CHAPTER XIII.
GAUDIN LEARNS STRANGE SECRETS IN THE BASTILLE
It was not until Galouchet, the gaoler, entered the chamber of the Tour de la Liberté the next morning that Sainte-Croix awoke from his slumbers--from one of those bright dreams of freedom, triumph, and happiness, albeit always tempered with some vague mistrust, which haunt our sleeping existence; the fairer in their visioned prospects, the more gloomy and hopeless the reality.
Exili had already risen. He was looking over the contents of a small chest of carved wood, placed on the table before him. The gaoler was apparently making preparations for breakfast, clattering some metal plates upon the undraped and rude table; and in the fireplace the dense smoke was creeping through some hissing pieces of damp wood, as the sap sputtered and bubbled from their ends. Gaudin stared about him confusedly. The last impression of his dreams was mingled with his waking sensations, and he remained silent for a few moments, after some incoherent words, to collect his senses. Exili muttered some conventional salute, and then went on with his scrutiny, whilst Galouchet, having put the table in order, according to his own notions, offered his assistance towards completing Sainte-Croix’s toilet.
‘What charge will monsieur choose to defray for his nourishment?’ asked the gaoler, as Gaudin rose from his pallet.
‘What do you expect?’ inquired Sainte-Croix.
‘_Parbleu!_ we have all prices. You may live like a prince for fifty livres a-day, or starve like a valet for two. This will include your washing, if you are not over-fond of clean linen, and a candle a-night. The firewood you must pay for separately.’
Gaudin looked towards the fireplace, and the struggling flame.
‘Ah!’ said Galouchet, divining his thoughts; ‘the wood is rather damp, to be sure, but that makes it last the longer; and as you and Monsieur Exili occupy the same room, it will come cheaper.’
‘Is there news in the city this morning, Galouchet?’ asked Exili.
‘But little,’ returned the functionary. ‘Pierre, the scullion, sleeps out of the fortress, and tells me that an eboulement took place last night, and the Bièvre burst into some of the _carrières_ of St. Marcel; and fell so rapidly, in consequence, that all the mills this side of St. Medard were stopped for three hours.’
‘Was anybody lost?’ inquired the physician.
‘It is believed so. A party of Bras d’Acier’s gang were hunted out of the vaults between the Cordelières and Montrouge, like rats in our _cachots_, when the rains come; and one of the superintendents at the Gobelins was fished up, half-drowned, from a shaft in the Rue Mouffetard.’
‘Do you know his name?’ asked Sainte-Croix eagerly.
‘I can’t say I do,’ returned Galouchet. ‘What rate will you fix your _nourriture_ at, monsieur?’ he continued.
‘I care not,’ said Gaudin; ‘only let it be something that I can eat.’
The day passed on, but the hours lagged so tediously that Time himself appeared to be a prisoner. Little conversation passed between the two inmates of the cell. Exili was occupied in writing nearly the whole day; and Gaudin, who could ill bear the confinement, with his restless and excitable spirit, after the hour’s exercise in the great court allowed to all the prisoners, obtained permission to walk on the ramparts in front of the sentinels. This position commanded a view along the Rue St. Antoine, as well as of the houses in the Rue St. Paul. Towards this point were Gaudin’s eyes constantly directed. He beheld people moving in the streets, and over the plains in the immediate vicinity of the city walls--the _coup d’œil_ was alive with commerce--and the buzz of their voices plainly reached his ear; but he envied them not, nor drew one comparison between their freedom and his state of durance, except when he saw them turn from the great thoroughfare into the small street wherein the Hôtel d’Aubray was situated. He fancied he could pick out the pointed roof of the mansion from amongst the others, and once he imagined that he saw the delicate figure of the Marchioness emerge from the Rue St. Paul, and pass towards the city, without so much as throwing back a glance towards the fortress in which she knew he was confined. And then the hell of jealousy raged in his veins, and he felt the bitterness of captivity. He thought of the circumstances under which he had found her with Theria the preceding evening; then came back the recollection of the impassioned interview, and her apparent devotion to him, until the struggle of his conflicting feelings to establish what he hoped for, over what he dreaded, nearly maddened him.
At length it got dusk, and he could see no more. The murmur of the peopled city died away; the lights appeared in the embrasures of the Bastille, and the night-wind chilled him. He descended once more to his cell, and found his gaoler there.
‘I was coming to seek you, monsieur,’ he said, ‘for the curfew will soon ring. Mass! your supper is nearly cold. Here is a slice of _rôti_, a plate of eggs, and a salad; you could not fare better at home.’
‘Have any of my things come?’ asked Gaudin.
‘They are being overlooked in the _corps du garde_,’ replied the man. ‘By the way, monsieur, my sweetheart, Françoise Roussel, gave me this note for you, when I met her without the walls this afternoon. She did not care that it should be read by the governor.’
Gaudin snatched the note, and discerned the handwriting of the Marchioness. Hastily tearing it open, he read--
‘Be true and patient; all may yet be well, and you will be revenged. Rely on me to aid you; we have gone too far to retract. In life, and after it, yours _only_,
‘Marie.’
‘I must put out your light,’ said Galouchet. ‘Last night you were brought in late, and nothing was said; but neither fire nor lamp can be allowed between curfew and sunrise.’
‘You can have it, my good fellow,’ said Gaudin, still quivering with the emotion which the letter had called up. ‘Here--here is some money for you. I will keep your secret. You may retire.’
The man raked out the embers on the grate, and departed. As soon as the clanking of the three doors that shut in the cell had ceased, Exili, who till now had remained quiet, arose from his table, and approaching Sainte-Croix in the darkness, said rapidly--
‘I will now show you some of the mysteries by which my career has, up to yesterday, thriven. But, first--precaution!’
He took his cloak, and by the aid of the forks on the table fixed it so that it covered the window, the position of which could be plainly ascertained by the faint moonlight from without, and then he returned towards the table at which he had been sitting.
‘The clods without think that our light and darkness is subservient to their will alone; but the elements obey not such idiots. The ether which percolates all things--vitalised and inorganic--setting up a communion between them, reveals not itself to the uninitiated. With me, the various elements are as abject slaves, whom I can summons at my bidding.’
As he spoke, he dashed a small rod he held against the wall, and a flame, so bright that Gaudin could hardly look upon it, burst from its extremity. In another moment he had relighted the lamp, and he then shook the blaze amongst the embers on the hearth, which were presently rekindled. Sainte-Croix looked upon his companion with the gaze of one bewildered. Exili read the expression of the other’s features and continued, perceiving his advantage--
‘Life and death are equally within my grasp. Whom shall I call up? Will you see the ghastly corpse of the Croce Bianca, at Milan?’
‘No! No!’ cried Gaudin, covering his eyes with his hand, as if he dreaded to meet the horrid sight.
‘Will that serve to recall its memory as well?’ asked Exili, throwing a phial upon the table.
A glance sufficed to show its nature to Sainte-Croix. It was a small bottle of the terrible Aqua Tofana--the ‘Manna of St. Nicholas de Barri.’
‘That menstruum is powerless, compared to what I am about to show you. But first, look here.’
He stooped beneath the table, and pulled out a species of cage, in which several rats were huddled together, fighting, and scrambling over their fellows.
‘Where did you get those vermin from?’ inquired Gaudin.
‘There are more in the Bastille than are wanted,’ replied Exili. ‘They have been willingly granted by some poor wretch at the base of our tower. Galouchet bought them. I told him they were to study anatomy from.’
He plunged his hand fearlessly amongst them, and drew forth one of the shrieking animals. Then squeezing its throat, he poured a drop or two of the fluid down the mouth. The rat gave a few convulsive throes, and he threw it down, dead, upon the table.
‘You see the effect of the potion,’ he continued. ‘Now, look here.’
Pouring the greater part of the remaining liquid of the phial into a glass, he coolly drank it off before Gaudin could arrest his hand. But no effect supervened. Instead of falling lifeless as Sainte-Croix had anticipated, Exili gazed at him, and, with a short, hollow laugh, threw the empty bottle amongst the embers.
‘Are you man or demon?’ asked Gaudin, scarcely trusting to his senses.
‘Neither,’ said Exili. ‘I have lost the sympathies of the former; the latter I may be hereafter. I have studied poisons, as you see; but I have also studied their antidotes. Have you kept the small phial by you, which you bought of me at Milan?’
‘It has never been out of my keeping until now,’ said Gaudin.
‘With that you could command twenty lives,’ said Exili; ‘and yet my remedies could so blunt and weaken its malignity that I would take it all at one draught. You shall learn more. Attend!’
From his box of carved wood he drew forth a series of test glasses, and half-filled them with water from the prison _cruche_. He next took a small flacon, and pinched a few atoms of the powder it contained into the first glass, varying the addition in each. Then dropping some colourless fluid into them, one after the other, a precipitate fell down in all, in clouds of the brightest tints, but each different.
‘See how completely these dull minerals do my bidding,’ he exclaimed. ‘To you the potion offers no trace by which its nature could be told; to me there is not an atom suspended in it, in its invisible but imperishable form, which cannot be reproduced before our eyes. Do you believe in me?’
‘I do--I do,’ returned Gaudin. ‘What price do you put upon the revelation of these mysteries?’
‘Nothing--beyond your attention and secrecy.’
‘And yet you love revenge,’ said Sainte-Croix, eyeing him with mistrust.
‘It is my life--my very blood,’ answered Exili. ‘And my revenge--the deepest I can have--is to teach you all I know.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Simply what I have said. You may call it good for evil if you choose, but still it is my revenge. You have time and leisure before you. Make the best of both.’
Again Exili gazed at Sainte-Croix with the expression of a vulture hovering about its prey, as Gaudin advanced to the table, and, with some curiosity, handled the apparatus which was spread about it. The physician opened a drawer in the box, which was apparently filled with sand. This, however, was but on a false top, which he drew away, and discovered several small bottles, of the size of one’s finger, which he took out.
‘These small messengers have worked great events in their time,’ he said. ‘This,’ taking up one, ‘was the terror of Rome, of Verona, and Milan. I could add much to the records of the Scaliger and Borromeo families, respecting its efficacy. This,’ he added, pointing to another, ‘is so potent that a century and a half has not impaired its power. It is the foam of a dying boar, slain by poison, collected as you see, and was the scourge with which the Borgias swept away their enemies.’
‘Why is one of the phials gilt?’ asked Gaudin.
‘Because its contents are the most precious,’ returned Exili. ‘Its power baffled even the attempts at imitation of Spara and Tofana. It was discovered by a monk in a convent at Palermo, and the secret has remained with me alone.’
‘It is clear as water,’ observed Gaudin, holding it against the light.
‘And like water, without taste or odour. It aided many whose hearts clung to one another,’ he continued, watching Sainte-Croix with his eagle eyes; ‘by clearing away the obstacles that impeded their union.’
Gaudin stretched out his hand, trembling with emotion, and clutched the phial, which he regarded intently, his dilated pupil, parted lips, and short, hurried breathing, showing the conflict of passions that was going on within him. Exili passed a few more of the phials in review before him. From one he let fall a few drops upon the hearth; it hissed and boiled, and the stone remained black where it had been; into another he dipped a piece of gold, and its yellow and polished surface was changed to a dull gray by the contact.
Then throwing out several of the allusions which he found had most deeply stung his companion the night before, he placed himself by the side of Gaudin, and proceeded to explain to him the rough composition of the different articles the box contained. And as he saw the intense attention, the almost gasping eagerness with which Sainte-Croix followed his instructions, he exclaimed almost unconsciously,
‘Mine--mine for ever!’