The Mystery of the Lost Dauphin Part 38

"It must be tonight. When again shall I have the opportunity? Tomorrow I must return to Versailles."

He walked stealthily back and forth, between the garden and the theatre.

The night advanced and the streets were growing deserted; the taverns were being emptied of their occupants; the great clock sounded two, then the half hour; the royal carriages drew up. The Carbonaro glided along the solitary street of Louvois and made his way amid a group of lackeys.

His insignificant stature enabled him to remain there unmolested. He was supposed to be some hackney coachman or an a.s.sistant placed there for the purpose of guarding horses. Louis Pierre stood motionless close to the wall.

He had not long to wait. Prince Ferdinand descended the steps, accompanying his wife, who was leaving early, being fatigued from a ball which she had attended the previous night. The Prince intended remaining longer,--perchance to hover around some fair face. But, in order to forestall any jealous pangs, he whispered to her gallantly and affectionately, according to his winning nature:

"I shall be with you very soon."

The suspicious, ardent Italian wife and the impulsive, gallant husband were a happy devoted pair. Caroline had warned him, as they left the box, not to remain late.

"Don't wait for the sun to chase you home," she had said, half playfully, half seriously. "I must go now, myself, in order to--be careful of--our secret--the heir we are to give to France."

He rea.s.sured her tenderly, solicitously, pressing her arm to his side.

On reaching the carriage, he spoke the words we have already reproduced and which are recorded in history as the last words of Ferdinand: "I shall be with you very soon."

She stepped lightly into the carriage and turned her head at the window to have a last look at her husband as he started towards the theatre. He was walking along the pavement of Rameau street, beneath the gay buntings. Louis Pierre stood among the lackeys and sentinels. When later, in the solitude of the dungeon, he lived again the tragic moments of his deed,--he could not understand how he accomplished with such admirable dexterity that which a half hour earlier seemed so difficult of execution. An invisible hand seemed to have guided him and sent his own hand unflinchingly to its task. That powerful man, surrounded by courtiers, friends and sentinels, who, drawn up on each side, presented arms; that man whose splendid physique was revealed through his elegant dress and who with one hand could have hurled to earth the puny creature inflicting death:--that man, Louis Pierre a.s.sured himself, had been delivered helpless and unsuspicious into his hands by Fate. He was no longer overpowered by the consciousness of his insignificance; no longer did he regard himself a despicable atom; within him was a species of lucid inebriation, a glorious wave of pride and confidence. His moment shone. The obscure plebeian had written his page of history.

"Before that moment, my life had amounted to naught. My latent self suddenly sprang into being. To be satisfied with killing a spy! What puerility! So little sufficed the inferior nature of Giacinto."

Thus communed Pierre Louis, as the imperious face of Amelie, her mouth drawn in bitter disdain, with a terrible frown as of an avenging archangel, came to his mind's eye. She stood for the feminine suggestion there is in all tragedy. Great souls are lonely. They so love their ideals that they cannot compromise nor forgive. It seemed to him that the splendid eyes of Naundorff's daughter had fearlessly and unhesitatingly shown him the way to the Prince. As a somnambulist moves, he had accomplished the deed. With his small dagger, he had dealt a marvelously dexterous blow, rapid and to the spot. Ferdinand felt no wound, not even the coldness of the blade; he thought some one chanced to strike against him; suddenly he realized he was about to fall. None of the others suspected the truth. Meanwhile the a.s.sailant disappeared.

On reaching the corner of Richelieu street, Louis Pierre nonchalantly slackened his speed and started toward the dark arcades, today in ruins, opposite the stupendous edifice of the library. He was safe from pursuit. None of those near whom he had stood before the theatre knew him. He told himself that his life had trembled on the edge of a blade.

Just then he pa.s.sed an inn wherein coffee was being served. Fate ordained that a waiter carrying a tray upon which the fragrant beverage steamed should step out of the door and stumble against him, an accident occasioning the breaking of the dishes. The waiter turned infuriated upon the causer of the damage, and, chasing him into the darkness of an alley, caught him by the collar and shook him soundly. The Carbonaro was such a weakling! He seemed to hear an interior voice saying:

"You have wrought. Now 'tis this man's turn."

When Ferdinand reached the vestibule, he involuntarily put his hand to his side, over the unsuspected wound. He felt the projecting hilt of the dagger. The entire blade was buried in his body. He cried out in pain as the fine triangular weapon was extracted. The Princess Caroline hurried back from her carriage and threw her arms around him and those bare round arms were bathed in blood. Then followed tender heart-rending adieux. The dying Prince poured out his soul during his last hours even as his body delivered up its life. He spoke of glory, of patriotism, of Christian faith, of love, of past faults; but more insistently than ought else, did he plead for the a.s.sa.s.sin's pardon. As the King bent over him, his lips, livid with the approach of death, implored:

"Forgive him, forgive him! We are all sinners, having need of forgiveness. Sire and uncle, say yes!"

As the King maintained silence, he groaned:

"O my G.o.d, do you deny me this dying consolation?"

In his agony, as fever consumed his ebbing life, this descendant of Henry of Navarre, so like that glorious ancestor, even in the manner of his death, murmured:

"Forgive him, forgive him!"

Lecazes, meanwhile, amazed at the swiftness with which the trunk had fallen, approached Louis Pierre, who was a prisoner in one of the lower apartments, and whispered, as he drew him aside:

"Did you do this for money? Have you accomplices"

The Carbonaro cast upon the Minister a look of scorn, saying:

"Do men do these things for money? I am the avenger of my country and of Naundorff and his daughter. The race perishes. There will be no heir."

"Fool," replied the Minister, gloating over that somber soul's discomfiture, "the Princess is promised an heir."

Louis Pierre turned pale as the futility of the crime overwhelmed him.

"No matter," said he. "I did the deed and I would repeat it a thousand times."

Again he a.s.sumed the stoical air and supreme command of self which characterized him in such a high degree both during his trial and upon the scaffold.

The whispered dialogue between Lecazes and the a.s.sa.s.sin was remarked by the other occupants in the apartment and became the basis of the charge of complicity brought against the Baron, and was the cause of his removal and fall. It was said of him that:

"He slipped in the puddle of blood and fell."

FINISH.