CHAPTER XVIII.

THE RUE DE L’HIRONDELLE

On the southern bank of the Seine, touching the water-boundary of the Quartier Latin, and running parallel with the river from the Place du Pont St. Michel, which is situated at the foot of the bridge from which it takes its name, there is a dark and noisome street, bordered by tall gloomy houses, and so narrow in its thoroughfare that the inhabitants on either side of the way can all but shake hands with each other across the footway--for carriages could not pass. It is called--for it exists in all its pristine squalor and wretchedness at the present day--the Rue de l’Hirondelle. The pure air can scarcely penetrate to its reeking precincts, the way is choked up with offal and things flung from the houses to decay in the streets. The houses are tenanted by the lowest orders, and the dirt of ages has been suffered to accumulate on the walls and passages: in fact, it bears some resemblance to the miserable portion of the ‘Rookery’ still left in London, with the exception, that this Rue de l’Hirondelle is narrower and darker. Gloomy at all times, at night the thinly scattered lamps scarcely illuminate its entrance; and he would be a bold man indeed who chose to pass along it alone. And in the seventeenth century, before the introduction of street-lights, when the poverty of its inhabitants would not allow them to place lanterns before their doors, it was always in total darkness, even when bright moonlight fell upon the quays and open places.

It was the evening of the funeral of M. d’Aubray, the father. The night was stormy, and the wind howled over the city as if bearing on its wings spirits wailing for the dead and crying for retribution. Few cared to be abroad: the few lamps had been extinguished after struggling against the blast and were not relighted: and one window only in the Rue de l’Hirondelle gave token that the houses were inhabited.

In a miserable room of one of the worst-conditioned houses--so ruinous in its appearance that large black beams crossed the street from its front to the opposite side of the narrow street, to prop it up from falling and crushing those who might be below--there were two persons seated at a small fire. In one of them any person who had once seen him could have recognised the Italian Exili, although his imprisonment had left traces of its privations upon his face. His features were more wan, his hair was grizzled, and his eyes had sunk yet deeper, glaring from the bottom of the orbits with riveting intensity. His companion was dressed in a fantastic costume of old black velvet, with a capuchin cowl which, when worn over his head, nearly concealed his face, and his head was now buried in it,--less, however, for privacy than to shield himself from the cold draughts of air that poured in through the broken, ill-fitted windows. On a rough table before him were pieces of money, of all degrees of value: and these he was counting, as he put them away in a box heavily clasped with iron.

‘Sorcery is still thriving,’ said the latter personage, ‘and we have had a good day. Here are twelve pistoles from the Demoiselle La Varenne, who came to-day suspicious of her new patron, M. Chanralon, the Archbishop of Paris. He has taken up with the Marchioness of Gourville.’

‘The sister of the _maréchal_?’ asked Exili.

‘The same. Ho! ho! ours is a brave court!’ continued the other with a derisive laugh. ‘Better be magician than superintendent at the Gobelins. Here is a piece of gold from the same clique. Pierre-Pont, the lieutenant of the Gardes-du-corps, is crazy with jealousy for La Varenne. He came to-day for a philtre: he will come for poison next.’

‘Hush!’ exclaimed Exili; ‘the very echoes linger about these walls to repeat themselves to the next comers. I find liberty too sweet to run the chance of another sojourn in the Bastille, where Sainte-Croix would too gladly see me--curses wither him!’

‘He will be here to-night,’ replied Lachaussée--for such was Exili’s companion--‘to have his wound dressed. M. François d’Aubray is an expert swordsman, and the Captain found his match on the _terrain_ last night.’

The ex-superintendent alluded to a duel which had been fought on the preceding night on a lonely piece of waste-ground behind Notre Dame, frequently chosen for such engagements from the facility of escape which the river on all sides afforded. Gaudin had met the brother of the Marchioness--the result of the rencontre at Versailles--and had been wounded. He had taken Lachaussée with him as an attendant; for that person, since the affair in the catacombs of the Bièvre, had been leading but a sorry life during Gaudin’s imprisonment, and was now assisting Exili in professing the art and mystery of a sorcerer. The cause of the Italian’s release from the Bastille was never publicly stated, though many knew it. Threatened revelations, which would deeply have affected those high in position in Paris, procured his discharge within a few days of Sainte-Croix’s liberation; and once more thrown upon the world of the great city, he had, under his old cloak of an alchemist, set up for a magician. He had encountered Lachaussée ready to assist him, or to avail himself, in fact, of any chance of livelihood that might turn up; and linked together as they, in a measure, were, by the affair of the Croce Bianca at Milan, they had become trusty partners; for the bondages of crime, despite the evil natures of the allies, are firmer than those of honour and friendship. Exili, with the deeply-vindictive and unforgiving disposition of his countrymen, desired only to be revenged upon Gaudin for his arrest and confinement; and Lachaussée, knowing that he was in the power of Sainte-Croix as long as the letter announcing the crime at Milan was in his possession, was equally anxious for his downfall. More than once he had counselled Exili to instil some poison into the wound as he dressed it, that might have induced an agonising death. But the Italian patiently awaited his time to pounce, as an eagle would have done, upon his prey. He wished to play with his victim, secretly sure that he would eventually fall miserably, through his agency--and not alone.

‘Twenty crowns more,’ said Lachaussée, as he swept the remaining pieces of coin into the chest, ‘and that from the armourer’s wife of the Place Dauphin to show her the devil! It is lucky her courage did not fail her until after she had paid her money. We should else have been terribly put to our wits to exhibit his highness.’

‘Unless our interest with M. de Sainte-Croix could have produced Madame de Brinvilliers,’ answered Exili, as a ghastly smile flitted over his sallow countenance--a dull and transient sunbeam playing upon the face of a corpse.

‘And we shall have more money still,’ said Lachaussée, taking no notice of Exili’s speech. ‘I know two customers who will come after curfew this evening. Witchcraft is flourishing.’

‘The infernal powers grant that it may not turn round upon us,’ said Exili. ‘Recollect, within four days of each other, that César and Ruggieri were both strangled by the devil--at least, so goes the story.’

‘The solution is easy,’ returned Lachaussée. ‘They boasted of favours granted by the great ladies of the court: ’tis a dangerous game to play.’

‘At all events the fall of Urban Grandier was mortal. I have no wish to be roasted alive like him. Hist! I hear some one coming up to our room.’

A mastiff who had been reposing silently at Exili’s feet, having a strange contrivance fastened on to its head, in the manner of a mask, and representing a demon’s face, in order that the vulgar might take it for his familiar spirit, uttered a low growl; and the sound of approaching footsteps, stumbling up the rugged staircase of the house, was plainly audible. The next moment Gaudin de Sainte-Croix knocked at the door, and was admitted to the apartment.

‘Your unguent has marvellous powers of healing,’ he said to Exili, after the first salutations. ‘I am already cured, although the wound had an ugly look.’

‘I could have put the hurt beyond any leech’s skill to cure, by anointing the blade with some pomander of my own make,’ said Exili. ‘It would send such venom through the veins, as soon as it pierced them, that human aid would be of little avail. Your wasp stung you smartly as it was; but you see I cured you.’

‘Unlike the wasp,’ said Sainte-Croix, ‘he still retains his sting about him.’

‘Then render it powerless,’ replied Exili, fixing his eyes steadfastly on him. ‘You can do it: more obnoxious insects than François d’Aubray have fallen by our means. The earth has this day enfolded one in its cold dark shroud--the deed and the victim are hidden together.’

‘A second would excite suspicion,’ replied Gaudin, perceiving the drift of his words.

‘A second and a third and a twentieth might pass away with equal secrecy,’ returned Exili. ‘Look you, Monsieur de Sainte-Croix, when men have played with life and death as we have done, even to the perdition, the utter, hopeless ruin of their souls, in whatever state may follow this short fever of worldly existence,--when the triumph of the hour that passes is all our passions crave, and the purity of that which has gone, the misery of the time which is to come, are alike spurned from consideration and forgotten in the wild and heedless recklessness of the present,--in this position they should have no secrets: all should be in common between them.’

‘I have kept nothing from you,’ said Gaudin.

‘I do not say you have,’ continued Exili; ‘it is to the effusion of my own most hidden knowledge I allude. All that this great city holds of rank, beauty, and power are my slaves. I give the succession to the thirsting profligate, or remove the bar that keeps the panting lover from his idol. These fools and butterflies come to seek me as they would a mere drug-vendor, and little think of what I may have in store for them. There is not one particle of the venom in their crystal drinks which I cannot call back to its tangible state; and when I die I shall leave the process of the tests behind me, to confound the latest poisoners. But until then, as chemical art at present stands, the traces are inscrutable. Your way is open before you.’

As Exili finished speaking, he turned on one side as if to overlook the contents of a small retort that was bubbling over a spirit-lamp at his side: but his gaze was still directed towards Sainte-Croix.

‘You would have me send this François d’Aubray to join his father?’ said Gaudin, after a minute’s pause.

‘He is coming here this evening,’ observed Lachaussée, ‘and ought to have been here before this.’

‘You have not given him any of the Aqua Tofana?’ asked Gaudin, with a look of alarm.

‘Calm yourself, _mon capitaine_,’ replied Exili with a sneer. ‘He will not come for poison, but a philtre; and that not for love, but against it. He does not fear the glance of an evil eye; he wishes to turn aside the magic of a fond one.’

Those high in position in Paris at this epoch, no less than the humblest and least instructed inhabitants of the city, were accustomed to place the blindest confidence in the predictions and potions of the various fortune-tellers and empirics with whom Paris swarmed, under the names of alchemists, magicians, and Bohemians. The court set the example of belief; and the common people, ever ready to imitate its follies, readily fell into the same superstition. Links in the chain of the wonderful system of espionage which ran through the entire population,--the universal corruption of all classes, especially valets, mistresses, and confessors, which Richelieu had effected,--the astrologers gleaned important information respecting the inhabitants, which they were ever ready to place at the disposal of the best paymaster. The higher orders sought them eagerly, paying them as long as they served a purpose; but, when this was over, a _lettre de cachet_ consigned them to the Bastille, and they were generally found strangled in their cells, the murder being attributed invariably to the devil.

‘Hark!’ said Lachaussée, whose ear had been on the alert to catch the slightest sound; ‘I can hear some one approaching.’

‘It should be Monsieur d’Aubray,’ replied Exili. ‘He must not see you here, however,’ he continued, addressing Sainte-Croix. ‘Step within this cabinet, and you will doubtless find out the feelings of his family towards you.’

Gaudin caught up his hat and sword, and had scarcely concealed himself when the brother of the Marchioness of Brinvilliers entered the apartment.