But, recovering himself on the instant, he took the offensive, and in a bitter voice he said: “Madam, I have forgotten. If the memory of that meeting was pleasant, the memory of the second occasion on which I saw you has blotted it out.”
“And this second occasion, Monsieur?”
“It was at the beginning of the following year, at Versailles, whither I accompanied the French plenipotentiaries entrusted with the task of negotiating the peace of the defeat. I saw you in a café, sitting at a table, drinking and laughing with some German officers, one of whom was an officer of Bismarck’s staff. That day I understood the part you played at the Tuileries and on whose errand you came.”
All these revelations of the vicissitudes of a life which seemed fabulous, were set forth in less than ten minutes. There was no structure of reasoning. No attempt, either logical or rhetorical, to impose this incredible thesis on those who were listening. Nothing but the facts, nothing but the bare proofs, violent, driven home like the blows of a fist, and all the more terrifying that they evoked against a quite young woman memories some of which went back more than a century!
Ralph d’Andresy was almost amazed. The scene appeared to him to savor of romance, or rather to belong to some fantastic and gloomy melodrama. These conspirators, who accepted these fables as if they had been indisputable facts, seemed to him the creatures of a dream. Truly he was quite alive to the poorness of the intelligence of these country bumpkins, relics of an epoch that had passed away. But all the same how on earth could they bring themselves to ignore the very data of the problem presented by the age they attributed to this woman? However credulous they might be, had they not eyes to see?
Again the attitude of the Countess to them appeared even more strange. Why this silence which, when all was said and done, was an acceptance of their theory, practically, at times, a confession? Was she refusing to demolish a legend of eternal youth which was pleasing to her and helpful to the execution of her plans? Or was it that, ignorant of the terrible danger hanging over her head, she looked upon all this theatrical display as merely a practical joke?
“Such is this woman’s past,” continued the Baron d’Etigues solemnly. “I shall not dwell on the intermediate episodes which link that past with to-day. Always keeping behind the scenes, Josephine Balsamo, the Countess of Cagliostro, played a part in the tragi-comedy of Boulangism, in the sordid drama of Panama. One finds her hand in every event which is disastrous to our country. But in these matters we have only indications of the secret part she played. We have no direct proof. Let us leave them and come to this actual epoch. One word before we do so, however. Have you no observations to make about any of these matters, Madam?”
“Yes,” she said.
“Let us have them.”
“Well,” said the young woman, with the same note of mocking irony in her delightful voice, “I should like to know, since I appear to be on my trial and you to have formed yourselves into a really mediæval tribunal—of the German brand, of course—whether you attach any real importance to the charges you have heaped up against me. If you do you may as well condemn me to be burnt alive on the spot, as a witch, a spy, and a renegade—all crimes which the Inquisition never pardoned.”