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The Mysteries of Paris V2

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"Madame," said Fleur-de-Marie, timidly, struck with this change of
language: "have I displeased you in any way?"

"How could you have displeased me?" demanded Madame d'Harville, with
haughtiness.

"It seems to me that just now you spoke to me with more kindness,
madame."

"Truly, girl, must I weigh each of my words, since I consent to
interest myself in you? I have the right, I think, to address you
questions?"

Hardly were these words pronounced than Clemence, for many reasons,
regretted their severity. In the first place, by a praiseworthy return
of generosity; then because she thought, by offending her rival, she
could learn nothing more of what she wished to know.

In effect, the countenance of La Goualeuse, one moment open and
confiding, became instantly reserved.

Like the sensitive plant, which at the first touch closes its delicate
leaves, and folds them within its bosom, the heart of Fleur-de-Marie
contracted painfully.

Clemence resumed gently, not to awaken the suspicions of her
_protegee_ by too sudden a change. "In truth, I repeat to you, I
cannot comprehend that, having so much to praise in your benefactor,
you should be a prisoner here; how, after having sincerely returned to
the paths of rectitude, could you cause yourself to be arrested in a
place to you interdicted? All this seems to me extraordinary. You
speak of an oath which so far has imposed silence upon you; but this
oath even is so strange!"

"I have told the truth, madame."

"I am sure of it; one has only to see and hear you to believe you
incapable of a falsehood. But, what is incomprehensible in your
situation, augments, irritates my impatient curiosity; it is only to
that that you must attribute the sharpness of my words just now. Come,
I avow I was wrong; for, although I had no other right to your
confidence than my earnest wish to be useful to you, you have offered
to tell me that which you have told to no one, and I am very sensible,
believe me, my poor child, of this proof of your faith in the interest
I have for you. Hence, I promise you, in guarding scrupulously your
secret, if you confide it to me, I will do all in my power to meet
your wishes."

Thanks to this palliating speech, Madame d'Harville regained the
confidence of La Goualeuse, for a moment impaired. Fleur-de-Marie, in
her innocence, reproached herself for having misinterpreted the words
which had wounded her.

"Pardon me, madame," said she; "I was doubtless wrong not to tell you
at once what you wished to know; but you asked me the name of my
rescuer; in spite of myself, I cannot resist the pleasure of speaking
of him."

"Nothing is better; it proves how grateful you are toward him. But why
have you left the good people with whom he had placed you? Does your
oath have reference to this?"

"Yes, madame; but thanks to you, I believe now, still keeping my word,
I shall be able to satisfy my benefactors as to my disappearance."
"Come, my poor child, I listen." "It is about three months since M.
Rudolph placed me at a farm situated four or five leagues hence." "He
conducted you there himself?" "Yes, madame; he confided me to the
care of a lady as good as she was venerable, whom I soon loved as a
mother. She and the cure of the village, at the request of M. Rudolph,
took charge of my education." "And M. Rudolph often came to the
farm?" "No, madame; he came there only three times while I was
there." Clemence could not conceal a thrill of joy. "And when he
came to see you, it made you very happy, did it not?" "Oh, yes,
madame! it was for me more than happiness: It was a sentiment mixed
with gratitude, respect, admiration, and even a little fear." "Fear!"
"From him to me--from him to others--the distance is so great!" "But
what is his rank?" "I am ignorant if he has any rank, madame." "Yet
you speak of the distance which exists between him and others." "Oh,
madame! that which places him above the rest of the world is the
elevation of his character--his inexhaustible generosity for those who
suffer; it is the enthusiasm with which he inspires everybody. The
wicked even cannot hear his name without trembling; they respect him
as much as they fear him. But pardon me, madame, for having again
spoken of him--I ought to be silent; for I should give you but an
imperfect idea of him whom I ought to content myself with adoring to
myself. As well attempt to express by words the grandeur of Heaven!
This comparison is perhaps sacrilegious, madame. But will it offend to
compare to Goodness itself the man who has given me a consciousness of
good and evil--who has dragged me from the abyss--to whom I owe a new
existence?" "I do not blame you, my child; I comprehend your
feelings. But how have you abandoned this farm, where you were so
happy?"

"Alas, it was not voluntary, madame!"

"Who forced you, then?"

"One night, a short time since," said Fleur-de-Marie, trembling at the
recital, "I went to the parsonage of the village, when a wicked woman,
who had treated me cruelly in my childhood, and a man, her accomplice,
who was concealed with her in a ravine, threw themselves upon me,
wrapped me up, and carried me off in a carriage."

"For what purpose?"

"I do not know, madame. My waylayers were acting, I think, under the
orders of some powerful persons."

"What then ensued?"

"Hardly had the vehicle moved, than the bad woman, whose name was La
Chouette (Screech-Owl), cried, 'I have got some vitriol; I am going to
wash the face of La Goualeuse, to disfigure her.'"

"How horrid! Unfortunate child! What saved you from that danger?"

"The accomplice of this woman, a blind man, called the Schoolmaster."

"He defended you?"

"Yes, madame, on this occasion and on another. This time a struggle
ensued between him and La Chouette. Availing himself of his strength,
he forced her to throw out of the window the bottle which contained
the vitriol. This was the first service he rendered me, after having
assisted in carrying me off. The night was very dark. At the end of an
hour and a half the carriage stopped, I believe on the high road which
crosses the plain of Saint Denis; a man on horseback waited for us
here. 'Well,' said he, 'have you got her at last?' 'Yes, we have her,'
answered La Chouette, who was furious at having been prevented from
disfiguring me. 'If you wish to get rid of this little thing there is
a good way; I will stretch her on the road--drive the wheels of the
carriage over her head--it will look as if she was run over by
accident.'"

"Oh, this is frightful!"

"Alas, madame! La Chouette was well capable of doing what she said.
Happily, the man on horseback said that he did not wish to harm me;
that it was only necessary to keep me shut up for two months in some
place where I could neither get out nor write to any one. Then La
Chouette proposed to take me to a man called Bras-Rouge, who kept a
tavern in the Champs Elysees. In this tavern there were several
subterranean chambers; one of them, La Chouette said, could answer for
my prison. The man on horseback accepted this proposition. Then he
promised me that, after remaining two months with Bras-Rouge, I should
be so provided for that I would not regret the farm at Bouqueval."

"What a strange mystery!"

"This man gave some money to La Chouette, promising her some more when
I should be taken from Bras-Rouge, and set out on a gallop. We
continued our route toward Paris. A short time before we arrived at
the gates, the Schoolmaster said to La Chouette, 'You wish to shut up
La Goualeuse in one of Bras-Rouge's cellars; you know very well that,
being near the river, these cellars in winter are always inundated. Do
you wish to drown her?' 'Yes,' answered La Chouette."

"But what had you done to this horrible woman?"

"Nothing, madame: and yet, since my infancy, she has always shown this
feeling toward me. The Schoolmaster answered, 'I will not have the
Goualeuse drowned; she shall not go to Bras-Rouge.' La Chouette was as
much surprised as I was, madame, to hear this man defend me thus. She
became furious, and swore that she would take me to Bras-Rouge in
spite of him. 'I defy you,' said he,' for I have La Goualeuse by the
arm; I will not let her go, and I'll strangle you if you come near
her.' But what do you mean to do with her?' cried La Chouette, 'since
she must be put out of the way for two months.' 'There is a way,' said
the Schoolmaster; 'we are going to the Champs Elysees; we will stop
the carriage near the guard-house; you will go and look for Bras-Rouge
at his tavern. It is midnight; you will find him there; bring him with
you; he will take La Goualeuse to the post, and declare she is a gay
girl, whom he found near his tavern. As they are condemned to three
months' imprisonment when they are caught on the Champs Elysees, and
Goualeuse is still on the police lists, she will be arrested, and sent
to Saint Lazare, where she will be as well guarded and concealed as in
the cellar of Bras-Rouge.' 'But,' replied La Chouette, 'the Goualeuse
will not suffer herself to be arrested; once at the guard-house, she
will tell all, she will denounce us. Supposing, even, that she is
imprisoned, she will write to her protectors; all will be discovered.'
'No, she will go to prison willingly,' answered the School-master; 'she
must swear that she will not denounce us to any one as long as she
remains at Saint Lazare, nor afterward either. She owes as much to me,
for I have prevented her being disfigured by you, and drowned at
Bras-Rouge's; but if after having sworn not to speak, she should do
it, we will set the farm at Bouqueval a-fire.' Then, addressing me, he
said, 'Decide! swear the oath I ask, you shall go to prison for two
months; otherwise I abandon you to La Chouette, who will take you to
the cellar, where you'll be drowned. Come, decide. I know If you swear
you will keep your oath.'"

"And you have sworn?"

"Alas! yes, madame; I feared so much to be disfigured by La Chouette,
or to be drowned in a cellar; that appeared to me so frightful. Any
other kind of death would nave appeared less fearful. I should not,
perhaps, have endeavored to escape."

"What a gloomy idea at your age!" said Madame d'Harville, looking at
La Goualeuse with surprise. "Once away from this place, returned to
your benefactors, will you not be very happy? Has not your repentance
effaced the past?"

"Can the past be effaced? Can the past be forgotten? Can repentance
destroy the memory, madame?" cried Fleur-de-Marie, in a tone so
despairing that Clemence shuddered.

"But all faults can be redeemed, unhappy child!"

"But the recollection of the stain--madame, does it not become more
and more terrible in measure as the mind is purified, as the soul
becomes elevated? Alas! the more you mount the deeper appears the
abyss from which you have emerged."

"Then you renounce all hope of re-establishment and pardon?"

"On the part of others--no, madame; your goodness proves that
indulgence is never wanting to the penitent."

"You will, then, be the only one without pity toward yourself?"

"Others may be ignorant, may pardon and forget what I have been. I,
madame, never can forget."'

"And sometimes you wish to die?"

"Sometimes!" said La Goualeuse, smiling bitterly, "yes, madame,
sometimes."

"Yet you feared to be disfigured by that horrible woman? you cling to
your beauty, then, poor child? That announces that life has some
charms for you. Courage, then--courage!"

"It is, perhaps, a weakness to think so; but if I were handsome, as
you say, madame, I should wish to die handsome, in pronouncing the
name of my benefactor."

The eyes of Madame d'Harville filled with tears.

Fleur-de-Marie had said these words so simply; her angelic features,
pale and cast down, her mournful smile, were so much in unison with
her words, that no one could doubt the reality of her gloomy desire.
Madame d'Harville was endowed with too much sensibility not to feel
what was fatal and inflexible in this thought of La Goualeuse-_ "I
shall never forget what I have been" _--a fixed, constant idea,
which would predominate and torture the life of Fleur-de-Marie.
Clemence, ashamed at having for a moment misunderstood the generosity,
always so disinterested, of the prince, also regretted that she should
have had for a moment a feeling of jealousy toward La Goualeuse, who
had expressed, with so much warmth, her gratitude toward her
protector. Strange thing--the admiration which this poor prisoner
showed so vividly for Rudolph, augmented, perhaps, still more the
profound love which Clemence was forever to conceal from him. She
resumed, to drive away her thoughts: "I hope that, in future, you will
be less severe toward yourself. But let us speak of your oath; now I
can understand your silence. You did not wish to denounce the
wretches?"

"Although the Schoolmaster took part in my abduction, he had twice
defended me--I was afraid of being ungrateful toward him."

"And you lent yourself to the designs of these monsters?"

"Yes, madame, I was so much alarmed! La Chouette went to seek
Bras-Rouge; he took me to the guard-house, saying he found me roving
about his inn; I did not deny it; I was arrested, and brought here."

"But your friends at the farm must be very much alarmed."

"Alas, madame, in my fright I did not reflect that my oath would
prevent me from informing them; now it gives me much pain, but I
believe that, without breaking my oath, I can beg you to write to
Madame George, at the farm of Bouqueval, to have no uneasiness about
me, without telling her where I am, for I have promised to be silent."

"My child, these precautions will become useless if, at my
recommendation, you are pardoned; to-morrow you shall return to the
farm, without having broken your oath; you can then consult your
benefactors, to know how far you are restricted by this oath, drawn
from you by threats."

"You think, madame, that, thanks to your kindness, I can hope to leave
here soon?"

"You deserve so much interest, that I shall succeed, I am sure, and I
doubt not that after to-morrow you can go yourself to reassure your
benefactors."

"How can I have merited so much kindness on your ladyship's part? How
can I show my gratitude?"

"By continuing to conduct yourself as you have done. I only regret I
can do nothing for your future welfare-it is a pleasure that your
friends have reserved."

Madame Armand entered suddenly, with an alarmed air.

"Madame," said she to Clemence, with hesitation, "I am grieved at the
message I have to deliver to you."

"What do you mean to say, madame?"

"The Duke de Lucenay is below-he comes from your house, madame."

"You frighten me; what is it?"

"I am ignorant, madame, but M. de Lucenay has information for you, he
says, as sad, as it was unforeseen. He learned at his wife's that you
were here and he came in all haste."

"Sad news!" said Madame d'Harville. Then suddenly she cried in a
heart-rending tone, "My daughter-my child, perhaps! Oh, speak,
madame!"

"I am ignorant, madame."

"Oh! in mercy, madame, take me to M. de Lucenay," cried Madame
d'Harville, going out, quite bewildered, and followed by Madame
Armand.

"Poor mother!" said the Gonaleuse, sadly; "oh, now, it is impossible!
At the moment even when she was showing so much benevolence toward me,
such a blow to fall! No, no-once more, it is impossible!"




CHAPTER XVII.

A FORGED INTIMACY.


We will conduct the reader to the house in the Rue du Temple, the day
of the suicide of M. d'Harville, about three o'clock in the afternoon.
Pipelet, the porter, alone in the lodge, was occupied in mending a
boot. The chaste porter was dejected and melancholy. As a soldier, in
the humiliation of his defeat, passes his hand sadly over his scars,
Pipelet breathed a profound sigh, stopped his work, and moved his
trembling finger over the transverse fracture of his huge hat, made by
an insolent hand. Then all the chagrin, inquietude, and fears of
Alfred Pipelet were awakened in thinking of the inconceivable and
incessant pursuits of the author.

Pipelet had not a very extended or elevated mind; his imagination was
not the most lively nor the most poetical, but he possessed a very
solid, very logical, very common sense.

Cabrion, a painter, formerly a tenant, had seen fit to make the porter
a butt of the most audacious practical jokes, inundating him with
caricatures, laughable labels, and startling appearances before his
unexpectant appalled sight. Unfortunately, by a natural consequence of
the rectitude of his judgment, not being able to comprehend practical
jokes, Pipelet endeavored to find some reasonable motive for the
outrageous conduct of Cabrion, and on this subject he posed himself
with a thousand insoluble questions. Thus, sometimes, a new Paschal,
he felt himself seized with a vertigo in trying to sound the
bottomless abyss which the infernal genius of the painter had dug
under his feet. How many times, in the overflowings of his
imagination, he had been forced to commune within himself thanks to
the frenzied skepticism of Madame Pipelet, who, only looking at facts,
and disdaining to seek after causes, grossly considered the
incomprehensible conduct of Cabrion toward Alfred as simple
comicality.

Pipelet, a serious man, could not admit of such an interpretation; he
groaned at the blindness of his wife; his dignity as a man revolted at
the thought that he could be the plaything of a combination so vulgar
as a _lark!_ He was absolutely convinced that the unheard-of
conduct of Cabriori concealed some mysterious plot under a frivolous
appearance.

It was to solve this fatal problem that the man in the big hat
exhausted his powerful logic. "I would sooner lay my head on the
scaffold," said this austere man, who, as soon as he touched them,
increased immensely the importance of any propositions. "I would
sooner lay my head upon the scaffold than admit that, in the mere
intention of a stupid pleasantry, Cabrion could be so obstinately
exasperated against me; a _farce_ is only played for the gallery.
Now, in his last undertaking, this obnoxious creature had no witness;
he acted alone and in obscurity, as always; he clandestinely
introduced himself into the solitude of my lodge to deposit on my
forehead a hideous kiss! I ask any disinterested person, for what
purpose? It was not from bravado--no one saw him; it was not from
pleasure--the laws of nature opposed it; it was not from friendship--I
have but one enemy in the world--it is he. It must, then, be
acknowledged that there is a mystery there which my reason cannot
penetrate! Then to what does this diabolical plot, concerted and
pursued with a persistence which alarms me, tend? That I cannot
comprehend: it is this impossibility to raise the veil, which, by
degrees, is undermining and consuming me."

Such were the painful reflections of Pipelet at the moment when we
present him to our readers. The honest porter had just torn open his
bleeding wounds, by carry--his hand mechanically to the fracture of
his hat, when a piercing voice, coming from one of the upper stories
of the house, made these words resound again: "Mr. Pipelet, quick!
quick! come up! make haste!"

"I do not know that voice," said Alfred, after a moment of anxious
listening, and he let his arm, inclosed in the boot he was mending,
fall on his knees.

"Mr. Pipelet! make haste!" repeated the voice, in a pressing tone.

"That voice is completely strange to me. It is masculine; it calls me,
that I can affirm. It is not a sufficient reason that I should abandon
my lodge. Leave it--desert it in the absence of my wife--never!" cried
Alfred, heroically, "never!"

"Mr. Pipelet," said the voice, "come up quick, Mrs. Pipelet is off in
a swoon."

"Anastasia!" cried Alfred, rising from his seat: then be fell back
again, saying to himself, "child that I am--it is impossible; my wife
went out an hour ago. Yes, but might she not have returned without my
seeing her? This would be rather irregular; but I must declare that it
is possible."

"Mr. Pipelet, come up; I have your wife in my arms!"

"Some one has my wife in their arms!" said Pipelet, rising abruptly.

"I cannot unlace Mrs. Pipelet all alone!" added the voice.

These words produced a magical effect upon Alfred: his face flushed,
his chastity revolted.

"The masculine and unknown voice speaks of unlacing Anastasia!" cried
he: "I oppose it, I forbid it!" and he rushed out of the lodge; but on
the threshold he stopped.

Pipelet found himself in one of those horribly critical, and eminently
dramatical positions, so often described by poets. On the one hand,
duty retained him in his lodge: on the other, his chaste and conjugal
susceptibility called him to the upper stories of the house. In the
midst of these terrible perplexities, the voice said:

"You don't come, Mr. Pipelet? so much the worse--I cut the strings,
and I shut my eyes!"

This threat decided Pipelet.

"Mossieur!" cried he, in a stentorian voice, "in the name of honor I
conjure you to cut nothing--to leave my wife intact! I come!" and
Alfred rushed upstairs, leaving, in his alarm, the door of the lodge
open. Hardly had he left it, than a man entered quickly, took from the
table a hammer, jumped on the bed, at the back part of the obscure
alcove, and vanished. This operation was done so quickly, that the
porter, remembering almost immediately that he had left the door open,
returned precipitately, shut it, and carried off the key, without
suspecting that any one could have entered in this interval. After
this measure of precaution, Alfred started again to the assistance of
Anastasia, crying, with all his strength, "Cut nothing--I am coming--
here I am--I place my wife under the safeguard of your delicacy!"

Hardly had he mounted the first flight, before he heard the voice of
Anastasia, not from the upper story, but in the alley.

The voice, shriller than ever cried, "Alfred! here you leave the lodge
alone! Where are you, old gadabout?"

At this moment, Pipelet was about placing his right foot on the
landing-place of the first story; he remained petrified, his head
turned toward the bottom of the stairs, his mouth open, his eyes
fixed, his foot raised.

"Alfred!" cried Mrs. Pipelet anew.

"Anastasia is below--she is not above, occupied in being sick," said
Pipelet to himself, faithful to his logical argumentation. "But then
this unknown and masculine voice, who threatened to unlace her, is an
impostor. He has been playing a cruel game with my emotions! What is
his design? There is something extraordinary going on here! No matter:
do your duty, happen what may! After having responded to my wife, I
shall mount to enlighten this mystery and verify this voice."

Pipelet descended, very much troubled, and found himself face to face
with his wife.

"It is you?" said he.

"Well! yes, it is me; who would you have it to be?"

"It is you--my eyes do not deceive me!"

"Ah, now! what is the matter, that makes your big eyes look like
billiard balls? You look at me as if you were going to eat me."

"Your presence reveals to me that something has been passing here--
things--"

"What things? Come, give me the key of the lodge; why do you leave it?
I come from the office of the Normandy diligences, where I went in a
hack, to carry the trunk of M. Bradamanti, who did not wish it to be
known that he was about to leave town to-night, and who could not
depend on that little scoundrel Tortillard (Hoppy)--and he is right!"

Saying these words, Mrs. Pipelet took the key, which her husband held
in his hand, opened the lodge, and went in before her husband.

Hardly had they entered, when a person, descending the staircase
lightly, passed rapidly and unperceived before the lodge. It was the
"masculine voice" which had so deeply excited the inquietudes of
Alfred.

Pipelet rested himself heavily on his chair, and said to his wife in a
trembling voice, "Anastasia, I do not feel at my accustomed ease;
things occurring here--events--"

"Now you repeat that again; but things occur everywhere; what is the
matter? Come, let us see--why, you are all wet--all in a perspiration!
what effort have you been making? He's all a-trickling--the old
darling!"

"Yes, I perspire, as I have reason to;" Pipelet passed his hand over
his face, dripping with moisture; "for there are regular revolutionary
events passing here."

"Again I ask, what is it? You never can remain quiet. You must always
be trotting about like a cat, instead of remaining in your chair to
take care of the lodge."

"If I trot, it is for you."

"For me?"

"Yes; to spare you an outrage for which we both should have groaned
and blushed, I have deserted a post which I consider as sacred as the
sentry-box."

"Some one wished to commit an outrage on me--on me!"

"It was not on you, since the outrage of which you were threatened was
to have been accomplished upstairs, and you were gone out--"

"May Old Harry run away with me, if I understand a single word of what
you are singing there. Ah, ah! is it that you are decidedly losing your
noddle? I shall begin to think that you are absent-minded--the fault
of that beggarly Cabrion! Since his games of the other day, I don't
know you; you look struck all of a heap. That being will be always
your nightmare."

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