CHAPTER XIX.

THE MISCHIEF STILL THICKENS ON ALL SIDES

Hurriedly as François d’Aubray ascended the staircase, yet the others found time to receive him with due effect. Gaudin retreated within the lumbering piece of furniture that took up half one side of the room; Exili resumed his attitude of attention to the chemical preparations going on; and Lachaussée, burying his features still deeper in his capuchin cowl, hastily lighted a rude lamp standing on a tripod near the table, which, trimmed with some medicated spirit, burned with a ghastly flame that threw a cadaverous and almost unearthly light upon the countenances of those who turned their faces towards it.

‘I am before my time,’ said François, as he entered the room; ‘it yet wants a good half-hour to curfew.’

‘We are at your service,’ replied Exili; ‘my assistant told me we might expect you, Monsieur d’Aubray.’

‘You know me, then!’ exclaimed the other with surprise.

‘No more than I am acquainted with every one else who comes to seek my aid,’ answered the physician calmly. ‘I should lay small claim to my title of astrologer if I could not divine the position or desires of my clients.’

‘Then you know my business here this evening?’

‘Part has been told me,’ said Exili--‘part, and the most important, I can read here.’

From a small china cup he took some noisome black unguent, with which he smeared his hands, and held them in the light of the coloured flame. Then tracing (or pretending to do so) certain things delineated on the compound, he continued--

‘I see Notre Dame by night, and a duel being fought on the _terrain_, between yourself and one they call Gaudin de Sainte-Croix. You wound him--he leaves with his _témoin_ in a boat, and you return to the Hôtel d’Aubray.’

‘Well?’ asked François eagerly, gazing at Exili with breathless attention.

‘Well,’ echoed the physician, ‘your sister, Madame de Brinvilliers, is awaiting your return. You have words together, and she is determined not to give up her lover, your late antagonist.’

‘Is that known also?’ asked François in a tone of mortification.

‘More by common report than by my magic,’ said Exili. ‘Walk on the quays and carrefours and listen to what the people say if you doubt me.’

‘Go on--go on,’ exclaimed the other.

‘I see no more,’ replied the physician; ‘all else has been told me by mortal lips. You wish to stop this liaison, without totally crushing your sister together with it. Is it not so?’

‘You are correct. I do not wish Madame de Brinvilliers to fall so utterly; but Sainte-Croix’s influence with her must be put an end to.’

‘The means are simple,’ replied Exili.

‘I know what you would say,’ interrupted D’Aubray; ‘you would have me exercise the most cursed power you have at your command--that of poison. No, physician--I am no murderer. If I met Sainte-Croix again in fair fight, I might deal less gently with him; but if he fell, it should be in equal combat.’

‘You spoke too hurriedly,’ continued Exili. ‘I would suggest the glance of an evil eye, or some philtre that might draw his affections away, and disgust his present mistress. Here is such a one, unless you would have him blighted by my glance.’

He fixed his eyes upon D’Aubray with such a terrible expression that François firmly believed the power rested in them which he vaunted. He returned no answer, but stretched out his hand for the small phial that Exili held towards him.

‘Now seek the fairest _dame galante_ that you can find, who would have an officer of the Normandy cavalry for her lover, and bid her drink it--fearlessly, for it is harmless. Gaudin de Sainte-Croix will be in her toils from that instant. The whirlpool of passion will drag him round faster and faster in its eddies, until he is lost; for in perdition alone can an attachment formed on passion end.’

‘Is there any one above another to whom I should give the draught?’ asked D’Aubray.

‘’Tis immaterial,’ replied Exili; ‘there is no lack of such beauties at present in our gay city. Seek, if to-morrow be fine, and you will find a score upon the Pont Neuf to serve your turn. If not, Marotte Dupré, La Duménil, La Varenne--pshaw! even Montespan herself, in all the plumage of her last triumph, if you choose to fly at such high game.’

D’Aubray placed some pieces of gold on the table, and rose to depart, taking the potion with him. Exili also got up from the seat at the same time, as he said--

‘Stay--let me light you down. The stairs are old and crumbling, and the passage obscure.’

He took the lamp from the table, and, preceding his guest, led the way down the staircase. As they reached the street door he said hurriedly to D’Aubray--

‘Your hatred of Sainte-Croix cannot be deadlier, fiercer than my own. Be satisfied with knowing that, should the philtre fail, his days are numbered.’

He watched the retreating form of François d’Aubray until it was lost in the obscurity of the Rue de l’Hirondelle, and then returned back to his apartment.

Sainte-Croix had emerged from his place of concealment, and was now conversing with Lachaussée. Their talk ceased suddenly as Exili entered; but there was an air of excitement about both, as though they had been engaged in a warm, though brief argument. Gaudin’s face was flushed, his brow knit, and his breathing forcible and hurried; whilst Lachaussée was compressing his under-lip forcibly against his teeth, as he caressed the mastiff with his foot--merely, however, with the pretence of doing something, for his eye was fixed on Sainte-Croix with no very bland expression.

The quick glance of Exili detected that they had been interrupted in some earnest conversation. He, however, took no notice of it. Sainte-Croix took his departure as soon as he imagined François d’Aubray was out of the way; and Exili extinguished the fire in his small furnace, and also prepared to leave the room.

‘I shall go to rest,’ he said to his assistant. ‘The only other visitor we expect to-night will be content with your augury. See that he pays, however; and, after you have got all you can by agreement, see what else can be wrung from him by fear.’

He gathered a few articles together and left the chamber, proceeding to the one immediately over it, where his slow and measured tread could soon be heard pacing the old and ill-secured floor ere he retired to bed.

Lachaussée remained for a few minutes after he left in deep reflection, from which he was aroused by the sound of the curfew, as the adjacent bell of Notre Dame, on the other side the left branch of the Seine, swung its booming echoes over the dreary precincts of the Rue de l’Hirondelle. It had not ceased when the restless manner of the mastiff betokened the arrival of another stranger. A growl was followed by a deep hoarse bark, and the beast rose from his crouching position at the feet of Lachaussée, and shambled round the room with the gait of some huge wild animal; his strange head-gear giving him the appearance in the obscurity of a superhuman monster. At a word from Lachaussée the mastiff returned and resumed his place; and, after a blundering noise up the staircase, mingled with a few oaths from the new-comer, the door opened, and no less a personage entered the room than honest Benoit, the master of the mill-boat at the Pont Notre Dame.

Lachaussée pulled his cowl closer over his head than ever as the visitor advanced, apparently in great awe, and making numberless obeisances as he approached.

‘You made an appointment here this evening,’ said Lachaussée in a feigned voice, ‘touching some theft committed at your mill.’

‘I did, most infernal seigneur,’ replied Benoit, searching for some term of appropriate respect. ‘That is--my wife, Monsieur--Monseigneur--Bathilde would have me come, and never let me have any rest until I did, though she is not often so fidgety.’

‘And what does she want to know?’

‘Mass! she told me to ask more things than I can recollect, when she found I had made up my mind to come. Woman’s curiosity, monsieur--nothing more. She would have known who the young gallant is that spends all his time talking to the pretty wife of Pierre Huchet when he is on guard as a good bourgeois; and why the Veuve Boidart always goes to mass at St. Jacques la Boucherie, living, as she does, in the Rue de la Harpe; and if it was the students or the Bohemians, or both together, who stole the gilded weathercock from our mill-boat, which was given to me by Monsieur le Rouge, and belonged to the _tourelle_ of the Grand Châtelet that tumbled down the other day.’

‘You had better look for it amongst the scholars of Mazarin and Cluny than in the Cours des Miracles,’ replied Lachaussée. ‘But this is not all?’

‘She--in fact, I may say _we_,’ continued Benoit, ‘were most anxious to know what has become of a fellow-countrywoman, one Louise Gauthier, who has, we fear, fallen into bad hands. She was living with Madame Scarron, but has not been heard of since the fete at Versailles.’

‘What fee can you pay to learn?’ asked Lachaussée. ‘At this season the rulers of the planets require to be propitiated, and the sacrifices are expensive.’

‘There are two good livres,’ said Benoit, laying the pieces down on the table. ‘You should have more if I had earned them; but times are bad for us poor workpeople.’

‘You have no more than this?’ inquired Lachaussée.

‘Not a sou; and Bathilde will have to go without her lace cap against her fete day as it is. If I had more I would give it to you, so long as you tell me of Louise Gauthier.’

Lachaussée perceived the Languedocian spoke honestly. Convinced that he saw the extent of his wealth before him, he made some preparations for his pretended incantation; and taking a bottle of spirit from Exili’s table, he poured it on the expiring flame in the tripod, which was leaping up in intermittent flashes, as if about to go out altogether.

But as he bent over the lamp, in the carelessness of the moment he used more of the medicated alcohol than was needed. It fired up, and catching the vapour from the bottle, communicated with the contents, causing the flask to explode violently. Lachaussée started back, as a cloud of flame rose almost in his face. As it was, it laid hold of his cowl, which was immediately on fire. Heedless of being on his guard, in the fright and danger of the moment he threw it off, and his well known features met the astonished gaze of Benoit, who was in no less a state of alarm than the pretended sorcerer. But as he recognised the ex-superintendent of the Gobelins, his common sense came back in great strength, to the discomfiture of his belief in the supernatural. The alarm finished with the explosion; but Benoit immediately exclaimed--

‘I think we have met before--in the catacombs of the Bièvre!’

Lachaussée had been so taken by surprise that for a few seconds he made no reply; whilst Benoit’s fingers were working as though he clutched an imaginary stick, and intended to use it. All his respect for the magician had vanished in his desire to chastise Lachaussée.

‘Concealment is no longer needful,’ at length he observed.

‘Not at all,’ said Benoit, as he swept the pieces of money from the table and put them in his pocket again. ‘I know now how it was you were not drowned in the Bièvre; we shall see you on the gibbet yet. ’Tis a pity your horoscopes did not foretell this bad chance. I wish you good-bye.’

‘Hold!’ cried Lachaussée, as Benoit advanced to the door: ‘you go not so easily--we must understand each other first.’

‘It will not take long to do that,’ replied the Languedocian. ‘My arms can speak pretty plainly when they are needed.’

‘And so can this,’ exclaimed the other, as he took down a cumbrous old pistol fitted with a _snaphaunce_ and presented it at the Languedocian. ‘Now--you are unarmed, and the odds are against you. We must have a compact before you leave.’

Benoit retreated before the fire-arm, as though intimidated until he reached the window; this he dashed open with his fist, and then commenced calling for the watch with all his might. In an instant Lachaussée raised the pistol and discharged its contents. But the _snaphaunce_ was comparatively a clumsy contrivance; it hung a second upon being released; and Benoit, perceiving the object of the other, suddenly stooped, so that the charge, whatever it was, passed over his head and through the window, shattering the casement on the other side of the street.

‘A miss again!’ cried Benoit, jumping upright. ‘Bras d’Acier himself took no better aim in the catacombs. _Au secours! aux voleurs!_ Now, then, Monsieur Lachaussée, look out for yourself. Here comes the Guet Royal, or I am mistaken.’

And indeed, as he spoke, the lanterns of the watch were discernible coming round the street, attracted by the lusty lungs of Benoit. Lachaussée muttered an imprecation as he advanced to the window, and observed them coming closer to the door. Not caring to be given into custody, and perceiving that he could not escape by the street, he hurriedly left the room, closing the door after him, and Benoit heard him going upstairs. The mastiff would, in all probability, have fastened upon the Languedocian, as he kept growling in a crouching position as though preparing to spring, but the contrivance fastened about his head so effectually muzzled him that Benoit was under no apprehensions.

‘_Ohé! messieurs!_’ he shouted; ‘come on, or the bird will have flown. Look out for the roof as well as the door. He is an active fellow, but no sorcerer. You see his familiars will not release him.’

As he spoke, a cry from the guard below called Benoit’s attention to the direction in which they were gazing. We have stated that the Rue de l’Hirondelle was crossed by several large black beams, from the houses on one side of the way to those on the other, that the ruinous buildings might not fall upon the heads of the passers-by. As Benoit looked up, he perceived that Lachaussée had emerged from one of the windows of the floor above, and at his imminent peril was clinging to the beam, and traversing it as he best might, to reach the house opposite. But, narrow as the thoroughfare was, before he had half crossed it, Benoit had crept out of the window from which he had called the watch, on to another of the supports below the one chosen by Lachaussée, and telling the guard to withhold their fire, was in pursuit of his old acquaintance. The soldiers paused to watch the strange chase, and gave a cry of admiration as Benoit, clutching the timber above him, by a violent effort swung himself up to the beam by which the other was endeavouring to escape.

It was a moment of keen anxiety. They were both afraid of letting go their hold, which was so treacherous that the least change in their position would have caused them to overbalance themselves and tumble down into the street; and so they remained for some minutes, watching each other like two fencers, to be in readiness for any attack the other was about to make. At length Lachaussée made a creeping movement in advance, when Benoit, whose mountebank engagements had given him a certain kind of gymnastic superiority, trusting to his knees to keep him from falling, caught hold of Lachaussée by the legs. But he lost his equilibrium in so doing, and after wavering for an instant as if in uncertainty, he fell on one side of the beam--still, however, keeping hold of the other, who was now driven to support both himself and Benoit by his arms, half-hanging from, half-leaning over, the timber.

‘Look out, _mes braves_,’ gasped the Languedocian, ‘and catch us. Our friend won’t hold long. No, no,’ he continued, as Lachaussée, struggling, tried to free himself from the grip, ‘you don’t shake me off. I will stick to you as the hangman will some day. Come under and hold your scarves.’

The guards were quick in taking the hint. Not a quarter of a minute had passed before they had pulled off their scarves, and some ten or a dozen standing in a circle laid hold of the different ends, pulling them tight, so as to form a sort of network, as they stood in a ring directly beneath Benoit.

In vain Lachaussée tried to get away. Every struggle expended what strength he had remaining, until, unable any longer to cling to the beam, he fell, and Benoit with him. They came heavily down, pulling one or two of the watch to the ground; but the scarves broke their fall of some twelve feet, and the next moment Benoit was on his legs, whilst Lachaussée found himself in the custody of the guard, at the head of which he perceived Sainte-Croix. Gaudin had fallen in with the patrol soon after leaving the house of Exili, and knowing the Chevalier du Guet for the night, had sauntered on in conversation with him at the head of the watch, until they had been attracted to the Rue de l’Hirondelle by Benoit’s cries for assistance.

‘To the lock-up with such a gallows-bird!’ cried Benoit. ‘I can tell you as much about him as will last until to-morrow morning. Guard him well, or the devil will strangle him in the night, as he did the other sorcerers.’

The officer directed his party to move on, guarding Lachaussée between them, whilst Benoit brought up the rear. As they started from the Rue de l’Hirondelle he looked up to the house they had just quitted, and saw Exili’s vulture face peering from one of the windows at the tumult; but of this he took no notice.

On the way to the guard-house Gaudin approached Lachaussée, at a signal from the latter.

‘You can free me if you choose,’ said the superintendent shortly.

‘I shall not interfere in the matter,’ replied Sainte-Croix. ‘Only be satisfied that you are not a prisoner by _my_ agency.’

‘If you refuse to liberate me,’ returned the other, ‘the earth may tell some strange secrets that you would not care should be known.’

‘What do you mean, cur?’ said Gaudin contemptuously.

‘Civil words, Monsieur de Sainte-Croix,’ answered Lachaussée. ‘We have chemical compounds that, in the event of M. Dreux d’Aubray’s body being exhumed, would bring every atom of his last beverage to its simple elements. Do you understand? There cannot be so much difficulty as you imagine in procuring my liberation.’

‘Silence!’ returned Gaudin in a low quick voice; ‘silence--or we shall be overheard.’

‘But my freedom!’ continued Lachaussée in a loud tone.

‘Wait until we get to the guard-house,’ said Sainte-Croix, as he passed on, and was once more at the side of the Chevalier du Guet.

They passed on through some of the narrow tortuous streets that lie towards the water boundary of the Quartier Latin, and at last arrived at a guard-house in the vicinity of the Hôtel Dieu. Gaudin spoke a few words to the captain of the watch aside, which the other appeared to agree with: they were evidently companions as well as acquaintances.

‘There is some mistake here,’ said Sainte-Croix. ‘I see now the prisoner you have captured is my valet. He has been lunatic enough to go and consult some predicting varlet, and met this other simple fellow. They have had a brawl between them; and whoever first called the guard would have given the other into custody.’

‘_Pardieu!_’ said Benoit, ‘you great seigneurs have different notions of a brawl to us artisans. I suppose, if his _snaphaunce_ had put me beyond Master Glazer’s skill, who can cure anything, you would have thought lightly of it.’

‘Silence! common person!’ said the captain.

‘I _will_ speak,’ said Benoit, who began to be very angry at this unexpected turn that things were taking; ‘and I am not a common person. Ask Monsieur Sainte-Croix if he found me so when we met one night at the corner of the Rue Neuve St. Paul. I believe that all the Bohemians and the great folks in Paris are so leagued together that they are afraid of one another, and the people receive all the buffets of their disagreeings. The man Lachaussée there is an inhabitant of all the Cours des Miracles in Paris. I know him, I tell you.’

‘You are at liberty, fellow; you can depart,’ said the officer.

‘Liberty, forsooth!’ continued Benoit with increased excitement. ‘Why, I have never been arrested. I am the accuser; and M. de Sainte-Croix knows that Lachaussée is no more----’

At a motion from the captain of the watch, two of the guard seized Benoit whilst he was thus pouring out his anger, and, without allowing him to finish his speech, very unceremoniously turned him out of the guard-house, and half-drove, half-walked him to the end of the street, where they left him to go home to the boat-mill, vowing that he would still be even with all of them.