The Mystery of the Lost Dauphin Part 36

"At once, if Monseigneur wishes."

"Do not call me 'Monseigneur.' That is over, Captain. I am only Naundorff, the mechanic, the chemist. You are taking me from a land where I have known only sorrow to a country of peace and liberty. In Holland my good wife and little children await me. There shall I forget my insensate dreams, the cause of my ills. Because of my refusal to accept the decrees of fate, I have been punished in whom I most love, this daughter. A widow twice, never having been a wife, her life is blighted forever. The prison walls did not lie in speaking to me the terrible words: 'Your friends shall perish.'"

Amelie laid her hand on her father's shoulder. Her eyes were dry. She seemed to forgive him all that she had suffered.

"My friends," added Naundorff, turning to the Carbonari, "let us give the lie to the prison prophecy. Since I am given respite and my persecutors seem to be satiated from having rifled me of my certificates; since they ignore my interview with the woman--whom I have forgiven (may my mother in heaven forgive her also)--; friends, return to a quiet life and cease to combat, cease to conspire, cease to avenge!

A clear light illumines my mind and heart. I see what I would impart to you. Listen: Resist not evil; rather return good for evil. He who uproots the hedge will be bitten by the serpent, say the words of eternal wisdom. Forgive that you may be forgiven."

Louis Pierre turned his face away that Naundorff might not see the keen light in his eyes.

"Farewell, farewell!" repeated the outlaw. "I am a simple man, henceforth. My only t.i.tle is that of Man. I go to earn my bread by the sweat of my brow. I go to die obscurely. Embrace me again."

The two Carbonari folded their arms around him, Giacinto shedding tears.

Naundorff said gently:

"Thanks, thanks! Peace descend upon you both. Cease to struggle, claim not your dues. And you, Giacinto, do penance. Your hands are stained with blood."

The Sicilian involuntarily looked upon those members. Just then they were seized by Amelie, who whispered in his ear:

"O Giacinto, do not reproach yourself! 'Twas simple justice. Listen. She who prepared the ambuscade shall herself leave France in banishment, or else there is no G.o.d."

Some moments later the sloop glided out of port. Erect and majestic, like unto a dethroned queen, Amelie waved an adieu to the Knights of Liberty.

Giacinto and Louis Pierre stood motionless on the wharf which now began to be covered with fishermen, sailors and venders. Their eyes were riveted upon the sloop as she reached the schooner Polipheme. They could still distinguish the black form of Amelie and her father's grave outlines. The Polipheme weighed anchor, spread sails and gracefully cleaved the waves red with the morning sun.

The gay voices of the crowd ash.o.r.e awaiting the arrival of the fis.h.i.+ng smacks const.i.tuted so brilliant a tout ensemble that Giacinto, notwithstanding the sad parting from his friends, felt new life rus.h.i.+ng through his veins and joy tugging at his heart strings. He looked at Louis Pierre. That face wore an expression recalling vengeance and the scaffold. Shuddering, the Sicilian returned to reality.

"They are gone, Louis Pierre," said he, in order to break the silence.

"They are gone,--those royal personages whom history will fail to enumerate."

"Giacinto, you should have gone to Holland with them. I advise you as a friend, for in Versailles you have a mistress whom you have filched from a guard,--a dangerous experiment. O, I know all about it; she lives on our floor. Do you think the bird worth the risking of your neck? Yes, it was best for our friends to go. The police pretend to have forgotten us. 'Tis a trap. They will not forget to square accounts with the man who sent Volpetti to his brother Satan.--You are a child, Giacinto, and may be led to any pasture by a petticoat string--"

"Bah!" interrupted the other. "Were it not for petticoats, what savor would remain to life? My dear little laundress has set me quite crazy with love and the sergeant is dying with jealousy. Will you believe that here also I have discovered a jewel of a woman?--the daughter of a tinker. And I am either a fool or this night--"

"So you remain? You are indeed a fool, Giacinto. I shall work out my ends, henceforth, without your aid. Tho I be sought, I shall not be found; even tho I be found, I shall not be caught, and even tho I be caught, I shall not be retained. In this enigma I speak the truth."

Giacinto's superst.i.tious nature was aroused.

"Why do you say these words, friend?" he asked.

"Because no man is overcome until he has performed his a.s.signed task,"

serenely replied the Knight of Liberty. "Was the Other One overcome before he had subjugated Europe? Today he is chained to Saint Helena, but he first demonstrated the might of the Revolution. Before he could demonstrate the might of Despotism, he was overpowered, for this the Fates would not permit."

"We are not the Other One."

"Each man is the Other One. Each man may change the world if he acts of himself."

"Bah!" retorted Giacinto. "We are p.a.w.ns on a chess-board. Poor devils, we but play our part. What matters it to me that it be primary or secondary? I have sent to h.e.l.l the devil who killed my brother. For the rest, a fig!--I feel his warm blood on my hands now!"

His nostrils dilated at the ghastly memory, his lips smacked with savage joy, his handsome face glowed with exultation.

"Yes," answered Louis Pierre in a solemn voice. "Your work is accomplished. Fear, Giacinto, for you are now a hollow sh.e.l.l. Remember how the dastardly Volpetti was given life only to accomplish his mission. Volpetti was delivered to you when he had secured the doc.u.ments for Lecazes. But my work is as yet unfulfilled. For that reason I am secure. My history is as yet unwritten."

"And it shall remain unwritten, my friend. What have two poor devils such as you and I to do with history, especially since we no longer accompany royalty?"

"I am a man," retorted Louis Pierre Louvel. "Have you measured the power of a man? Giacinto, the birth of an individual is of transcendent importance. Remember Him who was born in Judea. Consider the significance of a male child to the House of France! This rotten dynasty which the Cossack has forced us to again endure may yet sprout forth fresh and green, and all because of a child's birth."

By this time the two Carbonari had reached their lodgings. They ascended to their humble apartments. Louis Pierre took up his knapsack and, according to the French custom, kissed his companion on the cheek.

"Are we not to breakfast together?" asked Giacinto.

"By breakfast time, I shall be far away from this place. You should be also," replied Louis Pierre.

"What would the tinker's daughter think of her sweetheart? She has this morning peeped from her window five times. She has thrown me a flower and waved her hand--"

The fatalist remonstrated no further. Carrying his light equipage, he descended the rickety stairs. Naundorff had paid the bills. He might, therefore, depart, without seeking the host. His rickety form took the direction of the woods and was soon lost to view.

An hour later Giacinto sat before a succulent repast of stewed fish. A girl held to his lips a gla.s.s of foamy beer. Just then steps and the clanking of muskets sounded on the stairway. The officer heading the soldiers laid a hand on the Sicilian's shoulder, saying:

"Manacle his hands."

Chapter X

A DESCENDANT OF HENRI OF NAVARRE

In a human existence there may be a culminating moment,--a moment in which ambitions are realized and reality adapts itself to the dreamed-of ideal. The maneuvers of a subterranean state-craft during that epoch of incessant conspiracy had raised Lecazes to the pinnacle of glory. The Police was in its apogee, holding triumphantly in its hands the warp whose reverse side was espionage, provocation, indictment, torture, and whose obverse consisted of brilliant court ceremonials, stormy discussions in Councils and diplomatic strife in the royal coterie, wherein conservative and reactionary parties contended bitterly.

Dominating the maneuvers from his cabinet, the genial Minister reigned,--the arbiter of the nation. He was the real master. He held the reins and guided the King with well dissembled strategy, as well as the other members of the royal family and the courtiers and officials,--all of whom complacently obeyed him, in their solicitude for the maintenance of the legitimate government.

Nevertheless, to use his own expression, "his life flowed between two walls of paper." He was accustomed to say that Paper was his worst enemy, adding, "You may rid yourself of a man but not of a piece of written paper." Excepting those retained as future s.h.i.+elds, he tore all such sheets into bits, and compromising doc.u.ments he burned.

It was the month of February. Lecazes sat in the same closet in which he had received the d.u.c.h.ess de Rousillon. A cloud was upon his face and an expression at once stealthy and rapacious, such as characterizes the countenances of all selfishly ambitious men, when alone. The cause of his preoccupation was a letter just received. It was anonymous and contained only these brief clauses:

"Naundorff is despoiled, de Breze murdered, Giacinto executed. They shall be avenged. Guard the trunk; as for the limbs they are despicable."

Such communications seldom troubled the Minister, accustomed as he was to the language of charlatans. He usually destroyed the epistles, smiling a Machiavellian smile. But this letter troubled him, for it was not the first of the series; others had periodically preceded it, giving no clue to the writer and seeming to have for object a warning to the intended victim.

"There is not a thread of the net which I may not snap at will," he soliloquized. "They are not indeed thinking of avenging de Breze or Naundorff--nor even that insignificant Carbonaro whom I have had to execute. I did not do so as retaliation for Volpetti's death. However much I miss him, I can not replace him. He was my hands and feet. But pshaw! in state-craft we waive vengeance and travel direct to our ends,--the Carbonari to the demolis.h.i.+ng of the throne, I to the sustaining of it. To sustain it I have wrought miracles. Had I not obtained the papers which have cost me Volpetti, alas for the dynasty!

The happy exit must console me for the loss of my best man."

Re-reading the anonymous sheet, his attention was arrested by the phrase "Guard the trunk."

"Who is the trunk?" he asked himself. "I should overestimate even my own importance to suppose they mean me. Can it be the King? Poor decayed trunk, soon to fall beneath the great woodman's ax! Can it be his brother? Impossible!--that hollow reactionary, incorrigible trunk. He is the Carbonari's best ally. I know not what will be the outcome of the King's succ.u.mbing to gout. Can it be the Duke Louis? Sterile trunk! No, if any one in particular is signified, 'tis Ferdinand,--the destined perpetuator of the race. Let us see! Lecazes, imagine yourself a conspirator. Whom would you attack? Why Ferdinand! Ferdinand the debonnaire, the well-loved, the generator of heirs. May this writing be the effusion of some fool? Or is it a conspirator's dash of romantic honor in warning the intended victim? However that be, I must warn the Prince. He is as unsuspicious and gay and heroic as his ancestor, Henry of Navarre. Flatterers a.s.sure him that he is that great monarch's prototype. He and his wife go about so freely and to every kind of diversion. During one of these sky-larkings--Ah! kings may not live as other men. Naundorff little realizes the good turn I did him and his family by barring his approach to the throne, nor she either, the audacious little intriguante. She has ample opportunity now to devote her energies to the weaving of Flemish laces."

These thoughts still occupied him when he that afternoon entered the royal cabinet. Before the monarch stood a table whose draperies were arranged to conceal the swollen feet, for the gout grew daily worse.

Nevertheless, in frequent carriage rides and an incessant sortie of fine cla.s.sic raillery from his patrician lips, Louis XVIII demonstrated an increased activity.