who flatter and fawn on a vulgar demos more vilely than any of my comrades, the royal pages, ever courted the Roi Bien Aimé, would tear their hair in oratoric indignation if they ever discovered that for the past hundred and seventy-five years one man has been allowing himself to avoid death in defiance of all equalitarian principles. So much so, Monsieur le capitaine, that we three, among the most well-intentioned gentlemen in the Kingdom, as I boasted not long since, find ourselves obliged to hide like brigands in this out-of-the-way spot, and behind a labyrinth of boulders, precipices and thickets certain to keep all intruders away.