CHAPTER CV.
THE SECRET OF THE RING.
Zamara left the site of the Bastille, burning with rage. Every step he took deepened his bitter humiliation. Keenly sensitive about his diminutive form, he felt the cruel sarcasm this woman had put upon him with double force. To half-drown him in a cask, scarcely large enough to hold a child, was a stinging insult, for which he would, some day, have vengeance—vengeance on her, and on the man who had found out his fraud, and made it of no avail. But he still held the ring, and the thought of the gold it would purchase was some consolation.
Zamara went to his own room when he reached the residence of his mistress. His wine-stained garments were soon changed, and he sat down to examine the mysterious prize that had wrought such fatal consequences, at least to one life. It was an Egyptian scarabee, curiously carved, and of a dull green, around which a tiny serpent coiled itself, fold upon fold, shooting its head clear through the beetle, where it had been perforated for the string, upon which these antique gems were often gathered in a necklace for the monarch whose tomb they enriched. This serpent, Zamara truly guessed, had been attached to the scarabee after it was drawn from the tomb, after a sleep of some thousands of years. The head of the serpent was large in proportion to the body, and flattened, like that of an adder before it springs.
The dwarf examined the mechanism of this ring. He began to comprehend that it might be made terrible without magic. He searched the scarabee cautiously with his finger, and at the extremity found a tiny spring, scarcely larger than a grain of mustard-seed. In breathless trepidation he touched this spring, when the head of the serpent curved downward, the jaws opened, and through them shot a ruby tongue, slender and sharp as the finest needles. One dart of this subtile tongue, and the head writhed itself back into place.
The fire that shot over the dusky face of the dwarf was lurid. He understood the meaning of this delicate mechanism, and the sweetness of certain revenge was already in his bad heart. He went to a little cabinet, and took from a secret compartment a tiny earthenware jar, which contained a morsel of some apparently resinous substance. This he examined carefully, gloating over it with eager satisfaction. Opening a small knife, he was about to take some on its point, but a selfish after-thought seized upon him.
“Not yet,” he said; “there must be no danger to _her_, for she alone stands between me and such brutes as nearly murdered me to-night. Ho, the ring shall first win me gold, and then, oh! such sweet revenge. That fierce count has twice laid his great, strong hands upon Zamara—thrice heaped insult on him. Bulk makes him brave; but wit is stronger than weight, and revenge sharper than either.”
With these words, Zamara locked up the scarabee with the little jar, and crept into bed, muttering to himself, and lay in thoughtful wakefulness until the day dawned. Then he arose, and once more examined the beetle, to make sure that no secret of its mechanism had escaped him.
As early as it was possible to see his mistress, the dwarf went to her room, a richly frescoed boudoir, crowded with the gorgeous, but tarnished furniture that had been saved out of her royal degradation. She lay upon a stiff backed, gilded couch, in a loose, morning robe of soiled brocade, and turned her head indolently as the dwarf came in.
“Mistress, I have brought you the ring. You will believe now that Zamara speaks the truth.”
Du Berry started up, fully aroused.
“Let me look at it. No, no, no! I will not touch it. That strange man said it was fatal to every one but himself. The poor queen has found it so. Give it back to the old man. He shall not be despoiled a second time.”
The Countess Du Berry spoke hastily, and with shuddering emphasis. She had a nervous terror of the ring, which was, indeed, a proof of her own great crime.
“Take it back! Take it back! I have no wish for it!”
“But, madame would not believe me when I said the queen had given it up. She promised gold if I would let her have a sight of it. Has madame forgotten?”
“No, no! I never forget! But take the thing away! There is the money—count it for yourself. My heart is lighter, now that I am sure that thing can no longer harm the queen. Take your money there.”
Madame flung her purse, heavy with clinking gold, at the dwarf’s feet, and turning upon her couch, hid her face among its silken cushions, almost as much afraid as if a real serpent had been threatening her; for, with all her reckless audacity, the woman was a miserable coward at heart; and in this case superstition made her abject.
Zamara went out from her presence, weighing the purse of gold in his palm, and gloating over it.
“Ah, ha!” he muttered. “The ring frightens her. It is enough that this poor, harmless beetle has slept so long in a tomb; to her it is saturated with death, but I know how to make it harmless as a dove, or venomous as an asp. It shall be one to my friends, the other to my foes. After that the old prisoner may get it if he can.”
Again the dwarf opened his cabinet and took the earthen jar from its hiding-place. This time he opened the jaws of that serpent ring, and filled them with the soft, resinous paste, which he took from the jar with the sharp point of a penknife. Having thus charged the serpent with venom, he laid it carefully away in one of the most secret drawers of his cabinet.
“We must wait,” he said, muttering to himself, as was his habit. “They will not let me approach near enough until last night is forgotten. My looks frightened her, I could see that. It needs time and infinite craft—but that is nothing. ‘Revenge is a dish that can be eaten cold.’ It is locked up there, and I can wait.”