“The Master ... is a colossus. Did you ever read ‘Rocambole?’”
“No.”
Vidal paused a while; the figure of Rocambole[6] struck him, no doubt, as most fit for a likeness to the Master.
“Very well. Then imagine a man like the Cripple. Get me? But ever so much cleverer; a man who can imitate any handwriting, who knows four or five languages, who’s always master of himself, who can wear a workman’s smock or a frock coat with the same ease, who can talk to a lady and appear the finest of gentlemen, and then gossip with a street-walker and seem a loafer; and add to this that he’s a sort of clown, that he plays the accordion, that he can imitate a train, make funny motions and mock at everybody. And yet, with all this, boy, you can catch him sometimes half in tears at sight of a half-naked ragamuffin on the street, or because a little girl has asked him for an alms.”
“And what’s his name?”
“How should I know? Nobody does. Some folks say that they knew his father and mother, but it’s not so. I’ve wondered myself whether he mightn’t be the illegitimate son of some noble, but I can’t altogether believe that, for if it had really been so, it would be shocking that they should have arrested him, as they did, when he was seventeen.”
“He began early.”
“Yes. They arrested him without cause. He was in the employ of a fellow who’d managed some swindle, and they shut him up in the Saladero together with his employer. He tells the story himself. One day, it seems, the judge was about to take a deposition from some prisoner, and as the clerk was copying the deposition he was taken suddenly ill and they had to remove him to his home. The judge asked the jailer whether they had any prisoner who could copy down from dictation, whereupon the jailer summoned the Master. He sat down in the clerk’s chair, looked over the documents and began to write. The judge, after the deposition was over, casts a glance at the papers and opens his eyes in amazement. It was impossible to tell where the Master had begun and where the clerk had left off; the handwriting of one and the other was the same.
“What a clever rogue!”
“When the Master told this story, he said that if the judge hadn’t been a stupid ass, he would not have met such a bad end; but the only thing that occurred to the judge was to declare that this boy was a dangerous fellow and that they’d have to keep a close watch upon him. The Master, who noticed that they became even more watchful, and this after he had done them a favour, naturally got angry. Later, in the Saladero, he became acquainted with a notorious forger, and between the two of them, in the prison itself, they did a Frenchman out of forty thousand duros through a burial certificate.”