CHAPTER XXI.
THE DEAD-HOUSE OF THE HÔTEL DIEU, AND THE ORGY AT THE HÔTEL DE CLUNY
The autumn passed away, and winter came on in all its severity. The trees in the gardens of the Tuileries and the Palais d’Orleans, where the parterres and avenues of the Luxembourg are now situated, rose naked and dreary towards the dull sky; and the snow lay deep upon the Butte St. Roche, uncarted and uncared for, threatening to inundate the lower streets in the vicinity when the thaw came. The public places, too, lost their air of life and business. The mountebanks, showmen, and dentists ceased to pitch their platforms on the Pont Neuf and Carrefour du Châtelet; for although they were individuals inured to cold, yet they found the promenaders were more sensitive, and would not stop to listen to their harangues. The women were less attractive to the passing glance of the cavaliers in the streets, or the still mundane fathers in the churches. No more white shoulders, covered only by the rippling curls of the period, flashed in the afternoon sunlight--no more dazzling throats captured the hearts and the purses of the susceptible young gallants of the patrician _quartiers_, or whatever qualities supplied the perfect absence of either in the scholars of Cluny, Mazarin, and the Hôtel Dieu, attached to the Pays Latin. Sometimes an hour or two of warm sunlight brought the gossipers out in the middle of the day to their old haunts; elsewise they preferred assembling in the shops of the most approved retailers of passing scandal, and there canvassing the advantages or demerits of the different characters, or the probable results of the various politics, then mostly talked of in the good city of Paris.
The shop of Maître Glazer, the apothecary of the Place Maubert, was the most favoured resort of the idle bourgeois. They loved it in the summer, when the pure air came through the open front of the window to dilute the atmosphere of cunning remedies that filled it, and it appeared to have the same charm in the winter, although closely shut; perhaps from the idea, with some, that the inhalation of the air laden with such marvellous odours of chemicals and galenicals would have all the effect of swallowing the things themselves, and on a cheaper and less noxious plan.
But, in truth, the shop of Maître Glazer possessed various advantages over others as a lounge for the gossipers. In his quality of apothecary he was admitted to the councils, arrangements, and disputes of all the families in the neighbourhood; and not wishing to favour one more than another, he very properly retailed them in a circle from one to the other, which made his society much sought after; indeed, he was suspected of being sent for sometimes when the indisposition was a mere pretext for conversing a quarter of an hour with the apothecary, at such times as the supposed invalid was dying--not in the common acceptance of the word, but to be satisfied with regard to any point deeply affecting some neighbour; and as the cure in these cases was always very rapid, Maître Glazer got fresh honour thereby.
But just at present matters of deeper moment attracted the idlers to his shop than the discussion of mere domestic affairs. We have said that his reputation stood well in Paris as a talented compounder of antidotes to poisons; and the still increasing number of mysterious deaths in the city and faubourgs, which so entirely baffled all medical or surgical art, either to arrest the progress of the disease or discover its source--although they were all attributed to the working of poison--provided subjects for conversation in the mouths of everybody. The terrible episode which formed so fearful a characteristic of the moral state of the reign of Louis XIV., was now talked of publicly and generally, until the topic increasing led, but a very few years after the period of our story, to the establishment of the Chambre des Poisons, ordained by order of the King to inquire into the deeds of the poisoners and magicians then practising in Paris, and punish them if the accusations were brought home.
Maître Glazer was in his shop, and so was his son Philippe, together with Maître Picard, Jean Blacquart the Gascon, and one or two of the bourgeois neighbours, talking over the events of the day. Panurge was compounding medicines at his usual post, and endeavouring to outlie the Gascon, according to custom; and sometimes their controversies ran so high that they were only quieted when Philippe threatened to thrash them both at once, or beat every atom of flesh from Panurge’s bones, which, looking to his miserable condition, was certainly not a process of any very great labour.
‘I do not believe in all these stories,’ said Philippe; ‘they frighten the city, but not our profession. I admit that there is a grievous epidemic about, but the same symptoms attack those who die in and out of our hospital.’
‘Are the symptoms the same?’ asked a neighbour.
‘Precisely,’ replied Philippe: ‘there is the same wasting away of body and spirits; the same fluttering pulse and fevered system; the same low, crushing weariness of mind, until all is over. One would imagine, if all were true, that the poisoners were in the very heart of the Hôtel Dieu.’
‘I must have taken some myself,’ said Maître Picard. ‘My spirits sink, and I have a constant thirst; my pulse flutters too, wonderfully, albeit my body does not waste.’
‘May not Spara’s disciples have got to the hospital?’ asked the bourgeois who had before spoken.
‘Pshaw!’ said Philippe; ‘the sisters of charity are the only persons who tend our sick, and we can trust them. The Marchioness of Brinvilliers is amongst them. Whatever her faults, her kind words and gentle smile go far to soothe many pain-wearied frames; and yet she loses more of her patients than all the others.’
‘I have tested all the water used in the city,’ said Glazer, ‘but found it pure and wholesome. And I have made Panurge drink bucketfuls of it, but it never affected him.’
‘And yet to any one who cared to drug our fountains,’ said Philippe, ‘it would not be difficult, at nightfall, to row along the river and climb up the pillars of the Samaritaine.[15] A potion in its reservoir would carry death tolerably well over the city by the next noontide.’
‘It might be done with advantage,’ said a bourgeois. ‘The greater part of its water goes to the basins and fountains of the Tuileries, and the people who pay for it die of drought. The King cares more for his swans and orange trees than for his subjects.’
‘Neighbour Viot,’ said Maître Picard, ‘I am a public officer, and cannot allow such rebel talk.’
‘Beware of secret hurt rather than open authority,’ said Glazer. ‘Those words, so publicly expressed, may bring the Aqua Tofana into your goblet this very night.’
The face of bourgeois Viot fell at the mere hint of impending danger.
‘You surely do not think so?’ he said.
‘I do not say what I do not think,’ replied the apothecary. ‘If you have fear, after promulgating these rash sentiments, take some of my antidote with you: it is of rare virtue.’
‘It cured me,’ said Panurge, ‘after I had swallowed, at my master’s orders, a quantity of the St. Nicholas manna enough to kill a horse.’
‘But an ass is a different animal, Panurge,’ said Philippe, as he took up his hat and left the shop.
The humble assistant did not dare to retort, but seeing the Gascon laughing at him, when Philippe had gone, he aimed a blow at him with a bleeding-staff, which would have hurt Blacquart sorely had he not dived down and avoided it. As it was, the staff descended on the counter and broke a bottle, for which he was severely chidden by his master.
In the meantime Philippe Glazer, leaving his father’s, crossed the river by the Petit Pont and took his way towards Notre Dame. The doors of the cathedral were still open, and he entered the southern aisle, now dimly lighted by a few votive tapers, which were flaring and guttering upon their rude iron stands in the currents of air that swept through the interior. A man, who was evidently waiting to meet him, emerged from the shadow of one of the pillars as he advanced.
‘M. de Sainte-Croix!’
‘Philippe Glazer!’
‘We are truly met,’ said the student. ‘I received your note this evening, and you can come to the hospital with me.’
‘You are obliging me,’ said Gaudin; ‘I am anxious respecting the health of an old servant of mine, now an inmate.’
‘Pshaw! Captain Gaudin,’ replied Philippe, ‘between the Gens de la Courte Epée there should be no secrets. It is a matter of gallantry, or I am mistaken; we are freemasons, you know, of a certain sort, and may trust each other.’
Gaudin laughed and made an evasive reply, as he took Philippe’s arm; and the two, crossing the square before Notre Dame, entered the Hôtel Dieu. As they passed the lodge, the porter, recognising Philippe, gave him a note which had been left for the gentleman who was expected to accompany him. Gaudin knew the writing, and hastily opened it. Its contents were as follows:--
‘Do not notice me in the hospital, or suspicion will be aroused, and I shall not come again. In the Morgue we shall be free from interruption, and only there. Glazer will conduct you.
‘Marie.’
‘Mass!’ exclaimed Philippe, as Sainte-Croix mentioned the appointment--‘a strange rendezvous! The lady has a bold mind within that delicate frame.’
‘Hush!’ said Gaudin, pressing his arm; ‘do not speak so loud. Show me where the place is and leave me.’
‘Most willingly, if you have courage. One might select a livelier place, however, than the dead-house of an hospital for a trysting-place.’
He took his companion by the hand, and they advanced along one of the arched passages, which the dim lamps barely illuminated, to the top of a flight of stairs. These they descended, and, passing along another vaulted way, paused at a door at the extreme end. It was not fastened. Philippe threw it open, and they entered the Morgue of the hospital--the receptacle for such as died within the precincts of the Hôtel Dieu.
It was a dreary room, with bare white walls and a cold stone floor, lighted by one ghastly lamp that hung against the wall. The frightful mortality for which the hospital was then remarkable kept it well filled with its silent inmates. Some of these were placed upon the ground, enveloped in rough canvas wrappers--the only coffins allowed them--in the same state as they may now be seen brought to the Clamart and other dissecting-schools of Paris; others lay ranged side by side upon large oval marble slabs, capable of accommodating from eight to ten bodies each, and these had merely coarse sheets, or palls, thrown over them. Over the stone floor a wooden trellis was placed, an inch or two in thickness; for the floor was below the level of the turgid Seine, which flowed immediately on the other side of the wall, and the reflection of the lamp glimmering through the interstices showed the water already in the Salle des Cadavres.
As soon as Philippe Glazer had introduced Sainte-Croix to this dreary place he took his departure, and Gaudin was left alone. The light waved in the draught of air caused by opening and closing the door; and as it played over the features of some of the corpses they appeared to move, from the different shadows, and then to resume their wonted calm. In the fever of his mind Gaudin would almost have changed places with them. He had no nervous terror at being alone in such a dismal locality; his only feeling was one that approached to envy of their repose. A minute, however, had scarcely elapsed before the door again opened, and a female, enveloped in a mantle similar to those worn by the sisters of charity, entered. It was the Marchioness of Brinvilliers, who now came to commune with her guilty ally.
They met with perhaps less eagerness than heretofore, albeit they had not seen each other for several days; but although their passion had apparently decreased, yet ties more fearful and more enduring now bound their souls together in the common interest of mutual guilt. The whole world was contracted to the sphere in which they both moved; they knew of, cared for nothing beyond it, except those objects coming within the circle of their dark intent.
After the first greetings had passed, Marie looked cautiously from the door along the vaulted passage. Satisfied that no one was within hearing, she closed it, and going to the marble table, partially threw back the covering from one of the bodies; then grasping Sainte-Croix’s arm, she drew him towards her, saying in a low voice, but clear, and to him distinctly audible--
‘It has done its work nobly, and baffled every physician of the Hôtel Dieu. This one swallowed it in wine, which my own maid, Françoise Roussel, brought to the hospital. The girl would taste it as she went, upon the sly, and it well-nigh cost the fool her life. This one shows what the confiture could do. He lingered long though, and became a skeleton, as you perceive, before his death.’
Sainte-Croix was aghast at these revelations, although they had been anticipated. But the demoniac mind of his beautiful companion drew him still closer towards her; her nature rose grander and grander in the opinion of his dark soul, from the very fiendishness of its attributes.
‘I am _sure_ of its work,’ she continued. ‘Unlimited wealth, unquestioned freedom is in our grasp, so you but second my intentions. My brothers think they are ruling me as they would a wayward girl: how terrible will be my retribution!’
‘I have much to tell you, Marie, of my own plans,’ said Gaudin; ‘but it cannot be here. If those whom you have alluded to fall, others must go with them. We cannot pause in our career.’
‘There is one that I have marked as the earliest,’ returned the Marchioness. ‘I know not how it will affect your own feelings; in this instance I care not.’
Her eyes sparkled with excitement as she spoke, and her rapidity of utterance became mingled with her hurried but irregular respiration. An expression passed across her face of mingled triumph and satisfaction, whilst the fingers of her hand were quickly working one over the other.
‘And who is that, Marie?’ asked Gaudin, his curiosity aroused by the manner of the Marchioness.
‘The pale-faced girl, whose acquaintance with yourself I became so unluckily acquainted with in the Grotto of Thetis--your Languedocian leman--Louise Gauthier.’
‘She must not be injured!’ exclaimed Sainte-Croix hurriedly.
‘She must die!’ replied the Marchioness, with cold but determined meaning. ‘She loves you, and you may still care for her. You must be mine, and mine alone, Gaudin; your affections may not be participated in by another.’
‘All has finished between us, Marie! You are wrong--utterly wrong in your suspicions. You surely will not harm a poor girl like Louise?’
‘Gaudin!’ exclaimed his companion, fixing her glance on him with that intense expression, against the influence of which Sainte-Croix’s determination could not prevail, ‘when we have fallen--step by step, hour by hour--and each time irrevocably, to all appearance, until a fresh abyss, yawning beneath our presence, disclosed a still lower hell open to receive us--when the sympathies of the world have turned away from us to cling to fresh objects, in their parasitical attachment to the freshest and most plausible support, and our hopes and fears are merged into one blank feeling of careless determination by utter despair--when all is given up here and hereafter--in such positions it is not likely that we should pause in the career marked out to be pursued for any sentiment of justice or consideration. I am determined.’
There was the silence of some minutes after she had spoken, broken only by the laboured breathing of either party, or the drip of water, as, stealing through the walls from the river, it fell upon the noisome floor. Each, was waiting for the other to speak. Sainte-Croix was the first to break the pause. He knew that further allusion to Louise Gauthier would induce fresh recrimination--that Marie would believe no protestation on his part that the attachment was over--and that by boldly bearding her, in her present access of jealousy, the utter destruction of the poor girl would be hastened. He therefore endeavoured to turn the subject of their conversation into another channel.
‘Where is your brother?’ he asked. ‘You can act as you please towards the other person, as you appear to be beyond conviction from anything I can urge. François is at present the most important object for our vigilance. Is he in Paris?’
‘He is not,’ replied the Marchioness. ‘Both my brothers are at Offemont, arranging the distribution of the effects about the estate. They will remain there for some days, and then depart to Villequoy. Fortunately François has discharged one of his servants, and is compelled to look after many of his affairs himself, the superintendence of which would otherwise fall to his valet.’
‘Is he anxious to supply the place of the domestic?’ inquired Gaudin eagerly.
‘He is now looking out for some one. But why are you thus curious?’
‘Because I have a creature in my employ--one who dares scarcely call his life his own, unless by my permission, who might fill the post with advantage.’
‘I do not see what we could gain by that,’ observed the Marchioness.
‘He might wait upon his master at table,’ said Gaudin, ‘and pour out his drink.’
He regarded his companion with fixed intensity as he threw out the dark hint contained in his last words.
‘But would there be no suspicion?’ asked Marie.
‘None,’ replied her lover. ‘For his own sake, he would keep the secret close as the grave. He has a ready wit too, and an unabashed presence, that would carry him through any dilemma. I ought to know it.’
‘Hist!’ cried Marie; ‘there is a noise in the passage. We are overheard.’
‘It is nothing,’ said Sainte-Croix. ‘The night-wind rushing along the passages has blown-to some of the doors.’
The Marchioness had gone to the entrance of the _salle_, and looked along the vaulted way that led to it. A door at the upper end was distinctly heard to close.
‘I heard retreating footsteps!’ she exclaimed rapidly, as she returned. ‘There have been some eavesdroppers, I tell you.’
‘Pshaw!’ replied Gaudin; ‘who would come down here? It might be Philippe Glazer, who brought me into the hospital, and is anxious to know how much longer our interview is to last.’
‘He does not know me?’ inquired the Marchioness, in a tone that led up to the answer she desired.
‘He knows nothing, beyond that I have some idle affair with a _religieuse_. _Pardieu!_ if every similar gallantry was taken notice of in Paris, the newsmongers would have enough to do.’
‘However,’ said Marie, ‘it is time that we departed. I must go back to my dreary home.’
And she uttered the last words in a tone of well-acted despondency, as she prepared to depart.
‘Stay, Marie!’ cried Gaudin. ‘You have said that your brothers are at Offemont; who else have you to dread? There is a _réunion_ of all the best that Paris contains of life and revelry in the Rue des Mathurins this evening. You will go with me?’
‘It would be madness, Gaudin. The city would ring with the scandal to-morrow morning.’
‘You can mask,’ returned Sainte-Croix, ‘and so will I. I shall be known to all I care about, and those I can rely on. Marie! you will come?’
He drew a visor from his cloak as he spoke, and held it towards the Marchioness. The necessity for sudden concealment in the affairs of gallantry of the time made such an article part of the appointments of both sexes.
Marie appeared to waver for an instant; but Gaudin seized her hands and whispered a few low, but intense and impassioned words closely in her ear, as though he now mistrusted the very air that, damp and thickened, clung around them. She pulled the white hood over her face, and taking his arm, they quitted the dismal chamber in which this strange interview had taken place.
No notice was taken of them as they left the hospital. The porter was half-asleep in his huge covered settle, still holding the cord of the door in his hand, and he pulled it open mechanically as they passed. On reaching the open space of the Parvis Notre Dame, Sainte-Croix hailed a _voiture de remise_--a clumsy, ill-fashioned thing, but still answering the purpose of those who patronised it, more especially as there was but a small window on either side, and that of such inferior glass that the parties within were doubly private.
They crossed the river by the Petit Pont, and proceeded first to the Rue des Bernardins, where Sainte-Croix’s apartments were situated. Here the Marchioness left the dress of the sisterhood, in which she had visited the hospital, and appeared in her own rich garments; the other having been merely a species of domino with which she had veiled her usual attire. The coach then went on by the Rue des Noyers towards the _hôtel_ indicated by Gaudin.
‘This is a wild mad action, Gaudin,’ said the Marchioness. ‘If it should be discovered, I shall be indeed lost.’
‘There is no chance of recognition,’ replied Sainte-Croix, as he assisted his companion to fasten on her mask. ‘No one has tracked us.’
‘I am not so certain of that,’ said Marie. ‘My eyes have deceived me, or else I have seen, each time we passed a lamp, a figure following the coach, and crouching against the walls and houses. See! there it is again!’
As she spoke, she wiped away the condensed breath upon the windows with her mantle, and called Gaudin’s attention to the street.
‘There!’ she cried; ‘I still see the same figure--tall and dark--moving after us. I cannot discern the features.’
‘It is but some late passenger,’ said Gaudin, ‘who is keeping near our carriage for the safety of an escort. You must recollect we are in the centre of the cut-purse students.’
The coach turned round the corner of the Rue des Mathurins as he spoke, crossing the Rue St. Jacques, and halfway along the street stopped at a _porte-cochère_, which was lighted up with unusual brightness. The door was opened, and as Gaudin assisted the Marchioness to alight, both cast a searching glance along the narrow street in either direction; but excepting a lackey attached to the Hôtel de Cluny, where they now got down, not a person was visible.