BOOK V: LAFCADIO

“_There is only one remedy! One thing alone_ _can cure us from being ourselves!_ ...”

“_Yes; strictly speaking, the question is not how_ _to get cured, but how to live._” --JOSEPH CONRAD, Lord Jim, p. 225.

I

After Lafcadio, with the solicitor’s help--Julius acting as intermediary--had come into the 40,000 francs a year left him by the late Count Juste-Agénor de Baraglioul, his chief concern was to let no signs of it appear.

“Off gold plate perhaps,” he had said to himself at the time, “but the same victuals.”

What he had not considered--or perhaps what he had not yet learned--was that his victuals for the future would have a different taste. Or, put it like this: since struggling with his hunger gave him as much pleasure as indulging his appetite, his resistance--now that he was no longer pressed by want--began to slacken. To speak plainly, thanks to a naturally aristocratic disposition he had not allowed himself to be forced by necessity into committing a single one of those actions--which he might very well commit now, out of a gambling or a mocking humour, just for the fun of putting his pleasure before his interest.

In obedience to the Count’s wishes he had not gone into mourning.

A mortifying experience awaited him when he went to replenish his wardrobe in the shops which had been patronised by his last uncle, the Marquis de Gesvres. On his mentioning this gentleman’s name as a recommendation, the tailor pulled out a number of bills which the Marquis had neglected to pay. Lafcadio had a fastidious dislike to swindling; he at once pretended that he had come on purpose to settle the account, and paid ready money for his new clothes. The same misadventure awaited him at the bootmaker’s. When it came to the shirtmaker, Lafcadio thought it more prudent to choose another.

“Oh, Uncle de Gesvres, if only I knew your address, it would be a pleasure to send you your receipted bills,” thought Lafcadio. “You would despise me for it. No matter! I’m a Baraglioul and from this day forward, you scamp of a marquis, I dismiss you from my heart.”

There was nothing to keep him in Paris--or to call him elsewhere; he crossed Italy by short stages, making his way to Brindisi, where he meant to embark on some liner bound for Java.

He was sitting all alone in a compartment of the train which was carrying him away from Rome, and contemplating--not without satisfaction--his hands in their grey doeskin gloves, as they lay on the rich fawn-coloured plaid, which, in spite of the heat, he had spread negligently over his knees. Through the soft woollen material of his travelling-suit he breathed ease and comfort at every pore; his neck was unconfined in its collar which without being low was unstarched, and from beneath which the narrow line of a bronze silk neck-tie ran, slender as a grass-snake, over his pleated shirt. He was at ease in his skin, at ease in his clothes, at ease in his shoes, which were cut out of the same doeskin as his gloves; his foot in its elastic prison could stretch, could bend, could feel itself alive. His beaver hat was pulled down over his eyes and kept out the landscape; he was smoking dried juniper, after the Algerian fashion, in a little clay pipe and letting his thoughts wander at their will. He thought:

“---- The old woman with the little white cloud above her head, who pointed to it and said: ‘It won’t rain to-day!’ that poor, shrivelled old woman whose sack I carried on my shoulders” (he had followed his fancy of travelling on foot for four days across the Apennines, between Bologna and Florence, and had slept a night at Covigliajo) “and whom I kissed when we got to the top of the hill ... one of what the _curé_ of Covigliajo would have called my ‘good actions.’ I could just as easily have throttled her--my hand would have been steady--when I felt her dirty wrinkled skin beneath my fingers.... Ah! how caressingly she stroked and dusted my coat collar and said ‘_figlio mio! carino!_’ ... I wonder what made my joy so intense when afterwards--I was still in a sweat--I lay down on the moss--not smoking though--in the shade of that big chestnut-tree. I felt as though I could have clasped the whole of mankind to my heart in my single embrace--or strangled it, for that matter. Human life! What a paltry thing! And with what alacrity I’d risk mine if only some deed of gallantry would turn up--something really rather pleasantly rash and daring!... All the same, I can’t turn alpinist or aviator.... I wonder what that hidebound old Julius would advise.... It’s a pity he’s such a stick-in-the-mud! I should have liked to have a brother.

“Poor Julius! So many writers and so few readers! It’s a fact. People read less and less nowadays ... to judge by myself, as they say. It’ll end by some catastrophe--some stupendous catastrophe, reeking with horror. Printing will be chucked overboard altogether; and it’ll be a miracle if the best doesn’t sink to the bottom with the worst.

“But the curious thing would be to know what the old woman would have said if I had begun to squeeze. One imagines _what would happen if_, but there’s always a little hiatus through which the unexpected creeps in. Nothing ever happens exactly as one thinks it’s going to.... That’s what makes me want to act.... One does so little!... ‘Let all that can be, be!’ That’s my explanation of the Creation.... In love with what might be. If I were the Government I should lock myself up.

“Nothing very exciting about the correspondence of that Monsieur Gaspard Flamand which I claimed as mine at the Poste Restante at Bologna. Nothing that would have been worth the trouble of returning to him.

“Heavens! how few people one meets whose portmanteau one would care to ransack!... And yet how few there are from whom one wouldn’t get some queer reaction if one knew the right word--the right gesture!... A fine lot of puppets; but, by Jove, one sees the strings too plainly. One meets no one in the streets nowadays but jackanapes and blockheads. Is it possible for a decent person--I ask you, Lafcadio--to take such a farce seriously? No, no! Be off with you! It’s high time! Off to a new world! Print your foot upon Europe’s soil and take a flying leap. If in the depths of Borneo’s forests there still remains a belated anthropopithex, go there and reckon the chances of a future race of mankind....

“I should have liked to see Protos again. No doubt he’s made tracks for America. He used to make out that the barbarians of Chicago were the only persons he esteemed.... Not voluptuous enough for my taste--a pack of wolves! I’m feline by nature.... Well, enough of that!

“The _padre_ of Covigliajo with his cheery face didn’t look in the least inclined to deprave the little boy he was talking to. He was certainly in charge of him. I should have liked to make friends with him--not with the _curé_, my word!--but with the little boy.

“How beautiful his eyes were when he raised them to mine! He was as anxious and as afraid to meet my look as I his--but I looked away at once. He was barely five years younger than I. Yes, between fourteen and sixteen--not more. What was I at that age? A _stripling_[H] full of covetousness, whom I should like to meet now; I think I should take a great fancy to myself.... Faby was quite abashed at first to feel that he had fallen in love with me; it was a good thing he made a clean breast of it to my mother; after that he felt lighterhearted. But how irritated I was by his self-restraint! Later on in the Aures, when I told him about it under the tent, we had a good laugh together.... I should like to see him again; it’s a pity he’s dead. Well, enough of that!

“The truth is, I hoped the _curé_ would dislike me. I tried to think of disagreeable things to say to him--I could hit on nothing that wasn’t charming. It’s wonderful how hard I find it not to be fascinating. Yet I really can’t stain my face with walnut juice, as Carola recommended, or start eating garlic.... Ah! don’t let me think of that poor creature any more. It’s to her I owe the most mediocre of my pleasures.... Oh!! What kind of ark can that strange old man have come out of?”

The sliding door into the corridor had just let in Amédée Fleurissoire. Fleurissoire had travelled in an empty compartment as far as Frosinone. At that station a middle-aged Italian had got into his carriage and had begun to stare at him with such glowering eyes that Fleurissoire had made haste to take himself off.

In the next compartment, Lafcadio’s youthful grace, on the contrary, attracted him.

“Dear me! What a charming boy!” thought he; “hardly more than a child! On his holidays, no doubt. How beautifully dressed he is! His eyes look so candid! Oh, what a relief it will be to be quit of my suspicions for once! If only he knew French, I should like to talk to him.”

He sat down opposite to him in the corner next the door. Lafcadio turned up the brim of his hat and began to consider him with a lifeless and apparently indifferent eye.

“What is there in common between me and that squalid little rat?” reflected he. “He seems to fancy himself too. What is he smiling at me like that for? Does he imagine I’m going to embrace him? Is it possible that there exist women who fondle old men? No doubt he’d be exceedingly astonished to know that I can read writing or print with perfect fluency, upside down, or in transparency, or in a looking-glass, or on blotting-paper--a matter of three months’ training and two years’ practice--all for the love of art. Cadio, my dear boy, the problem is this: to impinge on that fellow’s fate ... but how?... Oh! I’ll offer him a cachou. Whether he accepts or not, I shall at any rate hear in what language.”

“_Grazio! Grazio!_” said Fleurissoire as he refused.

“Nothing doing with the old dromedary. Let’s go to sleep,” went on Lafcadio to himself, and pulling the brim of his hat down over his eyes, he tried to spin a dream out of one of his youthful memories.

He saw himself back at the time when he used to be called Cadio, in that remote castle in the Carpathians where his mother and he spent two summers in company with Baldi, the Italian, and Prince Wladimir Bielkowski. His room is at the end of a passage. This is the first year he has not slept near his mother.... The bronze door-handle is shaped like a lion’s head and is held in place by a big nail.... Ah! how clearly he remembers his sensations!... One night he is aroused from a deep sleep to see Uncle Wladimir--or is it a dream?--standing by his bedside, looking more gigantic even than usual--a very nightmare, draped in the fold of a huge rust-coloured caftan, with his drooping moustache, and an outrageous night-cap stuck on his head like a Persian bonnet, so that there seems no end to the length of him. He is holding in his hand a dark lantern, which he sets down on the table near the bed, beside Cadio’s watch, pushing aside a bag of marbles to make room for it. Cadio’s first thought is that his mother is dead or ill. He is on the point of asking, when Bielkowski puts his finger on his lips and signs to him to get up. The boy hastily slips on his bathing-wrap, which his uncle takes from the back of a chair and hands to him--all this with knitted brows and the look of a person who is not to be trifled with. But Cadio has such immense faith in Wladi that he hasn’t a moment’s fear. He pops on his slippers and follows him, full of curiosity at these goings-on and, as usual, all athrill for amusement.

They step into the passage; Wladimir advances gravely--mysteriously, carrying the lantern well in front of him; they look as if they are accomplishing a rite or walking in a procession; Cadio is a little unsteady on his feet, for he is still dazed with dreaming; but curiosity soon clears his brains. As they pass his mother’s room, they both stop for a moment and listen--not a sound! The whole house is fast asleep. When they reach the landing they hear the snoring of a footman whose room is in the attics. They go downstairs. Wladi’s stockinged feet drop on the steps as softly as cotton-wool; at the slightest creak he turns round, looking so furious that Cadio can hardly keep from laughing. He points out one particular step and signs to him not to tread on it, with as much seriousness as if they were really in danger. Cadio takes care not to spoil his pleasure by asking himself whether these precautions are necessary, nor what can be the meaning of it all; he enters into the spirit of the game and slides down the banister, past the step.... He is so tremendously entertained by Wladi that he would go through fire and water to follow him.

When they reach the ground floor, they both sit down on the bottom step for a moment’s breathing-space; Wladi nods his head and gives vent to a little sigh through his nose, as much as to say: ‘My word! we’ve had a narrow squeak!’ They start off again. At the drawing-room door, what redoubled precautions! The lantern, which it is now Cadio’s turn to hold, lights up the room so queerly that the boy hardly recognises it; it seems to him fantastically big; a ray of light steals through a chink in the shutters; everything is plunged in a supernatural calm; he is reminded of a pond the moment before the stealthy casting of a net; and he recognises all the familiar objects, each one there in its place--but for the first time he realises their strangeness.

Wladi goes up to the piano, half opens it and lightly touches two or three notes with his finger-tips, so as to draw from them the lightest of sounds. Suddenly the lid slips from his hand and falls with a terrific din. (The mere recollection of it made Lafcadio jump again.) Wladi makes a dash at the lantern, muffles it and then crumples up into an arm-chair; Cadio slips under the table; they stay endless minutes, waiting motionless, listening in the dark ... but no--nothing stirs in the house; in the distance a dog bays the moon. Then gently, slowly, Wladi uncovers the lantern.

In the dining-room, with what an air he unlocks the sideboard! The boy knows well enough it is nothing but a game, but his uncle seems actually taken in by it himself. He sniffs about as though to scent out where the best things lie hid; pounces on a bottle of Tokay; pours out two small glasses full for them to dip their biscuits in; signs to Cadio to pledge him, with finger on lip; the glasses tinkle faintly as they touch.... When the midnight feast is over, Wladi sets to work to put things straight again; he goes with Cadio to rinse the glasses in the pantry sink, wipes them, corks the bottle, shuts up the biscuit box, dusts away the crumbs with scrupulous care and gives one last glance to see that everything is tidy again in the cupboard.... Right you are! Not the ghost of a trace!

Wladi accompanies Cadio back to his bedroom door and takes leave of him with a low bow. Cadio picks up his slumbers again where he had left them, and wonders the next day whether the whole thing wasn’t a dream.

An odd kind of entertainment for a little boy! What would Julius have thought of it?...

* * * * *

Lafcadio, though his eyes were shut, was not asleep; he could not sleep.

“The old boy over there believes I am asleep,” thought he; “if I were to take a peek at him through my eyelids, I should see him looking at me. Protos used to make out that it was particularly difficult to pretend to be asleep while one was really watching; he claimed that he could always spot pretended sleep by just that slight quiver of the eyelids ... I’m repressing now. Protos himself would be taken in....”

The sun meanwhile had set, and Fleurissoire, in sentimental mood, was gazing at the last gleams of its splendour as they gradually faded from the sky. Suddenly the electric light that was set in the rounded ceiling of the railway carriage, blazed out with a vividness that contrasted brutally with the twilight’s gentle melancholy. Fleurissoire was afraid, too, that it might disturb his neighbour’s slumbers, and turned the switch; the result was not total darkness but merely a shifting of the current from the centre lamp to a dark blue night-light. To Fleurissoire’s thinking, this was still too bright; he turned the switch again; the night-light went out, but two side brackets were immediately turned on, whose glare was even more disagreeable than the centre light’s; another turn, and the night-light came on again; at this he gave up.

“Will he never have done fiddling with the light?” thought Lafcadio impatiently. “What’s he up to now? (No! I’ll _not_ raise my eyelids.) He is standing up. Can he have taken a fancy to my portmanteau? Bravo! He has noticed that it isn’t locked. It was a bright idea of mine to have a complicated lock fitted to it at Milan and then lose the key, so that I had to have it picked at Bologna! A padlock, at any rate, is easy to replace.... God damn it! Is he taking off his coat? Oh! all the same, let’s have a look!”

Fleurissoire, with no eyes for Lafcadio’s portmanteau, was struggling with his new collar and had taken his coat off, so as to be able to put the stud in more easily; but the starched linen was as hard as cardboard and he struggled in vain.

“He doesn’t look happy,” went on Lafcadio to himself. “He must be suffering from a fistula or some unpleasant complaint of that kind. Shall I go to his help? He’ll never manage it by himself....”

Yes, though! At last the collar yielded to the stud. Fleurissoire then took up his tie, which he had placed on the seat beside his hat, his coat and his cuffs, and going up to the door of the carriage, looked at himself in the window-pane, endeavouring, like Narcissus in the water, to distinguish his reflection from the surrounding landscape.

“He can’t see.”

Lafcadio turned on the light. The train at that moment was running alongside a bank, which could be seen through the window, illuminated by the light cast upon it from one after another of the compartments of the train; a procession of brilliant squares was thus formed which danced along beside the railroad and suffered, each one in its turn, the same distortions, according to the irregularities of the ground. In the middle of one of these squares danced Fleurissoire’s grotesque shadow; the others were empty.

“Who would see?” thought Lafcadio. “There--just to my hand--under my hand, this double fastening, which I can easily undo; the door would suddenly give way and he would topple out; the slightest push would do it; he would fall into the darkness like a stone; one wouldn’t even hear a scream.... And off to-morrow to the East!... Who would know?”

The tie--a little ready-made sailor knot--was put on by now and Fleurissoire had taken up one of the cuffs and was arranging it upon his right wrist, examining, as he did so, the photograph above his seat, which represented some palace by the sea, and was one of four that adorned the compartment.

“A crime without a motive,” went on Lafcadio, “what a puzzle for the police! As to that, however, going along beside this blessed bank, anybody in the next-door compartment might notice the door open and the old blighter’s shadow pitch out. The corridor curtains, at any rate, are drawn.... It’s not so much about events that I’m curious, as about myself. There’s many a man thinks he’s capable of anything, who draws back when it comes to the point.... What a gulf between the imagination and the deed!... And no more right to take back one’s move than at chess. Pooh! If one could foresee all the risks, there’d be no interest in the game!... Between the imagination of a deed and.... Hullo! the bank’s come to an end. Here we are on a bridge, I think; a river....”

The window-pane had now turned black and the reflections in it became more distinct. Fleurissoire leant forward to straighten his tie.

“Here, just under my hand the double fastening--now that he’s looking away and not paying attention--upon my soul, it’s easier to undo than I thought. If I can count up to twelve, without hurrying, before I see a light in the country-side, the dromedary is saved. Here goes! One, two, three, four (slowly! slowly!), five, six, seven, eight, nine ... a light!...”

II

Fleurissoire did not utter a single cry. When he felt Lafcadio’s push and found himself facing the gulf which suddenly opened in front of him, he made a great sweep with his arm to save himself; his left hand clutched at the smooth framework of the door, while, as he half turned round, he flung his right well behind him and over Lafcadio’s head, sending his second cuff, which he had been in the act of putting on, spinning to the other end of the carriage, where it rolled underneath the seat.

Lafcadio felt a horrible claw descend upon the back of his neck, lowered his head and gave another push, more impatient than the first; this was followed by the sensation of nails scraping through his flesh; and after that, nothing was left for Fleurissoire to catch hold of but the beaver hat, which he snatched at despairingly and carried away with him in his fall.

“Now then, let’s keep cool,” said Lafcadio to himself. “I mustn’t slam the door to; they might hear it in the next carriage.”

He drew the door towards him, in the teeth of the wind, and then shut it quietly.

“He has left me his frightful sailor hat; in another minute I should have kicked it after him, but he has taken mine along with him and that’s enough. That was an excellent precaution of mine--cutting out my initials.... But there’s the hatter’s name in the crown, and people don’t order a beaver hat of that kind every day of the week.... It can’t be helped, I’ve played now.... Perhaps they’ll think it an accident.... No, not now that I’ve shut the door.... Stop the train?... Come, come, Cadio! no touching up! You’ve only yourself to thank.

“To prove now that I’m perfectly self-possessed, I shall begin by quite quietly seeing what that photograph is the old chap was examining just now.... _Miramar!_ No desire at all to go and visit _that_.... It’s stifling in here.”

He opened the window.

“The old brute has scratched me ... I’m bleeding.... He has made me very ill. I must bathe it a little; the lavatory is at the end of the corridor, on the left. Let’s take another handkerchief.”

He reached down his portmanteau from the rack above him and opened it on the seat, in the place where he had been sitting.

“If I meet anyone in the corridor I must be calm.... No! my heart’s quiet again. Now for it!... Ah! his coat! I can easily hide it under mine. Papers in the pocket! Something to while away the time for the rest of the journey.”

The coat was a poor threadbare affair of a dingy liquorice colour, made of a harsh-textured and obviously cheap material; Lafcadio thought it slightly repulsive; he hung it up on a peg in the small lavatory into which he locked himself; then, bending over the basin, he began to examine himself in the glass.

There were two ugly furrows on his neck; one, a thin red streak, starting from the back of his neck, turned leftwards and came to an end just below the ear; the other and shorter one, was a deep scratch just above the first; it went straight up towards the ear, the lobe of which it had reached and slightly torn. It was bleeding, but less than might have been expected; on the other hand, the pain, which he had hardly felt at first, began to be pretty sharp. He dipped his handkerchief into the basin, staunched the blood and then washed the handkerchief. “Not enough to stain my collar,” thought he, as he put himself to rights; “all is well.”

He was on the point of going out; just then the engine whistled; a row of lights passed behind the frosted window-pane of the closet. Capua! The station was so close to the scene of the accident that the idea of jumping out, running back in the dark and getting his beaver back again, flashed, dazzling, on his mind. He regretted his hat, so soft and light and silky, at once so warm and so cool, so uncrushable, so discreetly elegant. But it was never his way to lend an undivided ear to his desires--nor to like yielding--even to himself. More than all, he hated indecision, and for ten years he had kept on him, like a fetish, one of a pair of cribbage dice, which Baldi had given him in days gone by; he never parted from it; it was there, in his waistcoat pocket.

“If I throw six,” he said to himself as he took it out, “I’ll get down.”

He threw five.

“I shall get down all the same. Quick, the victim’s coat!... Now for my portmanteau....”

He hurried to his compartment.

Ah! how futile seem all exclamations in face of the extravagance of fact! The more surprising the occurrence, the more simple shall be my manner of relating it. I will therefore say in plain words, merely this--when Lafcadio got back to his compartment, his portmanteau was gone!

He thought at first that he had made a mistake, and went out again into the corridor.... But no! It was the right place. There was the view of Miramar.... Well, then? He sprang to the window and could not believe his eyes. There, on the station platform, and not very far from his carriage, his portmanteau was calmly proceeding on its way in company of a strapping fellow who was carrying it off at a leisurely walk.

Lafcadio’s first instinct was to dash after him; as he put out his hand to open the door, the liquorice coat dropped on to the floor.

“Tut! tut! in another moment I should have put my foot in it.... All the same, that rascal would go a little quicker if he thought there was a chance of my coming after him. Can he have seen ...?”

At this moment, as he was leaning his head out of the carriage window, a drop of blood trickled down his cheek.

“Well! Good-bye to my portmanteau! It can’t be helped! The throw said I wasn’t to get out here. It was right.”

He shut the door and sat down again.

“There were no papers in my portmanteau and my linen isn’t marked. What are the risks?... No matter, I’d better sail as soon as possible; it’ll be a little less amusing perhaps, but a good deal wiser.”

In the meantime the train started again.

“It’s not so much my portmanteau that I regret as my beaver, which I really should have liked to retrieve. Well! let’s think no more about it.”

He filled another pipe, lit it, and then, plunging his hand into the inside pocket of Fleurissoire’s coat, pulled out: a letter from Arnica, a Cook’s ticket and a large yellow envelope, which he opened.

“Three, four, five, six thousand-franc notes! Of no interest to honest folk!”

He returned the notes to the envelope and the envelope to the coat pocket.

But when, a moment later, he examined the Cook’s ticket, Lafcadio’s brain whirled. On the first page was written the name of _Julius de Baraglioul_. “Am I going mad?” he asked himself. “What can he have had to do with Julius?... A stolen ticket?... No, not possible!... a borrowed ticket ... must be. Lord! Lord! Perhaps I’ve made a mess of it. These old gentlemen are sometimes better connected than one thinks....”

Then, his fingers trembling with eagerness, he opened Arnica’s letter. The circumstances seemed too strange; he found it difficult to fix his attention; he failed, no doubt, to make out the exact relationship existing between Julius and the old gentleman, but, at any rate, he managed to grasp that Julius was in Rome. His mind was made up at once; an urgent desire to see his brother possessed him--an unbridled curiosity to find out what kind of repercussion this affair would set up in that calm and logical mind.

“That’s settled. I shall sleep to-night at Naples, get out my trunk, and to-morrow morning return by the first train to Rome. It will certainly be a good deal less wise, but perhaps a little more amusing.”

III

At Naples Lafcadio went to a hotel near the station; he made a point of taking his trunk with him, because travellers without luggage are looked at askance, and because he was anxious not to attract attention; then he went out to buy a few necessary articles of toilette and another hat instead of the odious straw (beside which, it was too tight) which Fleurissoire had left him. He wanted to buy a revolver as well, but was obliged to put this purchase off, as the shops were already shutting.

The train he took next day started early, arriving in Rome in time for lunch.

His intention was not to approach Julius until after the newspapers had appeared with an account of the “crime.” The _crime_! This word seemed odd to him, to say the very least; and _criminal_ as applied to himself totally inappropriate. He preferred _adventurer_--a word as pliable as his beaver and as easily twisted to suit his liking.

The morning papers had not yet mentioned the _adventure_. He awaited the evening ones with impatience, for he was eager to see Julius and to feel for himself that the game had begun; until then the time hung heavy on his hands, as with a child playing at hide-and-seek, who, no doubt, doesn’t want to be found, but wants, at any rate, to be sure he is being looked for. The vagueness of this state was one with which he was not as yet familiar; and the people he elbowed in the street seemed to him particularly commonplace, disagreeable and hideous.

When the evening came he bought the _Corriere_ from a newspaper-seller in the Corso; then he went into a restaurant, but he laid the paper all folded on the table beside him and forced himself to finish his dinner without looking at it--out of a kind of bravado, and as though he thought in this way to put an edge on his desire; then he went out, and once in the Corso again, he stopped in the light of a shop window, unfolded the paper and on the second page saw the following head-line:

CRIME, SUICIDE ... OR ACCIDENT

He read the next few paragraphs, which I translate:

Last evening in the railway station at Naples, the company’s servants found a man’s coat in the rack of a first-class carriage of the train from Rome. In the inside pocket of this coat, which is of a dark brown colour, was an unfastened envelope containing six thousand-franc notes. There were no other papers by which to identify the missing owner. If there has been foul play, it is difficult to account for the fact that such a considerable sum of money should have been left in the victim’s coat; it may, at any rate, be inferred that the motive was not robbery.

There were no traces of a struggle to be seen in the compartment; but under one of the seats a man’s shirt-cuff was discovered with the link attached; this article was in the shape of two cats’ heads, linked together by a small silver-gilt chain, and carved out of a semi-transparent quartz, known as opalescent feldspar, and commonly called moonstone by jewellers.

A thorough investigation of the railway line is being made.

Lafcadio crumpled the paper up in his hand.

“What! Carola’s sleeve-links now! The old boy is a regular public meeting-place!”

He turned the page and read in the stop-press news:

RECENTISSIME

DEAD BODY FOUND ON RAILWAY LINE

Without waiting to read further, Lafcadio hurried to the Grand Hotel. He slipped his visiting-card into an envelope after adding the following words underneath his name:

CENTER LAFCADIO WLUIKI

would be glad to know whether Count Julius de Baraglioul is not in need of a secretary.

He sent it up.

A manservant at last came to where he was waiting in the hall, led him along various passages and ushered him in to where Julius was sitting.

His first glance showed Lafcadio a copy of the _Corriere della Sera_, which had been thrown down in a corner of the room. On a table in the middle a large, uncorked bottle of eau-de-Cologne was exhaling its powerful perfume. Julius held out his arms.

“Lafcadio! My dear fellow!... How very glad I am to see you!”

His ruffled hair waved in agitated fashion on his temples; he seemed strangely excited; in one hand he held a black spotted handkerchief, with which he fanned himself.

“You are certainly one of the persons I least expected to see, but the one in the world I was most wanting to talk to this evening.... Was it Madame Carola who told you I was here?”

“What an odd question!”

“Why! as I’ve just met her.... I’m not sure, though, that she saw me.”

“Carola! Is she in Rome?”

“Didn’t you know?”

“I’ve just this minute arrived from Sicily and you are the first person I have seen. I’ve no desire to see her.”

“I thought she was looking extremely pretty----”

“You’re not hard to please.”

“I mean, prettier than she did in Paris.”

“Exoticism, no doubt--but if you’re feeling randy....”

“Lafcadio! Such language from you to me isn’t permissible.”

Julius tried to look severe, but only succeeded in pulling a face. He went on:

“You find me in a great state of agitation. I’m at a turning-point of my career. My head is burning and I feel, as it were, giddy all over, as if I were going to evaporate. I have come to Rome for a sociological congress, and during the three days I’ve spent here I’ve been going from surprise to surprise. Your arrival is the finishing touch.... I don’t recognise myself any longer.”

He was striding about the room; suddenly he stopped beside the table, seized the bottle, poured a stream of scent on to his handkerchief, applied it like a compress to his forehead and left it there.

“My dear young friend--if you’ll allow me to call you so.... My new book! I think I’ve got the hang of it. The way in which you spoke to me of _On the Heights_ in Paris, makes me think that you will not find this one uninteresting.”

His feet sketched a kind of pirouette; the handkerchief fell to the ground. Lafcadio hastened to pick it up and, as he was stooping, he felt Julius’s hand laid gently on his shoulder, just as once before he had felt Juste-Agénor’s. Lafcadio smiled and raised himself.

“I’ve known you such a short time,” said Julius, “and yet this evening I can’t help talking to you like a....”

He stopped.

“I’m listening like a brother, Monsieur de Baraglioul,” Lafcadio was emboldened to take up the words, “--since you allow me to.”

“You see, Lafcadio, in the set which I frequent in Paris--smart people, and literary people, and ecclesiastics and academicians--there is really nobody I can speak to--nobody, I mean, to whom I can confide the new preoccupations which beset me. For I must confess to you that, since our last meeting, my point of view has completely changed.”

“So much the better,” said Lafcadio impertinently.

“You can’t imagine, because you aren’t in the trade, how an erroneous system of ethics can hamper the free development of one’s creative faculties. So nothing is further from my old novels than the one I am planning now. I used to demand logic and consistency from my characters, and in order to make quite sure of getting them, I began by demanding them from myself. It wasn’t natural. We prefer to go deformed and distorted all our lives rather than not resemble the portrait of ourselves which we ourselves have first drawn. It’s absurd. We run the risk of warping what’s best in us.”

Lafcadio continued to smile as he waited for what was to come next, amused to recognise, at this remove, the effect of his first remarks.

“How shall I put it, Lafcadio? For the first time I see before me a free field.... Can you understand what that means? A free field!... I say to myself that it always has been, always will be free, and that up till now the only things to hinder me have been impure considerations--questions of a successful career, of public opinion--the poet’s continual vain hope of reward at the hands of ungrateful judges. Henceforth I hope for nothing--except from myself--henceforth I hope for everything from myself--I hope for everything from the man who is sincere--everything and anything! For now I feel in myself the strangest possibilities. And as it’s only on paper, I shall boldly let myself go. We shall see! We shall see!”

He took a deep breath, flung himself back sideways with one shoulder-blade raised, almost as if a wing were already beginning to sprout, and as if he were stifling with the weight of fresh perplexities. He went on incoherently in a lower voice:

“And since the gentlemen of the Academy shut the door in my face, I’ll give them good cause for it; for they had none--no cause whatever.”

His voice suddenly turned shrill as he emphasised the last words; then he went on more calmly:

“Well, then, this is what I have imagined.... Are you listening?”

“With my whole soul,” said Lafcadio, still laughing.

“And do you follow me?”

“To the devil himself!”

Julius again soused his handkerchief and sat down in an arm-chair; Lafcadio sat himself astride on a chair opposite him.

“The hero is to be a young man whom I wish to make a criminal.”

“I see no difficulty in that.”

“Hum! hum!” said Julius, who was not to be done out of his difficulty.

“But since you’re a novelist, once you set about imagining, what’s to prevent you imagining things just as you choose?”

“The stranger the things I imagine, the more necessary it is to find motives and explanations for them.”

“It’s easy enough to find motives for crime.”

“No doubt ... but that’s exactly what I don’t want to do. I don’t want a motive for the crime--all I want is an explanation of the criminal. Yes! I mean to lead him into committing a crime gratuitously--into wanting to commit a crime without any motive at all.”

Lafcadio began to prick up his ears.

“We will take him as a mere youth. I mean him to show the elegance of his nature by this--that he acts almost entirely in play, and as a matter of course prefers his pleasure to his interest.”

“Rather unusual, I should say,” ventured Lafcadio.

“Yes, isn’t it?” said Julius, enchanted. “Then, we must add that he takes pleasure in self-control.”

“To the point of dissimulation.”

“We’ll endow him, then, with the love of risk.”

“Bravo!” exclaimed Lafcadio, more and more amused. “If, added to that, he is a fellow who can lend an ear to the demon of curiosity, I think your pupil will be done to a turn.”

Progressing in this way by leaps and bounds, each in turn overtaking and overtaken by the other, one would have likened them to two schoolboys playing leap-frog.

_Julius._ First of all, I imagine him training himself. He is an adept at committing all sorts of petty thefts.

_Lafcadio._ I’ve often wondered why more aren’t committed. It’s true that the opportunity of committing them usually occurs only to people who are free from want and without any particular hankerings.

_Julius._ Free from want! Yes, I told you so. But the only opportunities that tempt him are the ones that demand some skill--some cunning.

_Lafcadio._ And which run him, no doubt, into some danger.

_Julius._ I said that he enjoys risk. But swindling is odious to him; he doesn’t want to appropriate things, but finds it amusing to displace them surreptitiously. He’s as clever at it as a conjurer.

_Lafcadio._ And, besides, he’s encouraged by impunity.

_Julius._ Yes, but sometimes vexed by it too. If he isn’t caught, it must be because the job he set himself was too easy.

_Lafcadio._ He eggs himself on to take greater risks.

_Julius._ I make him reason this way....

_Lafcadio._ Do you really think he reasons?

_Julius_ (continuing). The author of a crime is always found out by the need he had to commit it.

_Lafcadio._ We said that he was very clever.

_Julius._ Yes, and all the cleverer because he acts with perfect coolness. Just think! A crime that has no motive either of passion or need! His very reason for committing the crime is just to commit it without any reason.

_Lafcadio._ _You_ reason about his crime--_he_ merely commits it.

_Julius._ There is no reason that a man who commits a crime without reason should be considered a criminal.

_Lafcadio._ You’re too subtle. You have carried him to such a pitch that you have made him what they call “a free man.”

_Julius._ At the mercy of the first opportunity.

_Lafcadio._ I’m longing to see him at work. What in the world are you going to offer him?

_Julius._ Well, I was still hesitating. Yes, up till this very evening I was hesitating, and then, this very evening, the latest edition of the newspaper brought me just exactly the example I was in need of. A providential stroke! Frightful! Only think of it! My brother-in-law has just been murdered!

_Lafcadio._ What! the old fellow in the railway carriage was....

_Julius._ He was Amédée Fleurissoire. I had just lent him my ticket and seen him off at the station. An hour before starting he had taken six thousand francs out of the bank, and as he was carrying them on his person, he was a little bit anxious as he left me; he had fancies--more or less gloomy fancies--presentiments. Well, in the train....

But you’ve seen the paper?

_Lafcadio._ Only the head-lines.

_Julius._ Listen! I’ll read it to you. (He unfolded the _Corriere_.) I’ll translate as I go along.

“This afternoon, in the course of a thorough investigation of the line between Rome and Naples, the police discovered the body of a man lying in the dry bed of the Volturno, about five kilometers from Capua--no doubt the unfortunate owner of the coat that was found last night in a railway carriage. The body is that of a man of about fifty years of age. [He looked older than he really was.] No papers were on him which could give any clue to his identity. [Thank goodness! That’ll give me time to breathe, at any rate.] He had apparently been flung out of the railway carriage with sufficient violence to clear the parapet of the bridge, which is being repaired at this point and has been replaced by a wooden railing. [What a style!] The height of the bridge above the river is about fifteen metres. Death must have been caused by the fall, as the body bears no trace of other injuries. The man was in his shirt-sleeves; on his right wrist was a cuff similar to the one picked up in the railway carriage, but in this case the sleeve-link is missing. [What’s the matter?]”

Julius stopped. Lafcadio had not been able to suppress a start, for the idea flashed upon him that the sleeve-link had been removed since the committing of the crime--Julius went on:

“His left hand was found still clutching a soft felt hat....”

“Soft felt indeed! The barbarians!” murmured Lafcadio.

Julius raised his nose from the paper:

“What are you so astonished at?”

“Nothing! Nothing! Go on!”

“...soft felt hat much too large for his head and which presumably belongs to the aggressor; the maker’s name has been carefully removed from the lining, out of which a piece of leather has been cut of the size and shape of a laurel leaf....”

Lafcadio got up and went behind Julius’s chair so as to read the paper over his shoulder--and perhaps, too, so as to hide his paleness. There could no longer be any doubt about it; his crime had been tampered with; someone else had touched it up; had cut the piece out of the lining--the unknown person, no doubt, who had carried off his portmanteau.

In the meantime Julius went on reading:

“...which seems to prove the crime was premeditated. [Why this particular crime? My hero had perhaps merely taken general precautions just at random....] As soon as the police had made the necessary notes, the body was removed to Naples for the purposes of identification. [Yes, I know they have the means there--and the habit of preserving dead bodies....]”

“Are you quite sure it was he?” Lafcadio’s voice trembled a little.

“Bless my soul! I was expecting him to dinner this evening.”

“Have you informed the police?”

“Not yet. First of all, I must get clear in my own mind a little. I’m in mourning already, so from that point of view (as regards the dress question, I mean) there’s no need to bother; but you see, as soon as the victim’s name is published, I shall have to communicate with the family, send telegrams, write letters, make arrangements for the funeral, go to Naples to fetch the body.... Oh! my dear Lafcadio, there’s this congress I’ve got to attend--would you mind--would you consent to fetching the body in my place?”

“We’ll see about it.”

“That is, of course, if it won’t upset you too much. In the meantime I’m sparing my sister-in-law a period of cruel anxiety. She’ll never suspect from the vague accounts in the newspapers.... But to return to my subject. Well, then, when I read this paragraph in the paper, I said to myself: ‘This crime, which I can imagine to myself so easily, which I can reconstruct, which I can see--I know, I tell you, I know the reason for which it was committed; I know that if it hadn’t been for the inducement of the six thousand francs, it would never have been committed.’”

“But suppose....”

“Yes, yes. Let’s suppose for a moment that there had been no six thousand francs--or, better still, that the criminal didn’t take them--why, he’d have been my hero!”

Lafcadio in the meantime had risen; he picked up the paper which Julius had let fall, and opening it at the second page:

“I see,” he said in as cool a voice as he could muster, “I see that you haven’t read the latest news. That is exactly what _has_ happened. The criminal did _not_ take the six thousand francs. Look here! Read this: ‘_The motive of the crime, therefore, does not appear to be robbery._’”

Julius snatched the sheet that Lafcadio held out to him, read it eagerly, then passed his hand over his eyes, then sat down, then got up abruptly, darted towards Lafcadio, and seizing him with both arms, exclaimed:

“The motive of the crime not robbery!” and he shook Lafcadio in a kind of transport. “The motive of the crime not robbery! Why, then”--he pushed Lafcadio from him, rushed to the other end of the room, fanned himself, struck his forehead, blew his nose--“Why, then, I know--good heavens!--I know why the ruffian murdered him.... Oh! my unfortunate friend! Oh, poor Fleurissoire! So it was true what he said! And I who thought he was out of his mind! Why, then, it’s appalling!”

Lafcadio awaited the end of this outburst with astonishment; he was a little irritated; it seemed to him that Julius had no right to evade him in this manner.

“I thought that was the very thing you....”

“Be quiet! You know nothing about it. And here am I wasting my time with you, spinning these ridiculous fancies!.... Quick! my stick! my hat!”

“Where are you off to in such a hurry?”

“To inform the police, of course!”

Lafcadio placed himself in front of the door.

“First of all, explain,” said he imperatively. “Upon my soul, anyone would think you had gone mad.”

“It was just now that I was mad.... Oh, poor Fleurissoire! Oh, unfortunate friend! Luckless, saintly victim! His death just comes in time to cut me short in a career of irreverence--of blasphemy. His sacrifice has brought me to reason. And to think that I laughed at him!”

He had again begun to pace up and down the room; suddenly he stopped and laying his hat and stick beside the scent bottle on the table, he planted himself in front of Lafcadio:

“Do you want to know why the ruffian murdered him?”

“I thought it was without a motive.”

“To begin with,” exclaimed Julius furiously, “there’s no such thing as a crime without a motive. He was got rid of because he was in possession of a secret ... which he confided to me--an important secret--over-important for him, indeed. They were afraid of him. That’s what it was. There!... Oh! it’s all very well for you to laugh--you understand nothing about matters of faith.” Then, very pale and drawing himself up to his full height: “_I_ am the inheritor of that secret!”

“Take care! They’ll be afraid of you next.”

“You see how necessary it is to warn the police at once.”

“One more question,” said Lafcadio, stopping him again.

“No! Let me go. I’m in a desperate hurry. You may be certain that the continual surveillance under which they kept my poor brother and which terrified him to such a degree, will now be transferred to _me_--has now been transferred to me. You have no idea what a crafty set they are. Those people know everything, I tell you. It’s more important than ever that you should go and fetch the body instead of me. Now that I’m being watched as I am, there’s no knowing what mightn’t happen to me. Lafcadio, my dear fellow”--he clasped his hands imploringly--“I’ve no head at this moment, but I’ll make enquiries at the Questura as to how to get a proper authorisation. Where shall I send it to you?”

“I’ll take a room in this hotel. It’ll be more convenient. Good-bye, till to-morrow. Make haste! Make haste!”

He let Julius go. There was beginning to rise in him a feeling of profound disgust--a kind of hatred almost, of himself, of Julius, of everything. He shrugged his shoulders, and then took out of his pocket the Cook’s ticket, which he had found in Fleurissoire’s coat and which had the name of Baraglioul written on the first page; he put it on the table, well in sight, leaning it up against the scent bottle--then turned out the light and left the room.

IV

Notwithstanding all the precautions he had taken, notwithstanding his recommendations to the Questura, Julius de Baraglioul did not succeed in preventing the newspapers from divulging his relationship to the victim--nor, indeed, from mentioning in so many words the name and address of his hotel.

That evening, of a truth, he had gone through some incredibly sickening moments of apprehension, when, on his return from the Questura at midnight, he had found, placed in a conspicuous position in his room, the Cook’s ticket which had his name written in it and which he had lent to Fleurissoire. He had immediately rung the bell and, going out into the passage, pale and trembling, had begged the waiter to look under his bed--for he did not dare to look himself. A kind of inquiry, which he had held on the spot, led to no results; but what confidence can be placed in the personnel of big hotels?... However, after a good night’s sleep, behind a solidly bolted door, Julius had woken up more at ease. He was now under police protection. He wrote a number of letters and telegrams, which he took to the post himself.

On his return, he was told that a lady had asked for him; she had not given her name and was waiting for him in the reading-room. Thither Julius went and was not a little surprised to find Carola.

It was not, however, in the first room that he found her, but in another which was more retired, smaller and not so well lighted. She was sitting sideways, at the corner of a distant table, and was absently turning over the leaves of a photograph album, so as to give herself countenance. When she saw Julius come in, she rose, looking more confused than pleased. Beneath the long black cloak she was wearing could be seen a bodice that was dark, plain and almost in good taste; on the other hand, her tumultuous hat, in spite of its being black, gave her away sadly.

“You’ll think me very forward, Monsieur le Comte. I don’t know how I found courage enough to come to your hotel and ask for you. But you bowed to me so kindly yesterday.... And, besides, what I have to say is so important.”

She remained standing on the other side of the table; it was Julius who drew near; he held out his hand to her over the table, without ceremony.

“To what am I indebted for the pleasure of your visit?”

Carola’s head sunk.

“I know you have just lost....”

Julius did not at first understand; but as Carola took out her handkerchief and wiped her eyes:

“What! Is it a visit of condolence?”

“I knew Monsieur Fleurissoire,” she went on.

“Really?”

“Oh, I hadn’t known him long, but I was very fond of him. He was such a dear! so kind!... In fact, it was I who gave him his sleeve-links; you know, the ones they described in the papers. That’s how I knew it was he. But I had no idea he was your brother-in-law. It was a great surprise to me, and you may fancy how pleased I was.... Oh! I beg your pardon--that wasn’t what I meant to say.”

“Never mind, dear Miss Carola. You meant, no doubt, that you are pleased to have an opportunity of meeting me again.”

Without answering, Carola buried her face in her handkerchief; her sobs were convulsive and Julius thought it was his duty to take her hand.

“And so am I,” he said feelingly, “so am I, my dear young lady. Pray believe....”

“That very morning, before he went out, I told him to be careful. But it wasn’t his nature.... He was too confiding, you know.”

“A saint, Mademoiselle, a saint!” said Julius fervently, taking out his handkerchief in his turn.

“Yes, yes, that was just how it struck me,” cried Carola. “At night, when he thought I was asleep, he used to get up and kneel at the foot of the bed and....”

This unconscious revelation put the finishing touch to Julius’s discomposure; he returned the handkerchief to his pocket and, drawing still nearer:

“Do take your hat off, my dear young lady.”

“No, thank you; it’s not in my way.”

“But it _is_ in mine. Won’t you let me....”

But as Carola unmistakably drew back, he pulled himself together.

“Let me ask you whether you had any special reason for uneasiness?”

“Who? I?”

“Yes; when you told my brother-in-law to be careful, I want to know whether you had any reason to suppose.... Speak openly; no one comes in here in the mornings and we can’t be overheard. Do you suspect anyone?”

Carola’s head sank.

“It’s of particular interest to me, you see,” went on Julius with volubility. “Put yourself in my place. Last night, when I came back from the Questura, where I had been giving evidence, I found lying on the table in my room--on the very middle of my table--the railway ticket with which poor Fleurissoire had travelled. It had my name on it; I know those circular tickets are not transferable. Quite so; I did wrong to lend it--but that’s not the point. The very fact of bringing the ticket back to my room--seizing the opportunity to flout me cynically when I had gone out for a few minutes--constitutes a challenge--a piece of bravado--an insult almost--which (I need hardly say) would not disturb me in the least if I hadn’t good reason to suppose that I am threatened in my turn. I’ll tell you why. Your poor friend Fleurissoire was in possession of a secret--an abominable secret--a most dangerous secret--I didn’t question him about it--I had no desire to hear what it was, but he had the lamentable imprudence to confide it to me. And now I ask you again--do you know who the person is who actually went so far as to commit a murder for the purpose of stifling that secret? Do you know who he is?”

“Don’t be alarmed, Monsieur le Comte; I gave his name to the police last night.”

“Mademoiselle Carola, I expected no less of you.”

“He had promised me not to hurt him; he had only to keep his promise and I would have kept mine. It’s more than I can stand! He may do what he likes to me--I don’t care!”

Carola was growing more and more excited; Julius passed behind the table and, drawing near her again:

“We should perhaps be able to talk more comfortably in my room.”

“Oh, Monsieur le Comte,” said Carola, “I’ve told you everything I had to say; I mustn’t keep you any longer.”

As she went on retreating, she completed the tour of the table and found herself near the door once more.

“We had better part now, Mademoiselle,” said Julius virtuously and with the firm determination of appropriating the credit of this resistance. “Ah! I just wanted to add that if you mean to come to the funeral the day after to-morrow, it would be better not to recognise me.”

At this they took leave of each other, without having once mentioned the name of the unsuspected Lafcadio.

V

Lafcadio was bringing Fleurissoire’s mortal remains back from Naples. The funeral van which contained them was coupled to the end of the train, but Lafcadio had not thought it indispensable to travel in it himself. At the same time a sense of propriety had made him take his seat--not actually in the next carriage to it, for this contained only second-class compartments--but at any rate as near the body as was compatible with travelling first. He had left Rome that morning and was due back in the evening of the same day. He was reluctant to admit to himself the new sensation which had taken possession of his soul, for there was nothing he held in greater disdain than ennui--that secret malady from which he had hitherto been preserved by the fine carelessness of his youthful appetites and by the pricks of hard necessity. He left his compartment with a heart empty of hope and joy and prowled up and down the whole length of the corridor, harassed by a kind of ill-defined curiosity and vaguely seeking he knew not what new and absurd enterprise in which to engage. He no longer thought of embarking for the East and acknowledged reluctantly that Borneo did not in the least attract him--nor the rest of Italy either; he could not feel any interest in the consequences of his adventure; it appeared to him, in his present mood, compromising and grotesque. He felt resentment against Fleurissoire for not having defended himself better; his soul protested against the pitiful creature; he would have liked to wipe him from his mind.

On the other hand, he would gladly have met that strapping fellow who had carried off his portmanteau--a fine rascal that! And at Capua he leant out of the window and searched the deserted platform with his eyes, as though he hoped to discover him. But would he have recognised him? He had done no more than catch a distant glimpse of his back as he disappeared into the darkness. In his mind’s eye he followed him through the night, saw him reach the river’s bed, find the hideous corpse, rifle it and, almost as challenge, cut out of the hat--Lafcadio’s own hat--that little bit of leather which, as the newspapers had elegantly phrased it, was “of the size and shape of a laurel leaf.” With his hatter’s address inscribed on it, it was a piece of damning evidence, and after all Lafcadio was extremely grateful to his bag-snatcher for having prevented it from falling into the hands of the police. It was, no doubt, very much to this gentleman’s own interest not to attract attention to himself, and if, notwithstanding, he thought fit to make use of his bit of leather, upon my word! a trial of wits with him might not be unamusing.

The night by this time had fallen. A dining-car waiter made his way through the length of the train to announce to the first and second-class passengers that dinner was ready. With no appetite, but at any rate with the saving prospect of an hour’s occupation before him, Lafcadio followed the procession, keeping some way behind it. The dining-car was at the head of the train. The carriages through which Lafcadio passed were empty; here and there various objects, such as shawls, pillows, books, papers, were disposed on the seats so as to mark and reserve the diners’ places. A lawyer’s brief-case caught his eye. Sure of being last, he stopped in front of the compartment and went in. In reality he was not attracted by the bag; it was simply as a matter of conscience that he searched it. On the inner side of the flap, in unobtrusive gilt letters, was written the name

DEFOUQUEBLIZE

FACULTY OF LAW--BORDEAUX

The bag contained two pamphlets on criminal law and six numbers of the _Lawyers’ Journal_.

“More fry for the congress! Bah!” thought Lafcadio, as he put everything back in its place and then hastily joined the little file of passengers on their way to the restaurant.

A delicate-looking little girl and her mother brought up the rear, both in deep mourning. Immediately in front of them was a gentleman in a frock coat, long straight hair and grey whiskers--Monsieur Defouqueblize apparently, the owner of the brief-bag. Their advance was slow and unsteady because of the jolting of the train. At the last turn of the corridor, just as the professor was going to make a dash into the kind of accordion which connects one carriage with another, an exceptionally violent bump toppled him over. As he was trying to regain his balance, a sudden sprawl sent his eye-glasses flying--all their moorings broken--into the corner of the narrow space left by the corridor in front of the lavatory door. As he bent down to search for his eyesight, the lady and little girl passed in front of him. Lafcadio stayed for a moment or two watching the learned gentleman’s efforts with some amusement; pitiably at a loss, he was groping vaguely and anxiously over the floor with both hands; it was as though he were performing the waddling dance of a plantigrade or, back once more in the days of his infancy, had suddenly started playing “hunt the slipper.” ...Come, come, Lafcadio! Listen to your heart! It is not an evil one. Now for a generous impulse! Go to the poor man’s rescue! Hand him back the indispensable glasses! He will never find them by himself. His back is turned to them; in another minute he will smash them. Just then a violent jerk flung the unhappy man head foremost against the door of the water-closet; the shock was broken by his top-hat, which was caved in by the force of the impact and jammed tightly down over his ears. Monsieur Defouqueblize moaned; rose to his feet; took off his hat. Lafcadio, meanwhile, having come to the conclusion that the joke had lasted long enough, picked up the eye-glasses, dropped them like an alms into the hat, and then fled so as to escape being thanked.

Dinner had begun. Lafcadio seated himself at a table for two, next the glass door on the right-hand side of the aisle; the place opposite him was empty; on the left side of the gangway, in the same row as himself, the widow and her daughter were sitting at a table for four, two seats of which were unoccupied.

“What mortal dullness exudes from such places as this!” said Lafcadio to himself, as his listless glance slipped from one to another of the diners, without finding a face on which to dwell. “Herds of cattle going through life as if it were a monotonous grind, instead of the entertainment which it is--or which it might be. How badly dressed they are! But oh! how much uglier they would be if they were naked! I shall certainly expire before dessert, if I don’t order some champagne.”

Here the professor entered. He had apparently just been washing his hands, which had been dirtied by his hunt, and was examining his nails. A waiter motioned him to sit down beside Lafcadio. The man with the wine-list was passing from table to table. Lafcadio, without saying a word, pointed out a Montebello Grand Crémant at twenty francs, while Monsieur Defouqueblize ordered a bottle of St. Galmier. He was holding his pince-nez between his finger and thumb, breathing gently on the glasses and then wiping them with the corner of his napkin. Lafcadio watched him curiously and wondered at his mole’s eyes blinking under their swollen eyelids.

“Fortunately he doesn’t know it was I who gave him back his eyesight. If he begins to thank me, I shall take myself off on the spot.”

The waiter came back with the St. Galmier and the champagne; he first uncorked the latter and put it down between the two diners. The bottle was no sooner on the table than Defouqueblize seized hold of it without noticing which one it was, poured out a glassful and swallowed it at one gulp. The waiter was going to interfere but Lafcadio stopped him with a laugh.

“Oh! what on earth is this stuff?” cried Defouqueblize with a frightful grimace.

“This gentleman’s Montebello,” replied the waiter with dignity. “_This_ is your St. Galmier! Here!”

He put down the second bottle.

“I’m extremely sorry, Sir.... My eyesight is so bad.... Really, I’m overcome with....”

“You would greatly oblige me, Sir,” interrupted Lafcadio, “by not apologising--and even by accepting another glass--if the first was to your taste, that is.”

“Alas! my dear sir, I must confess that I thought it was horrible and I can’t think how I came to be so absentminded as to swallow a whole glassful.... I was so thirsty.... Would you mind telling me whether it’s very strong wine?... because I must confess that ... I never drink anything but water.... The slightest drop invariably goes to my head.... Good heavens! Good heavens! What’ll happen to me? Perhaps it would be more prudent to go back at once to my compartment. I expect I had better lie down.”

He made as though to get up.

“Stop! Stop! my dear sir,” said Lafcadio, who was beginning to be amused. “You’d better eat your dinner, on the contrary, and not trouble about the glass of wine. I will take you back myself later on, if you’re in need of help; but don’t be alarmed; you haven’t taken enough to turn the head of a baby.”

“I’ll take your word for it. But really, I don’t know how to.... May I offer you a little St. Galmier?”

“Thank you very much--will you excuse me if I say I prefer my champagne?”

“Ah! really! So it was champagne, was it? And ... you are going to drink all that?”

“Just to give you confidence.”

“You’re exceedingly kind, but in your place I should....”

“Suppose you were to eat your dinner,” interrupted Lafcadio, who was himself eating and had had enough of Defouqueblize. His attention was now attracted by the widow.

An Italian certainly. An officer’s widow, no doubt. What modesty in her bearing! What tenderness in her eyes! How pure a brow! What intelligent hands! How elegantly dressed and yet how simply!... Lafcadio, when your heart fails to re-echo to such a blended concord of harmonies, may that heart have ceased to beat! Her daughter is like her, and even at that early age, what nobility--half serious, half sad even--tempers the child’s excessive grace! With what solicitude her mother bends towards her! Ah! the fiend himself would yield to such beings as these; to such beings as these, Lafcadio, who can doubt that you would offer your heart’s devotion?...

At that moment the waiter passed by to change the plates. Lafcadio allowed his to be carried away before it was half empty, for at that moment he was gazing at a sight that filled him with sudden stupor--the widow--the exquisitely refined widow--had bent down towards the side nearest the aisle, and deftly raising her skirt, with the most natural movement in the world, had revealed a scarlet stocking and a neatly turned calf and ankle.

So incongruous was this fiery note that burst into the calm gravity of the symphony ... could he be dreaming? In the meantime the waiter was handing round another dish. Lafcadio was on the point of helping himself; his eyes fell upon his plate, and what he saw there finally did for him.

There, right in front of him, plain to his sight, in the very middle of his plate, fallen from God knows where, frightful and unmistakable among a thousand--don’t doubt it for an instant, Lafcadio--there lies Carola’s sleeve-link! The sleeve-link which had been missing from Fleurissoire’s second cuff! The whole thing was becoming a nightmare.... But the waiter is bending over him with the dish. With a sweep of his hand, Lafcadio wipes his plate and brushes the horrid trinket on to the table-cloth; he puts his plate back on to the top of it, helps himself abundantly, fills his glass with champagne, empties it at a draught and fills it again. For if a man who hasn’t dined is to have drunken visions.... But no! it was not an hallucination; he hears the squeak of the link against his plate; he raises his plate, seizes the link, slips it into his waistcoat pocket beside his watch, feels it again, makes certain--yes! there it is, safe and sound! But who shall say how it came on his plate? Who put it there?... Lafcadio looks at Defouqueblize. The learned gentleman is innocently eating, his nose in his plate. Lafcadio tries to think of something else; he looks once more at the widow; but everything about her demeanour and her attire has become proper again and commonplace; he doesn’t think her as pretty as before; he tries to imagine afresh the provocative gesture--the red stocking--but he fails; he tries to imagine afresh the sleeve-link on his plate and if he did not actually feel it in his pockets, there’s no question but that he would doubt his senses.... But now he comes to reflect, why did he take a sleeve-link which doesn’t belong to him? What an admission is implied by this instinctive and absurd action--what a recognition! How he has given himself away to the people--whoever they may be--who are watching him--the police, perhaps! He has walked straight into their booby trap like a fool. He feels himself grow livid. He turns sharply round; there, behind the glass door leading into the corridor.... No! no one.... But a moment ago there may have been someone who saw him! He forces himself to go on eating, but his teeth clench with vexation. Unhappy young man! it is not his abominable crime that he regrets, but this ill-starred impulse.... What has come over the professor now? Why is he smiling at him?

Defouqueblize had finished eating. He wiped his lips; then with both elbows on the table, fiddling nervously with his napkin, he began to look at Lafcadio; his lips worked in an odd sort of grin; at last, as though unable to contain himself any longer:

“Might I venture to ask for just a little more?”

He pushed his glass timidly towards the almost empty bottle.

Lafcadio, surprised out of his uneasiness and delighted at the diversion, poured him out the last drops.

“I’m afraid it’s impossible to give you much.... But shall I order some more?”

“Oh, well, not more than half a bottle then.”

Defouqueblize was obviously elevated and had lost all sense of the proprieties. Lafcadio, for whom dry champagne had no terrors and who was amused at the other’s ingenuousness, ordered the waiter to uncork another bottle of Montebello.

“No, no, not too much,” said Defouqueblize, as with a quavering hand he raised the glass which Lafcadio succeeded in filling to the brim. “It’s curious--I thought it so nasty at first. That’s the way with a great many things which one makes mountains of till one knows more about them. The fact is, I thought I was drinking St. Galmier, and you see I thought that for St. Galmier it had a very queer taste. If you were given St. Galmier now, when you thought you were drinking champagne, wouldn’t you say: ‘For champagne, it has a very queer taste’?...”

He laughed at his own words, then bending across the table to Lafcadio, who was laughing too, he went on in a low voice:

“I can’t think why I’m laughing so; it must be the fault of your wine. I suspect, all the same, it’s rather more heady than you make out. Eh! Eh! Eh! But you’ll take me back to my carriage? That’s agreed, isn’t it? If I behave indecently, you’ll know why.”

“When one’s travelling,” hazarded Lafcadio, “there’s no fear of consequences.”

“Oh!” replied the other at once, “all the things one would do in this life if there were no fear of consequences, as you justly remark! If one could only be sure that it wouldn’t lead to anything!... Why, merely what I’m saying to you just now--which, after all, is nothing but a very natural reflection--do you think I should venture to utter it without more disguise, if we were in Bordeaux, now? I say Bordeaux, because Bordeaux is where I live. I’m known there--respected. Not married, but well-to-do in a quiet little way; I’m in an honourable walk of life--Professor of Law at the Faculty of Bordeaux--yes, comparative criminology, a new chair.... You can see for yourself that when I’m there, I’m not allowed, actually not _allowed_, to get tipsy--not even once in a while, by accident. My life must be respectable. Just fancy! Supposing one of my pupils were to meet me in the street drunk!... Respectable! yes--and it mustn’t look as if it were forced; there’s the rub; one mustn’t make people think: ‘Monsieur Defouqueblize’ (my name, sir) ‘keeps a tight hand on himself--and a jolly good thing too.’ ... One must not only never _do_ anything out of the way, one must persuade other people that one _couldn’t_ do anything out of the way, even with all the licence in the world--that there’s nothing whatever out of the way in one, wanting to come out. Is there just a little more wine left? Only a drop or two, my dear accomplice, only a drop or two.... Such an opportunity doesn’t come twice in a lifetime. To-morrow, at the congress in Rome, I shall meet a number of my colleagues--grave, sober fellows, as tame, as disciplined, as stiffly self-restrained as I shall become myself, once I get back into harness again. People who are in society, like you and me, owe it to ourselves to go masked.”

In the meantime the meal was drawing to a close; a waiter went round collecting the scores and pocketing the tips.

As the car emptied, Defouqueblize’s voice became deeper and louder; at moments its bursts of sonority made Lafcadio feel almost uncomfortable. He went on:

“And even if there were no society to restrain us, that little group of relations and friends whom we can’t bear to displease, would suffice. They confront our uncivil sincerity with an image of ourselves for which we are only half responsible--an image which has very little resemblance to us, but out of whose borders, I tell you, it is indecent to emerge. At this moment--it’s a fact--I have escaped from my shape--taken flight out of myself.... Oh! dizzy adventure! Dangerous rapture!... But I’m boring you to death!”

“You interest me singularly.”

“I keep on talking ... talking! It can’t be helped! Once a professor, always a professor--even when one’s drunk; and it’s a subject I have at heart.... But if you’ve finished dinner, perhaps you’ll be so kind as to give me your arm back to my carriage, while I can still stand on my legs. I’m afraid if I wait any longer, I mayn’t be able to get up.”

At these words Defouqueblize made a kind of bound as though in an effort to get out of his chair, but subsided again immediately in a half sprawl over the table, where, with his head and shoulders flung forward in Lafcadio’s direction, he went on in a lower, semi-confidential voice:

“This is my thesis: Do you know what is needful to turn an honest man into a rogue? A change of scene--a moment’s forgetfulness suffice. Yes, sir, a gap in the memory and sincerity comes out into the open!... a cessation of continuity--a simple interruption of the current. Naturally, I don’t say this in my lectures ... but, between ourselves, what an advantage for the bastard! Just think! a being whose very existence is owing to an erratic impulse--to a crook in the straight line!...”

The professor’s voice had again grown loud; the eyes he now fixed on Lafcadio were peculiar; their glance, which was at times vague and at times piercing, began to alarm him. Lafcadio wondered now whether the man’s short sight were not feigned, and that peculiar glance seemed to him almost familiar. At last, more embarrassed than he cared to own, he got up and said abruptly:

“Come, Monsieur Defouqueblize, take my arm. Get up. Enough talk!”

Defouqueblize quitted his chair with a lumbering effort. Together they tottered down the corridor towards the compartment where the professor had left his brief-bag. Defouqueblize went in first. Lafcadio settled him in his corner and took his leave. He had already turned his back to go out, when a great hand fell heavily on his shoulder. He turned swiftly round. Defouqueblize had sprung to his feet--but was it really Defouqueblize?--this individual who, in a voice that was at once mocking, commanding and jubilant, exclaimed:

“You mustn’t desert an old friend like this, Mr. Lafcadio. What-the-deuceki. No? Really? Trying to make off?”

There remained not a trace of the tipsy, uncanny old professor of a moment ago in this great strapping stalwart fellow in whom Lafcadio no longer hesitated to recognise--Protos--a bigger, taller, stouter Protos who gave an impression of formidable power.

“Ah! it’s you, Protos?” said he, simply. “That’s better. I didn’t recognise you till this minute.”

For however terrible the reality might be, Lafcadio preferred it to the grotesque nightmare in which he had been struggling for the last hour.

“Not badly got up, was I? I’d taken special pains for your sake. But all the same, my dear fellow, it’s you who ought to take to spectacles. You’ll get into trouble if you’re not cleverer than that at recognising ‘the slim.’”

What half-forgotten memories this catchword _the slim_ aroused in Cadio’s mind! The _slim_, in their slang, at the time Protos and he were schoolboys together, were a genus who, for one reason or another, did not present to all persons and in all places the same appearance. According to the boys’ classification, there were many categories of the “slim,” more or less elegant and praiseworthy; and answering to them and opposed to them, was the single great family of “the crusted,” whose members strutted and swaggered through every walk of life, high or low.

Our schoolfellows accepted the following axioms:

1. The slim recognise each other.

2. The crusted do not recognise the slim.

All this came back to Lafcadio; as his nature was to throw himself into the spirit of the game, whatever it might be, he smiled. Protos went on:

“All the same, it was lucky I happened to turn up the other day, eh?... Not altogether by accident, maybe. I like keeping an eye on young novices: they’ve got ideas; they’re enterprising; they’re smart. But they’re too much inclined to think they can do without advice. Your handiwork the other night, my dear fellow, was sadly in need of touching up.... To wear a tile of that kind on one’s head when one’s out on the job! Was there ever such a notion? With the hatter’s address in the lining too! Why! you’d have been collared before the week was out. But when it’s a case of old friends I’ve a feeling heart--and, what’s more, I’ll prove it. Do you know, I used to be very fond of you, Cadio. I always thought something might be made of you. With a handsome face like yours, we could have got round all the women, and, for the matter of that, God forgive me! bled one or two of the men into the bargain. You can’t think how glad I was to have news of you at last and to hear you were coming to Italy. Upon my soul, I was longing to know what had become of you since the days we used to go and see that little wench of ours together. You’re not bad-looking even now. Oh! she knew a thing or two, did Carola!”

Lafcadio’s irritation was becoming more and more manifest--and likewise his endeavours to hide it; all this amused Protos prodigiously, though he pretended to notice nothing. He had taken a little round of leather out of his waistcoat pocket and was now examining it.

“Neatly cut out, eh?”

Lafcadio could have strangled him; he clenched his fists till his nails dug into his flesh. The other went on with his gibing:

“Damned good of me! Well worth the six thousand francs which--by the way, will you tell me why you didn’t pocket?”

Lafcadio made a movement of disgust:

“Do you take me for a thief?”

“Look here, my dear boy,” went on Protos quietly, “I’m not very fond of amateurs and I’d better tell you so at once quite frankly. And you know, it’s not a bit of use taking up the high and mighty line with me or playing the simpleton. You show promise--granted!--remarkable promise, but....”

“Stop your witticisms,” interrupted Lafcadio, whose anger was now uncontrollable. “What are you driving at? I committed an act of folly the other day--do you think I need to be told so? Yes! you have a weapon against me. I won’t ask whether it would be prudent of you, for your own sake, to use it. You want me to buy back that piece of leather? Very well, then, say so! Stop laughing and looking at me like that. You want money? How much?”

His tone was so determined that Protos fell back for a second, but recovered himself immediately.

“Gently! Gently!” he said. “Have I said anything ill-mannered? We are talking between friends--coolly. There’s no need to get excited. My word! Cadio, you’re younger than ever!”

But as he began to stroke his arm gently, Lafcadio jerked himself away.

“Let’s sit down,” went on Protos; “we shall talk more comfortably.”

He settled himself in a corner beside the door into the corridor and put his feet up on the opposite seat. Lafcadio thought he meant to bar the exit. Without a doubt Protos was carrying a revolver. He himself was unarmed. He reflected that if it came to a hand-to-hand struggle, he would certainly get the worst of it. But if for a moment he had contemplated flight, curiosity was already getting the upper hand--that passionate curiosity of his against which nothing--not even his personal safety--had ever been able to prevail. He sat down.

“Money? Oh, fie!” said Protos. He took a cigar out of his cigar-case and offered one to Lafcadio, who refused. “Perhaps you mind smoke?... Well, then, listen to me.” He took two or three puffs at his cigar and then said very calmly:

“No, no, Lafcadio, my friend, no, it isn’t money I want--it’s obedience. You don’t seem, my dear boy (excuse my frankness), you don’t seem to realise quite exactly what your situation is. You must force yourself to face it boldly. Let me help you a little.

“A youth, then, wished to escape from the social framework that hems us in; a sympathetic youth--a youth, indeed, entirely after my own heart--ingenuous and charmingly impulsive--for I don’t suppose there was much calculation in what he did.... I remember, Cadio, in the old days, though you were a great dab at figures, you would never consent to keep an account of your own expenses.... In short, the crusted scheme of things disgusts you.... I leave it to others to be astonished at that.... But what astonishes _me_ is that a person as intelligent as you, Cadio, should have thought it possible to quit a society as simply as all that, without stepping at the same moment into another; or that you should have thought it possible for any society to exist without laws.

“‘Lawless’--do you remember reading that somewhere? ‘Two hawks in the air, two fishes swimming in the sea, not more lawless than we....’[I] A fine thing literature! Lafcadio, my friend, learn the law of the slim!”

“You might get on a little.”

“Why hurry? We’ve plenty of time before us. I’m not getting out till Rome. Lafcadio, my friend, it happens that a crime occasionally escapes the detectives. I’ll explain you why it is that we are more clever than they--it’s because our lives are at stake. Where the police fail, we succeed. Damn it, Lafcadio, you’ve made your choice; the thing’s done and it’s impossible now for you to escape. I should much prefer you to be obedient, because I should really be extremely grieved to hand an old friend like you over to the police. But what’s to be done? For the future you are in their power--or ours.”

“If you hand me over, you hand yourself over at the same time.”

“I hoped we were speaking seriously. Try and take this in, Lafcadio. The police collar people who kick up a row; but in Italy they’re glad to come to terms with ‘the slim.’ ‘Come to terms’--yes, I think that’s the right expression. I work a bit for the police myself. I’ve a way with me. I help to keep order. I don’t act on my own--I cause others to act.

“Come, come, Cadio, stop champing at the bit. There’s nothing very dreadful about my law. You exaggerate these things; so ingenuous--so impulsive! Do you think it wasn’t out of obedience and just because I willed it, that you picked up Mademoiselle Venitequa’s sleeve-link off your plate at dinner? Ah! how thoughtless--how idyllic an action! My poor Lafcadio, how you cursed yourself for that little action, eh? The bloody nuisance is that I wasn’t the only one to see it. Pooh! Don’t take on so; the waiter and the widow and the little girl are all in it too. Charming people! It lies entirely with you to have them for your friends. Lafcadio, my friend, be sensible. Do you give in?”

Out of excessive embarrassment perhaps, Lafcadio had taken up the line of not speaking. He sat stiff--his lips set, his eyes staring straight in front of him.

Protos went on, with a shrug of his shoulders:

“Rum chap!... and in reality so easy-going!... But perhaps you would have consented already if I had told you what I expect of you. Lafcadio, my friend, enlighten my perplexity. How is it that you, whom I left in such poverty, refrained from picking up a windfall of six thousand francs dropped at your feet? Does that seem to you natural? Old Monsieur de Baraglioul, Mademoiselle Venitequa told me, happened to die the day after Count Julius, his worthy son, came to pay you a visit; and the evening of the same day you chucked Mademoiselle Venitequa. Since then your connexion with Count Julius has become ... well! well! let’s say exceedingly intimate; would you mind explaining why? Lafcadio, my friend, in old days you were possessed to my knowledge of numerous uncles; since then your pedigree seems to me to have become slightly embaragliouled!... No, no, don’t say anything. I’m only joking. But what is one to suppose?... unless, indeed, you owe your present fortune to Mr. Julius himself?... in which case, allow me to say, that attractive as you are, Lafcadio, the affair seems to me considerably more scandalous still. Whichever way it may be, though, and whatever you let us conjecture, the thing is clear enough, Lafcadio, my friend, and your duty is as plain as a pike-staff--you must blackmail Julius. Come, come, don’t make a fuss! Blackmail is a wholesome institution, necessary for the maintenance of morale. What! what! are you going to leave me?”

Lafcadio had risen.

“Let me pass!” he cried, striding over Protos’s body. Stretched across the compartment from one seat to the other, the latter made no movement to stop him. Lafcadio, astonished at not finding himself detained, opened the corridor door and, as he went off:

“I’m not running away,” he said. “Don’t be alarmed. You can keep your eye on me. But anything is better than listening to you any longer. Excuse me if I prefer the police. Go and inform them. I am ready.”

VI

On that same day the Anthimes arrived from Milan by the evening train. As they travelled third it was not till they reached Rome that they saw the Comtesse de Baraglioul and her daughter, who had come from Paris in a sleeping-car of the same train.

A few hours before the arrival of the telegram announcing Fleurissoire’s death, the Countess had received a letter from her husband; the Count had written eloquently of the immense pleasure his unexpected meeting with Lafcadio had caused him. Doubtless he had not breathed the faintest word of allusion to that semi-fraternity which, in Julius’s eyes, invested the young man with a perfidious charm (Julius, faithful to his father’s commands, had never had any open explanation with his wife, any more than with Lafcadio himself), but certain hints, certain reticences had been sufficient to enlighten the Countess; I am not quite sure even that Julius, who had very little to amuse him in the daily round of his bourgeois existence, did not find some pleasure in fluttering about the scandal and singeing the tips of his wings. I am not sure either that Lafcadio’s presence at Rome, the hope of meeting him again, had not something--had not a great deal--to do with Genevieve’s decision to accompany her mother.

Julius was there to meet them at the station. He hurried them back to the Grand Hotel, without speaking more than a word or two to the Anthimes, whom he was to meet next day at the funeral. The latter went to the hotel in the Via Bocca di Leone, where they had stayed for a day or two during their first visit to Rome.

Marguerite brought the author good news. Not a single hitch remained in the way of the Academy election; Cardinal André had semi-officially informed her the day before that there was no need even for the candidate to pay any further visits; the Academy was advancing to welcome him with open doors.

“You see!” said Marguerite. “What did I tell you in Paris? _Tout vient à point_.... One has nothing to do in this world but to wait.”

“And not to change,” added Julius, with an air of compunction, raising his wife’s hand to his lips, and not noticing his daughter’s eyes grow big with contempt as they dwelt on him. “Faithful to you, to my opinions, to my principles! Perseverance is the most indispensable of virtues.”

The recollection of his recent wild-goose chase had already faded from his mind, as well as every opinion that was other than orthodox, and every intention that was other than proper. Now that he knew the facts, he recovered his balance without an effort. He was filled with admiration for the subtle consistency which his mind had shown in its temporary deviation. It was not _he_ who had changed--it was the Pope!

“On the contrary, my opinions have been extraordinarily consistent,” he said to himself, “extraordinarily logical. The difficulty is to know where to draw the line. Poor Fleurissoire perished from having gone behind the scenes. The simplest course for the simple-minded is to draw the line at the things they know. It was this hideous secret that killed him. Knowledge never strengthens any but the strong.... No matter! I am glad that Carola was able to warn the police. It allows me to meditate with greater freedom.... All the same, if Armand-Dubois knew that it was not the real Holy Father who was responsible for his losses and his exile, what a consolation it would be for him--what an encouragement in his faith--what a solace and relief! To-morrow, after the funeral, I must really speak to him.”

* * * * *

The funeral did not attract much of a concourse. Three carriages followed the hearse. It was raining. In the first carriage came Arnica, supported by the friendly presence of Blafaphas (as soon as she was out of mourning, he no doubt married her); they had left Pau together two days earlier (the thought of abandoning the widow in her grief, of allowing her to take the long journey all by herself, was intolerable to Blafaphas; and for what? Had he not gone into mourning like one of the family? Was any relation in the world equal to a friend like him?), but on account of their unfortunately missing one of their trains, they arrived in Rome only a few hours before the ceremony.

In the last carriage were Madame Armand-Dubois with the Countess and her daughter; in the second, the Count and Anthime Armand-Dubois.

No allusion was made over Fleurissoire’s grave to his unlucky adventure. But on the way back from the cemetery, as soon as Julius de Baraglioul was alone with Anthime, he began:

“I promised you I would intercede on your behalf with his Holiness.”

“God is my witness that I never asked you to.”

“True! But I was so outraged by the state of destitution in which the Church had abandoned you, that I listened only to my own heart.”

“God is my witness that I never complained.”

“I know ... I know ... I was irritated to death by your resignation! And even--since you insist--I must admit, my dear Anthime, that it seemed to me a proof of pride rather than sanctity, and the last time I saw you at Milan that exaggerated resignation of yours struck me really as savouring more of rebellion than of true piety, and was extremely distasteful to me as a Christian. God didn’t demand as much of you as all that! To speak frankly, I was shocked by your attitude.”

“And I, my dear brother--perhaps I too may be allowed to say so now--was grieved by yours. Wasn’t it you yourself who urged me to rebel and....”

Julius, who was getting heated, interrupted him:

“My own experience has sufficiently proved to myself--and to others--during the whole course of my career, that it is perfectly possible to be an excellent Christian, without disdaining the legitimate advantages of the state of life to which it pleases God to call us. The fault that I found with your attitude was precisely that its affectation seemed to give it an appearance of superiority over mine.”

“God is my witness that....”

“Oh, don’t go on calling God to witness!” interrupted Julius again. “God has nothing to do with it. I am merely explaining that when I say that your attitude was almost one of rebellion ... I mean what would be rebellion for me; and what I find fault with is precisely that while you get credit for submitting to injustice, you leave other people to rebel for you. As for me, I wouldn’t accept the Church’s being in the wrong; while you with your air of not letting butter melt in your mouth, really _put_ her in the wrong. So I made up my mind to complain in your stead. You’ll see in a moment how right I was to be indignant.”

Julius, on whose forehead the beads of perspiration were beginning to gather, put his top-hat on his knee.

“Wouldn’t you like a little air?” asked Anthime, as he obligingly lowered the window on his side.

“So,” went on Julius, “as soon as I got to Rome, I solicited an audience. It was granted. This step of mine met with the most singular success....”

“Ah!” said Anthime indifferently.

“Yes, my dear Anthime, for though in reality I obtained nothing of what I came to ask, at any rate I brought away from my visit an assurance which ... effectually cleared our Holy Father from all the injurious suppositions we had been making about him.”

“God is my witness that I never made any injurious suppositions about our Holy Father.”

“I made them for you. I saw you wronged. I was indignant.”

“Come to the point, Julius. Did you see the Pope?”

“Well, no, then! I didn’t see the Pope,” burst out Julius at last, containing himself no longer, “but I became possessed of a secret--a secret which, though almost incredible at first, received sudden confirmation from our dear Amédée’s death--an appalling--a bewildering secret--but one from which your faith, dear Anthime, will be able to draw comfort. You must know, then, that the Pope is innocent of the injustice of which you were the victim....”

“Tut! I never for a moment doubted it.”

“Listen to me, Anthime--I didn’t see the Pope--because he is not to be seen. The person who is actually seated on the pontifical throne, who is obeyed by the Church, who promulgates--the person who spoke to me--the Pope who is to be seen at the Vatican--the Pope whom I saw--_is not the real one_.”

At these words Anthime began to shake all over with a fit of loud laughter.

“Laugh away! Laugh away!” went on Julius, nettled. “I laughed too, to begin with. If I had laughed a little less, Fleurissoire would not have been murdered. Ah! poor dear saint that he was! Poor lamb of a victim!...” His voice trailed off into sobs.

“What? What? Do you mean to say that this ridiculous story is really true? Dear me! Dear me!...” said Armand-Dubois, who was disturbed by Julius’s pathos. “All the same, this must be inquired into....”

“It was for inquiring into it that he met his death.”

“Because if after all I’ve sacrificed my fortune, my position, my science--if I’ve consented to be made a fool of ...” continued Anthime, who was gradually becoming excited in his turn.

“But I tell you the _real_ one is in no way responsible for any of that. The person who made a fool of you is a mere man of straw put up by the Quirinal.”

“Am I really to believe what you say?”

“If you don’t believe me, you can at any rate believe our poor martyr here.”

They both remained silent for a few minutes. It had stopped raining; a ray of sunlight broke through the clouds. The carriage slowly jolted into Rome.

“In that case, I know what remains for me to do,” went on Anthime in his most decided voice. “I shall give the whole show away.”

Julius started with horror.

“My dear friend, you terrify me. You’ll get yourself excommunicated for a certainty.”

“By whom? If it’s by a sham Pope, I don’t care a damn!”

“And I, who thought I should help you to extract some consolatory virtue out of this secret,” went on Julius, in dismay.

“You’re joking!... And who knows but what Fleurissoire, when he gets to heaven, won’t find after all that his Almighty isn’t the _real_ God either?”

“Come, come, my dear Anthime, you’re rambling! As if there _could_ be two! As if there could be another!”

“It’s all very easy for you to talk--you, who have never in your life given up anything for Him--you, who profit by everything--true or false. Oh! I’ve had enough! I want some fresh air!”

He leant out of the window, touched the driver on the shoulder with his walking-stick and stopped the carriage. Julius prepared to get out with him.

“No! Let me be! I know all that’s necessary for my purpose. You can put the rest in a novel. As for me, I shall write to the Grand Master of the Order this very evening, and to-morrow I shall take up my scientific reviewing for the _Dépêche_. Fine fun it’ll be!”

“What!” said Julius, surprised to see that he was limping again. “You’re lame?”

“Yes, my rheumatism came back a few days ago.”

“Oh, I see! So _that’s_ at the bottom of it!” said Julius, as he sank back into the corner of the carriage, without looking after him.

VII

Did Protos really intend to give Lafcadio up to the police as he had threatened? I cannot tell. The event proved at any rate that the police were not entirely composed of his friends. These gentlemen, who had been advised by Carola the day before, laid their mousetrap in the Vicolo dei Vecchierelli; they had long been acquainted with the house and knew that the upper floor had easy means of communication with the next-door house, whose exits also they watched.

Protos was not afraid of the detectives; nor of any particular accusation that might be brought against him; the machinery of the law inspired him with no terrors; he knew that it would be hard to catch him out; that he was innocent in reality of any crime and guilty only of misdemeanours too trifling to be brought home to him. He was therefore not excessively alarmed when he realised that he was trapped--which he did very quickly, having a particular flair for nosing out these gentry, in no matter what disguise.

Hardly more than slightly perplexed, he shut himself up in Carola’s room and waited for her to come in; he had not seen her since Fleurissoire’s murder, and was anxious to ask her advice and to leave a few instructions in the very probable event of his being run in.

Carola, in the meantime, in deference to Julius’s wishes, had not shown herself in the cemetery. No one knew that, hidden behind a mausoleum and beneath an umbrella, she was assisting at the melancholy ceremony from afar. She waited patiently, humbly, until the approach to the newly dug grave was free; she saw the procession re-form--Julius go off with Anthime and the carriages drive away in the drizzling rain. Then, in her turn, she went up to the grave, took out from beneath her cloak a big bunch of asters, which she put down a little way from the family’s wreaths; there she stayed for a long time, looking at nothing, thinking of nothing, and crying instead of praying.

When she returned to the Vicolo dei Vecchierelli, she noticed, indeed, two unfamiliar figures on the threshold, but without realising that the house was being watched. She was anxious to rejoin Protos; she did not for a moment doubt that it was he who had committed the murder, and she hated him....

A few minutes later the police rushed into the house on hearing her screams--too late, alas! Protos, exasperated at learning that she had betrayed him, had already strangled Carola.

This happened about midday. The news came out in the evening papers, and as the piece of leather cut out of the hat-lining was found in his possession, his two-fold guilt did not admit of a doubt in anyone’s mind.

Lafcadio, in the meantime, had spent the hours till evening in a state of expectancy--of vague fear. It was not the police with whom Protos had threatened him that he feared, so much as Protos himself, or some nameless thing or other, against which he no longer attempted to defend himself. An incomprehensible torpor lay heavy on him--mere fatigue perhaps; at any rate, he gave up.

The day before, he had seen Julius for barely a moment, when the latter had come to meet the train from Naples and take over the consignment of the corpse; then he had tramped the town for hours, trying to walk down the exasperation that had been left in him by his conversation with Protos and by the feeling of his dependence.

And yet the news of Protos’s arrest did not bring Lafcadio the relief that might have been expected. It was almost as though he were disappointed. Queer creature! As he had deliberately rejected all the material profits of the crime, so he was unwilling to part with any of the risks. He could not consent to the game’s coming to an end so soon. He would gladly--as in the old days when he used to play chess--have given his adversary a rook; and as though this latest development had made his victory too easy and taken away all his interest in the match, he felt that he should never rest content till he had set Fate at defiance more rashly still.

He dined in a neighbouring _trattoria_ so as not to be obliged to dress. Directly he had finished his dinner, he returned to the hotel, and as he was passing the restaurant glass doors he caught sight of Count Julius, who was sitting at table with his wife and daughter. He had not seen Genevieve since his first visit and was struck with her beauty. As he was lingering in the smoking-room, waiting for dinner to be finished, a servant came in to tell him that the Count had gone upstairs to his room and was expecting him.

He went in. Julius de Baraglioul was alone. He had changed into a morning coat.

“So they’ve caught the murderer,” he said at once, putting out his hand.

But Lafcadio did not take it. He remained standing in the embrasure of the door.

“What murderer?” he asked.

“Why, my brother-in-law’s, of course!”

“_I_ am your brother-in-law’s murderer.”

He said it without a tremor, without altering or lowering his voice, without making a movement and so naturally that at first Julius did not understand. Lafcadio was obliged to repeat:

“Your brother-in-law’s murderer has not been arrested, I tell you, for the good reason that I am your brother-in-law’s murderer.”

If there had been anything fierce about Lafcadio, Julius might perhaps have taken fright, but he looked a mere child. He seemed younger even than the first time Julius had met him; his eyes were as limpid, his voice as clear. He had shut the door, but remained leaning with his back against it. Julius, standing near the table, sank all of a heap into an arm-chair.

“My poor boy!” was the first thing he said, “speak lower!... What can have possessed you? How could you have done such a thing?”

Lafcadio bowed his head. He already regretted having spoken.

“How can I tell? I did it very quickly--just when it came over me.”

“What grudge can you have had against Fleurissoire--worthy, virtuous man?”

“I don’t know. He didn’t look happy.... What’s the use of wanting me to explain to you what I can’t explain to myself?”

The silence between them grew increasingly painful; their words broke it by fits and starts, but each time it closed round them again, heavier, deeper; and through it, from the big hall of the hotel below, there came floating up to them snatches of vulgar Neapolitan music. Julius was picking at a spot of candle grease on the table-cloth with his little finger-nail, which he kept very long and pointed. He suddenly noticed that this exquisite nail of his was broken. There was a tear right across it which spoiled the beautiful pinkness of its polished surface. How could he have done it? And how came he not to have noticed it before? In any case, the damage was beyond repair. There was nothing left for Julius to do but to cut it. His vexation was extreme, for he took great care of his hands and was particularly attached to this nail, which he had been long cultivating, and which enhanced and at the same time drew attention to the elegance of his finger. The scissors were in his dressing-table drawer and he half rose to get them, but he would have had to pass in front of Lafcadio; with his usual tact he put off the delicate operation till later.

“And what do you mean to do now?” he asked.

“I don’t know. Give myself up, perhaps. I shall take the night to think it over.”

Julius let his arm drop beside his arm-chair, he gazed at Lafcadio for a moment or two and then in a tone of utter discouragement sighed out:

“And to think that I was beginning to care for you!”

It was said with no unkind intention. Lafcadio could have no doubt of that; but for all their unconsciousness the words were none the less cruel and they struck at his very heart. He raised his head and stiffened himself against the sudden pang of anguish that stabbed him. He looked at Julius. “Did I really feel almost like his brother only yesterday?” thought he. His eyes wandered over the room where such a short time ago he had been able to talk so gaily, in spite of his crime; the scent bottle was still on the table, almost empty....

“Come, Lafcadio,” went on Julius, “your situation doesn’t seem to me altogether hopeless. The presumed author of the crime....”

“Yes, I know; he has been arrested,” interrupted Lafcadio dryly. “Are you going to advise me to allow an innocent man to be condemned in my place?”

“Innocent? He has just murdered a woman--you knew her too.”

“Very comforting, isn’t it?”

“I don’t mean that exactly, but....”

“You mean he’s just the only person who could denounce me.”

“There’s some hope left still, you see.”

Julius got up, walked to the window, straightened the folds of the curtain, came back and then leaning forward with his arms folded on the back of the chair he had just left:

“Lafcadio, I shouldn’t like to part from you without a word of advice. It lies entirely with you, I’m convinced, to become an honest man again and to take your place in the world--as far, that is, as your birth permits.... The Church is there to help you. Come, my lad, a little courage; go and confess yourself.”

Lafcadio could not suppress a smile.

“I will think over your kind words.” He took a step forward and then:

“No doubt you will prefer not to shake hands with a murderer. But I should like to thank you for your....”

“Yes, yes,” said Julius with a cordial and distant wave of the hand. “Good-bye, my lad. I hardly dare say ‘au revoir.’ None the less, if later on, you....”

“For the present you have nothing further to say to me?”

“Nothing further for the present.”

“Good-bye, Monsieur de Baraglioul.”

Lafcadio bowed gravely and went out.

* * * * *

He went up to his room on the floor above, half undressed and flung himself on his bed. The end of the day had been very hot and no freshness had come with the night. His window stood wide open but not a breath stirred the air; the electric globes of the Piazza dei Termi, far away on the other side of the garden, shone into his room and filled it with a diffused and bluish light which might have been the moon’s. He tried to reflect, but a strange torpor--a despairing numbness--crept over his mind; it was not of his crime that he thought nor of how to escape; the only effort he could make was not to hear those dreadful words of Julius: “I was beginning to care for you.” ...If he himself did not care for Julius, were those words worth his tears?... Was that really why he was weeping?... The night was so soft that he felt as though he had only to let himself go for death to take him. He reached out for the water bottle by his bed-side, soaked his handkerchief and held it to his heart, which was hurting him.

“No drink will ever slake again the thirst of my parched heart,” said he, letting the tears course down his face unchecked, so as to taste their bitterness to the full on his lips. A line or two of poetry, read he knew not where and unconsciously remembered, kept singing in his ears:

“My heart aches and a drowsy numbness pains My senses....”

He fell into a doze.

* * * * *

Is he dreaming? Or is that a knock at his door? His door, which he always leaves unlocked at night, opens gently and a slender white figure comes in. He hears a faint call:

“Lafcadio!... Are you there, Lafcadio?”

And yet, through his half-waking slumber, Lafcadio recognises that voice. Can it be that he doubts the reality of so gracious an apparition? Or does he fear that a word, a movement, may put it to flight?... He keeps silent.

Genevieve de Baraglioul, whose room was next-door to her father’s, had in spite of herself overheard the whole of the conversation between him and Lafcadio. An intolerable dread had driven her to his room and when her call remained unanswered, fully convinced that Lafcadio had killed himself, she rushed towards the bed and fell sobbing on her knees beside it.

As she knelt there, Lafcadio raised himself and bent over her with his whole being drawn towards her, but not daring as yet to put his lips on the fair forehead he saw gleaming in the darkness. Then Genevieve de Baraglioul felt all her strength dissolve; throwing back her forehead, which Lafcadio’s breath was already caressing, and not knowing where to turn for help against him, save to himself alone:

“Dear friend, have pity,” she cried.

Lafcadio mastered himself at once; drawing back and at the same time pushing her away:

“Rise, Mademoiselle de Baraglioul,” he said. “Leave me! I am not--I cannot be your friend.”

Genevieve rose, but she did not move from the side of the bed where Lafcadio, whom she had thought dead, lay half reclining. She tenderly touched his burning forehead, as though to convince herself he was still alive.

“Dear friend,” she said, “I overheard everything you said to my father this evening. Don’t you understand that that is why I am here?”

Lafcadio half raised himself and looked at her. Her loosened hair fell about her; her whole face was in the shadow so that he could not see her eyes but he felt her look enfold him. As though unable to bear its sweetness, he hid his face in his hands.

“Ah!” he groaned, “why did I meet you so late? What have I done that you should love me? Why do you speak to me so now when I am no longer free and no longer worthy to love you?”

She protested sadly:

“It is to you I have come, Lafcadio--to no one else. To you--a criminal. Lafcadio! How many times have I sighed your name since the first day when you appeared to me like a hero--indeed, you seemed a little over-daring ... I must tell you now--I made a secret vow to myself that I would be yours, from that very moment when I saw you risk your life so nobly. What has happened since then? Can you really have killed someone? What have you let yourself become?”

And as Lafcadio shook his head without answering: “Did I not hear my father say that someone else had been arrested--a ruffian, who had just committed a murder?... Lafcadio! while there is still time, save yourself! This very night! Go! Go!”

Then Lafcadio:

“Too late!” he murmured. And as he felt Genevieve’s loosened hair on his hands, he caught it, pressed it passionately to his eyes, his lips. “Flight! Is that really what you counsel me? But where can I possibly fly? Even if I escaped from the police, I could not escape from myself.... And, besides, you would despise me for escaping.”

“I! Despise you!”

“I lived unconscious; I killed in a dream--a nightmare, in which I have been struggling ever since.”

“I will save you from it,” she cried.

“What is the use of waking me, if I am to wake a criminal?” He seized her by the arm: “Can’t you understand that the idea of impunity is odious to me? What is there left for me to do--if not to give myself up as soon as it is daybreak?”

“You must give yourself up to God, not to man. Even if my father had not said it already, I should say so myself now: Lafcadio, the Church is there to prescribe your penance and to help you back to peace through repentance.”

Genevieve is right; most certainly the best thing Lafcadio can do now is to be conveniently submissive; he will realise this sooner or later and that every other issue is closed to him.... Vexatious, though, that that milksop of a Julius should have been the first to tell him so.

“Are you repeating that by heart?” said he angrily. “Can it be you speaking like that?”

He dropped her arm which he had been holding and pushed it from him; and as Genevieve drew back, there swelled up in him a blind feeling of resentment against Julius, a desire to get Genevieve away from her father, to drag her down, to bring her nearer to himself; as he lowered his eyes he caught the sight of her bare feet in their little silk slippers.

“Don’t you understand that it’s not remorse that I’m afraid of, but....”

He left the bed, turned away from her and went to the open window; he was stifling; he leant his forehead against the glass pane and cooled his burning palms on the iron balustrade; he would have liked to forget that she was there, that he was near her.

“Mademoiselle de Baraglioul, you have done everything that a young lady could be expected to do for a criminal--possibly a little more. I thank you with all my heart. You had better leave me now. Go back to your father, your duties, your habits.... Good-bye. Who can tell whether I shall ever see you again? Consider that when I give myself up to-morrow, it will be to prove myself a little less unworthy of your affection. Consider that.... No, don’t come nearer.... Do you think that a touch of your hand would suffice me?”

Genevieve would have braved her father’s anger, the world’s opinion and its contempt, but at Lafcadio’s icy tones, her heart fails her. Has he not understood, then, that to come and speak to him like this at night, to confess her love to him like this, requires courage and resolution on her part too, and that her love deserves more, maybe, than a mere “thank you”?... But how can she tell him that she too, up till to-day, has been living and moving in a dream--a dream from which she escapes only now and then among her poor children at the hospital, where, binding up their wounds in sober earnestness, she does seem sometimes to be brought into contact with a little reality--a petty dream, in which her parents move beside her, hedged in by all the ludicrous conventions of their world--and that she can never succeed in taking any of it seriously, either their behaviour or their opinions, or their ambitions or their principles, or indeed, their persons themselves? What wonder, then, that Lafcadio had not taken Fleurissoire seriously? Oh! is it possible that they should part like this? Love drives her, flings her towards him. Lafcadio seizes her, clasps her, covers her pale forehead with kisses.

* * * * *

Here begins a new book.

Oh, desire! Oh, palpable and living truth! At your touch the phantoms of my brain grow dim and vanish.

We will leave our two lovers at cockcrow, at the hour when colour, warmth and light begin at last to triumph over night. Lafcadio raises himself from over Genevieve’s sleeping form. But it is not at his love’s fair face, nor her moist brows, nor pearly eyelids, nor warm parted lips, nor perfect breasts, nor weary limbs--no, it is at none of all this that he gazes--but through the wide-open window, at the coming of dawn and a tree that rustles in the garden.

It will soon be time for Genevieve to leave him; but still he waits; leaning over her, he listens above her gentle breathing to the vague rumour of the town as it begins to shake off its torpor. From the distant barracks a bugle’s call rings out. What! is he going to renounce life? Does he still, for the sake of Genevieve’s esteem (and already he esteems her a little less now that she loves him a little more), does he still think of giving himself up?

A NOTE ON THE TYPE IN WHICH THIS BOOK IS SET

_This book is set (on the Linotype) in Elzevir No. 3, a French Old Style. For the modern revival of this excellent face we are indebted to Gustave Mayeur of Paris, who reproduced it in 1878, basing his designs, he says, on types used in a book which was printed by the Elzevirs at Leyden in 1634. The Elzevir family held a distinguished position as printers and publishers for more than a century, their best work appearing between about 1590 and 1680. Although the Elzevirs were not themselves type founders, they utilised the services of the best type designers of their time, notably Van Dijk, Garamond, and Sanlecque. Many of their books were small, or, as we should say now, “pocket” editions, of the classics, and for these volumes they developed a type face which is open and readable but relatively narrow in body, although in no sense condensed, thus permitting a large amount of copy to be set in limited space without impairing legibility._

[Illustration: colophon]

SET UP, ELECTROTYPED, PRINTED AND BOUND BY THE VAIL-BALLOU PRESS, INC., BINGHAMTON, N. Y. · ESPARTO PAPER MANUFACTURED IN SCOTLAND AND FURNISHED BY W. F. ETHERINGTON & CO., NEW YORK.

FOOTNOTES:

[A] In English in the original. (_Translator’s note._)

[B] Equivalent in pre-war days to £1600. (_Translator’s note._)

[C] In English in the original. (_Translator’s note._)

[D] _Compte rendu de la Délivrance de Sa Sainteté Léon XIII emprisonné dans les cachots du Vatican_ (Saint-Malo, imprimerie Y. Billois, rue de l’Orme 4), 1893. (_Author’s note._)

[E] There is an insinuation in Mlle. Péterat’s name which might be rendered in English by calling her Miss Fartwell. (_Translator’s note._)

[F] Roman Plastic Plaster (announced the catalogue) is a special fabrication of comparatively recent invention. This substance, of which Messrs. Blafaphas, Fleurissoire and Lévichon possess the unique secret, is a great advance on Marblette, Stucceen and other similar compositions, whose inferior qualities have been only too well established by use. (Follow the descriptions of the various models.) (_Author’s note._)

[G] _Cave_ meaning cellar in French, Protos makes a double pun impossible to render in English. (_Translator’s note._)

[H] In English in the original. (_Translator’s note._)

[I] In English in the original. (_Translator’s note._)

Typographical errors corrected by the etext transcriber:

Baraglious got back to Paris=> Baragliouls got back to Paris {pg 46}

eyebrows bginning to frown=> eyebrows beginning to frown {pg 89}

however, notwithtanding=> however, notwithstanding {pg 122}

four or five minutes=> four or five minute {pg 142}

tug of clear water=> tub of clear water {pg 175}

have trottled her=> have throttled her {pg 206}