CHAPTER XXXII TRYING TO ESCAPE FROM FATE
I walked fast as one who would try to escape from his fate.
I could not but see the cards being dealt by some mysterious hand; I could not but remember that Von Lichtenberg, a nobleman, a man of honour, the friend of his King, and presumably sane, had three times attempted my assassination when I was a child, to shield little Carl from some terrible evil at my hands; and look, to-night, whom had I met?
Then, Franzius, entering my life as he had done, and Eloise, like the people on the stage who are seen in the first act of the drama, to reappear in the last act, helping to form the tragic tableau on which the curtain falls.
But the terror and repulsion in my mind rose not from these things; it came like a breath from afar; it came like a breath from the unknown, from the time remote in the past when lived Margaret von Lichtenberg, the woman murdered by Philippe de Saluce.
I walked hurriedly, not caring whither I went; the sounds and lights of Paris surrounded me, but my spirit was not there. It was in the gardens of Lichtenberg, walking with Eloise and little Carl; it was in the picture-gallery, gazing at the portrait of the dead-and-gone Margaret, beneath which was the little portrait of Philippe de Saluce, so horribly like myself; it was in the windy bell-tower where the Man in Armour stood with his iron hammer before the iron bell; I saw again the duel in the forest, and Von Lichtenberg lying in the arms of General Hahn, and I heard again the slobbering of the torches, the wind in the pine-trees, and the far-off barking of the fox in the wood.
Ah, yes; all that might have something to do with me, but beyond all that I refused my fate. I refused to believe that the dead Margaret had a hold upon me—the last of the Mahons, who was also the last of the Saluces; the horrible whispered suggestion: "Are you Philippe de Saluce returned? Were you once in that old time the murderer of Margaret? And is she—is she little Carl?" This I refused; that I would not listen to; this I abhorred, as a whisper from the devil, as a blasphemy against God's goodness and against life.
"I have never done harm to any man!"