The Serapion Brethren, Vol. II

by E. T. A. Hoffmann

In much alarm, Mademoiselle Scuderi cried, "In the name of all the saints, what is the matter with the man?" But the Marquise, in particularly happy temper, laughed aloud, saying, "What it is, Mademoiselle; that Master René is over head and ears in love with you, and, according to the laws of la galanterie, begins to lay siege to your heart with a valuable present." She carried this jest further, begging Mademoiselle Scuderi not to be too obdurate towards this despairing lover of hers; and Mademoiselle Scuderi, in her turn, borne away on a current of merry fancies, said, "If things were so, she would not be able to refrain from delighting the world with the unprecedented spectacle of a goldsmith's bride of three-and-seventy summers, and unexceptionable descent." Madame de Maintenon offered to twine the bridal wreath herself, and give her a few hints as to the duties of a housewife, a subject on which such a poor inexperienced little chit could not be expected to know very much.

But, notwithstanding all the jesting and the laughter, when Mademoiselle Scuderi rose to depart, she became very grave again when her hand rested upon the jewel casket. "Whatever happens," she said, "I shall never be able to bring myself to wear these ornaments. They have, at all events, been in the hands of one of those diabolical men, who rob and slay with the audacity of the evil one himself, and are very probably in league with him. I shudder at the thought of the blood which seems to cling to those glittering stones--and even Cardillac's behaviour had something about it which struck me as being singularly wild and eery. I cannot drive away from me a gloomy foreboding that there is some terrible and frightful mystery hidden behind all this; and yet, when I bring the whole affair, with all the circumstances of it, as clearly as I can before my mental vision, I cannot form the slightest idea what that mystery can be--and, above all, how the good, honourable Master René--the very model of what a good, well-behaved citizen ought to be--can have anything to do with what is wicked or condemnable. But, at all events, I distinctly feel that I never can wear those jewels."

The Marquise considered that this was carrying scruples rather too far; yet, when Mademoiselle Scuderi asked her to say, on her honour, what she would do in her place, she replied, firmly and earnestly, "Far rather throw them into the Seine than ever put them on."

The scene with Master René inspired Mademoiselle Scuderi to write some pleasant verses, which she read to the King the following evening, at Madame de Maintenon's. Perhaps, for the sake of the picturing of Master René carrying off a bride of seventy-three--of unimpeachable quarterings--it was that she succeeded in conquering her feelings of the imminence of something mysterious and uncanny; but at all events she did so, completely--and the King laughed with all his heart, and vowed that Boileau Despreaux had met with his master. So La Scuderi's poem was reckoned the very wittiest that ever was written.

Several months had elapsed, when chance so willed it that Mlle. Scuderi was crossing the Pont Neuf in the glass coach of the Duchesse de Montpensier. The invention of those delightful glass coaches was then so recent that the people came together in crowds whenever one of them made its appearance in the streets, consequently, a gaping crowd gathered about the Duchesse's carriage on the Pont Neuf, so that the horses could hardly make their way along. Suddenly Mlle. Scuderi heard a sound of quarrelling and curses, and saw a man making a way for himself through the crowd, by means of fisticuffs and blows in the ribs, and as he came near they were struck by the piercing eyes of a young face, deadly pale, and drawn by sorrow. This young man, gazing fixedly upon them, vigorously fought his way to them by help of fists and elbows, till he reached the carriage-door, threw it open with much violence, and flung a note into Mademoiselle Scuderi's lap; after which, he disappeared as he had come, distributing and receiving blows and fisticuffs. La Martinière, who was with her mistress, fell back fainting in the carriage with a shriek of terror as soon as she saw the young man. In vain Mademoiselle Scuderi pulled the string, and called out to the driver. He, as if urged by the foul fiend, kept lashing his horses till, scattering the foam from their nostrils, they kicked, plunged, and reared, finally thundering over the bridge at a rapid trot. Mademoiselle Scuderi emptied the contents of her smelling-bottle out over the fainting La Martinière, who at last opened her eyes, and, shuddering and quaking, clinging convulsively to her mistress, with fear and horror in her pale face, groaned out with difficulty, "For the love of the Virgin, what did that terrible man want? It was he who brought you the jewels on that awful night." Mademoiselle Scuderi calmed her, pointing out that nothing very dreadful had happened after all, and that the immediate business in hand was to ascertain the contents of the letter. She opened it, and read as follows:--

"A dark and cruel fatality, which you could dispel, is driving me into an abyss. I conjure you--as a son would a mother, in the glow of filial affection--to send the necklace and bracelets to Master René Cardillac, on some pretence or other--say, to have something altered, or improved. Your welfare---your very life--depend on your doing this. If you do not comply before the day after to-morrow, I will force my way into your house, and kill myself before your eyes."

"Thus much is certain, at all events," said Mademoiselle Scuderi, when she had read this letter, "that, whether this mysterious man belongs to the band of robbers and murderers, or not, he has no very evil designs against me. If he had been able to see me and speak to me on that night, who knows what strange events, what dark concatenation of circumstances would have been made known to me, of which, at present, I seek, in my soul, the very faintest inkling in vain. But, be the matter as it may, that which I am enjoined in this letter to do, I certainly shall do, were it for nothing else than to be rid of those fatal jewels, which seem to me as if they must be some diabolical talisman of the Prince of Darkness's very own. Cardillac is not very likely to let them out of his hands again, if once he gets hold of them."

She intended to take them to him next day; but it seemed as if all the beaux esprits of Paris had entered into a league to assail and besiege her with verses, dramas, and anecdotes. Scarce had La Chapelle finished reading the scenes of a tragedy, and declared that he considered he had now vanquished Racine, when the latter himself came in, and discomfited him with the pathetic speech of one of his kings, until Boileau sent some of his fireballs soaring up into the dark sky of the tragedies, by way of changing the subject from that eternal one of the colonnade of the Louvre, to which the architectural Dr. Perrault was shackling him.

When high noon arrived, Mademoiselle Scuderi had to go to Madame Montansier, so the visit to René Cardillac had to be put off till the following day. But the young man was always present to her mind, and a species of dim remembrance seemed to be trying to arise in the depths of her being that she had, somehow and somewhen, seen that face and features before. Troubled dreams disturbed her broken slumbers. It seemed to her that she had acted thoughtlessly, and delayed culpably to take hold of the hands which the unfortunate man was holding out to her for help--in fact, as if it had depended on her to prevent some atrocious crime. As soon as it was fairly light, she had herself dressed, and set off to the goldsmith's with the jewels in her hand.

A crowd was streaming towards the Rue Nicaise (where Cardillac lived), trooping together at the door, shouting, raging, surging, striving to storm into the house, kept back with difficulty by the Marechaussée, who were guarding the place. Amid the wild distracted uproar, voices were heard crying, "Tear him in pieces! Drag him limb from limb, the accursed murderer!" At length Desgrais came up with a number of his men, and formed a lane through the thickest of the crowd. The door flew open, and a man, loaded with irons, was brought out, and marched off amid the most frightful imprecations of the raging populace. At the moment when Mademoiselle Scuderi, half dead with terror and gloomy foreboding, caught sight of him, a piercing shriek of lamentation struck upon her ears. "Go forward!" she cried to the coachman, and he, with a clever, rapid turn of his horses, scattered the thick masses of the crowd aside, and pulled up close to René Cardillac's door. Desgrais was there, and at his feet a young girl, beautiful as the day, half-dressed, with dishevelled hair, and wild grief, inconsolable despair in her face, holding his knees embraced, and crying in tones of the bitterest and profoundest anguish, "He is innocent! he is innocent!" Desgrais and his men tried in vain to shake her off, and raise her from the ground, till at length a rough, powerful fellow, gripping her arms with his strong hands, dragged her away from Desgrais by sheer force. Stumbling awkwardly, he let the girl go, and she went rolling down the stone steps, and lay like one dead on the pavement.