It was only an anonymous letter, and yet on perusing it Martial’s blood mounted to his forehead. “Can she have a lover?” he thought. Then reflecting on his own conduct towards his wife since their marriage, he said to himself: “And if she has, what right have I to complain? Did I not tacitly give her back her liberty?” However, he was greatly troubled; and yet he did not once think of playing the spy.
A few mornings afterwards, at about eleven o’clock, he was returning from a ride on horseback, and was not thirty paces from the Hotel de Sairmeuse when he suddenly perceived a lady hurriedly emerge from the house. She was very plainly dressed—entirely in black—but her whole appearance recalled that of the duchess in a striking fashion. “That’s certainly my wife,” thought Martial, “but why is she dressed in that fashion?” Then, yielding to a sudden impulse, he walked his horse up the Rue de Grenelle behind the woman in black. Blanche it was. She was tripping swiftly over the pavement, keeping her face shrouded by a thick veil and she never once turned her head. On reaching the Rue Taranne, she spoke hurriedly to a cab-driver on the stand, and then sprung into his vehicle. The Jehu was already on his box and he at once gave his bony horse such a vigorous cut of the whip that it was evident he had just been promised a princely gratuity. The cab had already turned into the Rue du Dragon, and Martial, ashamed of what he had already done and irresolute as to what he should do now was still tarrying at the corner of the Rue des Saints-Peres, where he had originally stopped his horse. Scarcely daring to entertain the suspicions that flitted across his mind, he tried to deceive himself. “After all,” he muttered, “it is of no use advancing. The cab’s a long way off by now, and I couldn’t overtake it.” Still he mechanically gave his horse the rein and when he reached the Croix Rouge he espied Blanche’s vehicle among a crowd of others. He recognized it by its green body and wheels striped with white. This decided him. The cab-driver had just managed to extricate himself from the block which traffic so frequently causes hereabouts, and whipping up his horse once more turned literally at a gallop up the Rue du Vieux Colombier—leading into the Place St. Sulpice. Thence he took the shortest cut to gain the outer boulevards.
Martial’s thoughts were busy as he trotted along a hundred yards or so behind the vehicle. “She’s in a terrible hurry,” he said to himself. “But this is scarcely the quarter for a lover’s rendezvous.” The cab had indeed now reached the squalid region extending beyond the Place d’Italie. It turned into the Rue du Chateau-des-Rentiers and soon drew up before a tract of waste ground. The Duchess de Sairmeuse then hastily alighted, and, without stopping to look to the right or to the left, hurried across the open space. Martial had prudently paused in the rear. Not far from him he espied a man sitting on a block of stone and apparently immersed in the task of colouring a clay-pipe. “Will you hold my horse a moment?” inquired Martial.
“Certainly,” answered the man, rising to his feet. He wore a workman’s blouse and a long beard, and his aspect altogether was scarcely prepossessing. Had Martial been less pre-occupied, his suspicions might have been aroused by the malicious smile that curved the fellow’s lips; and had he scrutinized him closely, he would perhaps have recognized him. For the seeming vagrant was Jean Lacheneur. Since forwarding that anonymous letter to the Duke de Sairmeuse, he had compelled the Duchess to multiply her visits to the Widow Chupin’s den, and on each occasion he had watched for her arrival. “So, if her husband decides to follow her I shall know it,” he thought. It was indispensable for the success of his plans that Blanche should be watched by her husband. For from among a thousand schemes of revenge, Jean had chosen the most frightful his fevered brain could conceive. He longed to see the haughty Duchess de Sairmeuse subjected to the vilest ignominy, and Martial in the hands of the lowest of the low. He pictured a bloody struggle in this miserable den; the sudden arrival of the police, summoned by himself, and the indiscriminate arrest of all the parties present. He gloated over the thought of a trial in which the crime committed at the Borderie would be brought to light; he saw the duke and the duchess in prison, and the great names of Sairmeuse and Courtornieu shrouded in eternal disgrace. And he believed that nothing was wanting to ensure the success of his plans. He had two miserable wretches who were capable of any crime at his disposal; and an unfortunate youth named Gustave, whom poverty and cowardice had made his willing slave, was intended to play the part of Marie-Anne’s son. These three accomplices had no suspicions of Lacheneur’s real intentions, while, as for the Widow Chupin and her son, if they suspected some infamous plot all they really knew in regard to it was the duchess’s name. Moreover, Jean held Polyte and his mother completely under his control by the wealth he had promised them if they served them faithfully. If Martial decided to follow his wife into the Poivriere the first time he watched her, Jean had, moreover, so arranged matters that the duke would at first suppose that Blanche had been led there by charity. “But he will not go in,” thought the seeming vagrant, as, holding Martial’s horse some little distance off, he looked in the direction of the hovel. “Monsieur le Duc is too cunning for that.”
And Martial did not go in. Though he was horrified when he saw his wife enter so vile a den, as if she were at home there, he said to himself that he should learn nothing by following her. He, therefore, contented himself by making a thorough examination of the hovel from outside, and then remounting his horse and throwing Lacheneur a silver coin he started back home at a gallop. He was completely mystified: he did not know what to think, what to imagine, what to believe. But, at the same time, he was fully resolved to fathom the mystery; and as soon as he returned home he sent Otto out in search of information. He could confide everything to this devoted servant from whom he had no secrets. At four o’clock in the afternoon, the faithful valet de chambre returned with an expression of consternation on his face. “What is it?” asked Martial, divining some great misfortune.
“Ah, sir, the mistress of that wretched den is the widow of Chupin’s son—”
Martial’s face turned ghastly pale. He knew life well enough to understand that since the duchess had been compelled to submit to these peoples’ power, they must be masters of some secret which she was anxious at any price to keep unrevealed. But what secret could it be? The years which had furrowed Martial’s brow, had not cooled the ardour of his blood. He was, as he had always been, a man of impulse, and so, without pausing he rushed to his wife’s apartments.
“Madame has just gone downstairs to receive the Countess de Mussidan and the Marchioness d’Arlange,” said the maid whom he met on the landing.
“Very well; I will wait for her here. You may retire.”
So saying, Martial entered Blanche’s dressing-room. It was in disorder for, after returning from the Poivriere, the duchess was still engaged at her toilette when visitors were announced. The wardrobe-doors stood open, two or three chairs were encumbered with wearing apparel, and Blanche’s watch, her purse, and several bunches of keys were lying on the dressing-table and the mantel-piece. Martial did not sit down. His self-possession was returning. “I will commit no act of folly,” he thought, “if I question her, I shall learn nothing. I must be silent and watchful.”