This prodigious poem gave us, cruel little wretches that we were, the greatest delight. We sang the verses perpetually, in the dormitory, out walking, in the playground, setting the last words to the classic music of "Les Lampions." But the old watch-dog has sharp teeth, and defends himself by "detentions," so none of us care to brave him to his face. The lamp hung over his head shows up his greenish-grey hair, his red forehead, and his threadbare coat, which once was blue. No doubt he is rhyming, for he is writing, and every now and then he raises that swollen brow, and his large blue eyes—which express such real kindness when we do not torment him with our tricks—search the room and observe in turn each of the thirty-five desks. I, too, take a prolonged survey of the companions of my slavery; I already know their faces. There is Rocquain, a little fellow, with a big red nose in a long white face; and Parizelle, a tall, stout boy, with an underhung jaw. He is fair-skinned, has green eyes and freckles, and for a wager ate a cockroach the other day. There is Gervais, a brown, curly-haired lad, who makes his will every week. He has communicated to me the latest of these documents, in which there is the following clause: "I leave to Leyreloup some good advice, contained in my letter to Cornélis." Leyreloup is his former friend, who played him the trick of rolling him in a heap of dead leaves last autumn, having been egged on to the deed by big Parizelle, whom the vengeful Gervais ever since regards as a rascal, and the advice contained in the posthumous letter is a warning to distrust the giant. All this small school-world is absorbed in countless interests which even at that time I held to be puerile, when compared with the thoughts that are in me. And my schoolfellows themselves seem to understand that there is something in my life which does not exist in theirs; they spare me the torments that are generally inflicted upon a new boy, but I am not the friend of any of them, except this same Gervais, who is my walking companion when we go out. Gervais is an imaginative lad, and when he is at home he devours a collection of the Journal pour Tous. He has found in it a series of romances called "L'Homme aux Figures de Cire," "Le Roi des Gabiers," "Le Chat du Bord," and Thursday after Thursday, when we go out walking, he relates these stories to me. The tragic strain of my own fate is the cause of my taking a grim pleasure in these narratives, in which crime plays the chief part. Unfortunately I have confided the secret of this questionable amusement to my good aunt, and the head master has separated the improvised feuilletoniste from his public. Gervais and I are forbidden to walk together. My aunt believed that the excess of sensitiveness in me, which alarmed her, would be corrected by this. Neither her solicitous tenderness, nor her pious care and foresight—she comes to Versailles from Compiègne every Sunday to take me out—nor my studies—for I redouble my efforts so that my stepfather should not triumph in my bad marks—nor my religious enthusiasm—for I have become the most fervent of us all at the chapel—no, nothing, nothing appeases the hidden demon which possesses and devours me. While the evening studies are going on, and in the interval between two tasks, I read a letter from Italy. This is my food for the week, conveyed in pages written by my mother. They give me details of her travels, which I do not understand very clearly; but I do understand that she is happy without me, outside of me—that the thought of my father and his mysterious death no longer haunts her; above all, that she loves her new husband, and I am jealous—miserably, basely jealous. My imagination, which has its strange lapses, has also a singular minuteness. I see my mother in a room in a foreign inn, and spread out upon the table are the various fittings of her travelling-bag, silver-mounted, with her cipher in relief, the Christian name in full, and encircling it the letter T. Marie T——. Well, had she not the right to make a new life for herself, honourably? Why should this mixture of her past with her present hurt me so much? So much, that just now, when stretched upon my narrow iron bed in the dormitory, I could not close my eyes.

How long those nights seemed to me, when I lay down oppressed by this thought, and strove in vain to lose it in the sweet oblivion of sleep! I prayed to God for sleep, with all the strength of my childlike piety. I said mentally twelve times twelve Paters and Aves—and I did not sleep. I then tried to "form a chimera;" for thus I called a strange faculty with which I knew myself to be endowed. When I was quite a little boy, on an occasion when I was suffering from toothache, I had shut my eyes, forcibly abstracted my mind, and compelled it to represent a happy scene in which I was the chief actor. Thus I was enabled to overrule my sensations to the point of becoming insensible to the toothache. Now, whenever I suffer, I do the same, and the device is almost always successful. I employ it in vain when my mother is in question. Instead of the picture of felicity which I evoke, the other picture presents itself to me, that of the intimate life of the being whom in all the world I most love, with the man whom I most hate. For I hate him, with an implacable hatred, and without being able to assign any other motive than that he has taken the first place in the heart which was all my own. Ah, me! I shall hear the slow hours struck, first from the belfry of a church hard by, and then by the school-clock—a grave and sonorous chime, then a treble ringing. I shall hear old Sorbelle walk through the whole length of the dormitory, and then go into the room which he occupies at the far end. How dull is the spectacle of the two rows of our little beds, with their brass knobs shining in the dim light; and how odious it is to be listening to the snores of the sleepers! At measured intervals the watchman, an old soldier with a big face and thick black moustaches, passes. He is wrapped in a brown cloth cape, and carries a dark lantern. Can it be that he is not afraid, all alone, at night, in those long passages, and on the stone staircases, where the wind rushes about with a dismal noise? How I should hate to be obliged to go down those stairs, shuddering in that darkness with the fear of meeting a ghost! I try to drive away this new idea, but in vain, and then I think. . . . Where is he who killed my father? Is it with fear, is it with horror that I shudder at this question? And I go on thinking. . . . Does he know that I am here? Panic seizes upon me, with the idea that the assassin might be capable of assuming the disguise of a school servant, for the purpose of killing me also. I commend my soul to God, and in the midst of these awful thoughts I fall asleep at length, very late, to be awakened with a start at half-past five in the morning, with an aching head, shaken nerves, and an ailing mind, sick of a disease which is beyond cure.

VI

Three years have passed away since the autumnal evening on which a hackney-coach had set down my stepfather and myself in that corner of one of the gloomy avenues of Old Versailles, which is made more gloomy by the walls of the school. I was to have remained at this school for ten months only—the period of my mother's stay in Italy. That evening was in the autumn of 1866; we are now in the winter of 1870, and I have been all this time imprisoned in the Lycée, "where the air is so good, and I get on so well." These are the reasons assigned by my mother for not taking me back to her home. My schoolfellows pass before me in the twilight of remembrance of that distant time. Rocquain, more pasty-faced than ever, with his comic-actor-like red nose, sings café-concert songs, smokes cigarettes in secret places, and collects the photographs of actresses. Gervais, still brown and surly, has a passion for races, at which he is always playing, and is reconciled with Leyreloup, "the hedgehog," as we call him, whom he has infected with his dangerous mania. The two are constantly arranging insect or tortoise steeple-chases. They have even contrived a betting system, and ten of us have joined in it. The game is played by placing in front of a dictionary several bits of paper with the name of a horse written upon each of them. The dictionary is then opened and shut rapidly, and the bit of paper which is blown farthest away by the little breeze thus created, is the winner, and the boys who have backed it divide the stakes. Parizelle is bigger than ever; at sixteen he is already growing a beard, and has been entertained by some military acquaintances at a certain café, which he points out to us when we take our weekly walks. As for myself, I have a new friend, one Joseph Dediot, who has introduced me to some of the verses of De Musset. We go wild over this poet. Dediot's place in the schoolroom is by the side of Scelles, the bookseller's son, whom we call Bel-Œil, because he squints. Bel-Œil is as lazy as a lobster, and Dediot has made the oddest bargain with him. Dediot does all his exercises, and in return for each, Bel-Œil hands over to him a copy of twenty lines of Rolla. In exchange for I know not how many versions, themes, and Latin verses, my friend has at last secured the entire poem, and we spout its most characteristic lines enthusiastically.

We have become sceptics and misanthropes. We play at despairing Atheism just as Parizelle and Rocquain play at debauchery, Gervais and others at sport and fashion, politics and love. Old Sorbelle, having been dismissed from the Lycée, has just published a pamphlet in which he figures under the name of Lebros, and the Provost under that of M. Bifteck. This little book occupies our attention throughout the whole winter, and induces us to form a conspiracy which leads to nothing. Here we are, then, playing at revolution! What a strange discipline is that of those infamous schools, where young boys ruin their years of unhappy youth by the puerile and premature imitation of passions from which they will have to suffer in reality some day, just as children, who are destined to die in war as men, play at soldiers, with their flaxen curls and their ringing laughter! Alas! for me the game was over too soon.

Nevertheless, this shabby, dull, mean school was my home, the only place in which I felt myself really "at home," and I loved it. Yes, I loved that hulks which was also partly barracks and partly hospital, because there at all events I was not perpetually confronted with the evidence of my double misfortune. After all, the influence of my age made itself felt there, the nervous strain upon me was relaxed, and I escaped from the fixed idea of the murderer of my father to be discovered, and my stepfather to be detested. My half-holidays were such misery to me that they would have made me dread the termination of my school-time, only that I knew the same date would place me in possession of my fortune, enabling me to devote myself entirely to the supreme aim and purpose of my life. I had sworn to myself that the mysterious assassin whom justice had failed to discover should be unearthed by me, and I derived extraordinary moral strength from that resolution, which I kept strictly to myself, without ever speaking of it. This, however, did not prevent me from suffering from trifles, whenever those trifles were signs of my doubly-orphaned state. How clearly present to me now are the torments of those sortie days! When the servant who was to take me to my mother's abode comes to fetch me on those Sunday mornings at eight, his careless manner makes me feel that I am no longer the son of the house. This wretch, this François Niquet, with his shaven chin and his insolent eye, does not remove his hat when I come down into the parlour. Sometimes, when the weather is bad, he presumes to grumble, and, although the smell of tobacco makes me sick, he lights his pipe in the railway carriage, and smokes without asking my leave. I would rather die than make any observation upon this, because I had once complained of my stepfather's valet, a vile fellow whom they made out to be in the right as against me, and I then and there resolved that never again would I expose myself to a similar affront. Besides, I had already suffered too much, and thus to suffer teaches one to feel contempt. The train proceeds, and I do not exchange a dozen words with the fellow. I know that I am regarded as proud and unamiable; but the same bent of mind which made me sullen when quite a child, now makes me take a pleasure in displeasing those whom I dislike. Amid silence and the reek of coarse tobacco, we reach the Montparnasse Station, where no carriage ever awaits me, no matter how bad the weather may be. We take the Boulevard Latour-Maubourg, and pass by the long avenues lined with buildings, hospitals, and bric-à-brac shops, turn down by the Church of Saint François Xavier, cross the Place des Invalides, and reach the door of our hotel. I hate the concierge, also a creature of M. Termonde's, and his broad flat face, in which I read hostility which is no doubt absolute indifference. But everything transforms itself into a sign of enmity, to my mind, from the faces of the servants, even to the aspect of my own room. M. Termonde has taken my own dear old room from me; a large handsome room, which used to be flooded with sunshine, with a window opening on the garden, and a door communicating with my mother's apartment. I now occupy a sort of large closet, with a northern aspect and no view except that of a wood-stack. When I reach home on those Sunday mornings, I have to go straight to this room and wait there until my mother has risen and can receive me. No one has taken the trouble to light a fire; so I ask for one, and while the servant is blowing at the logs, I take a chair, and gaze at the portrait of my father, which is now banished to my quarters after having figured for so long upon an easel draped with black, in my mother's morning-room. The odour of damp wood in process of kindling is mingled with the musty flavour of the room, which has been shut up all the week. I have some bitter moments to pass there. These mean miseries make me feel the moral forsakenness of my position more keenly, more cruelly. And my mother lives, she breathes at the distance of a few steps from me; yes, and she loves me!

Now that I can cast a look back upon my unhappy youth, I am aware that my own temper had much to do with the misunderstanding between my poor mother and myself which has never ceased to exist. Yes, she loved me, and at the same time she loved her husband. It was for me to explain to her the sort of pain she caused me by uniting and mingling those two affections in her heart. She would have understood me, she would have spared me the series of small dumb troubles that ultimately made any explanation between us impossible. When at length I saw her on those "sortie" days, at about eleven, just before breakfast, she expected me to meet her with effusive delight; how should she know that the presence of her husband paralysed me, just as it had done when we parted before her journey to Italy? There was an incomprehensible mystery to her in that absolute incapacity for revealing my mind, that stony inertness which overwhelmed me so soon as we were not alone, she and I—and we were never alone. She used to come to see me at Versailles once a week, on Wednesday, and it hardly ever happened that she came without my stepfather. I never wrote a letter to her that she did not show to her husband; indeed, he saw every letter which she received. How well I knew this habit of hers, how she would say, "André has written to me," and then hand to him the sheet of paper on which I could not trace one sincere, heartfelt, trustful line, because of the idea that his eyes were to rest upon it! How many notes have I torn up in which I tried to tell her the story of the troubles amid which I lived! Yes, yes, I ought to have spoken to her, nevertheless, to have explained myself a little, confessed my sufferings, my wild jealousy, my brooding grief, my great need of having a corner in her thoughts for myself alone, were it only pity—but I dared not. It was in my nature to feel the pain that I must cause her by speaking thus, too strongly, and I was unable to bear it. All the various trouble of my heart then was bound up in a timid silence, in embarrassment in her presence which affected herself. Like many women she was unable to understand a disposition different from her own, a manner of feeling opposed to hers. She was happy in her second marriage, she loved, she was loved. In M. Termonde she had met a man to whom she had given her whole self, but she had also given to me freely, lavishly. I was her son, it seemed so natural to her that he whom she loved should also love her child. And, in fact, had not M. Termonde been to me a vigilant and irreproachable protector? Had he not carefully provided for every detail of my education? No doubt he had insisted upon my being sent to school as a boarder, but I had also been of his opinion as to that. He had chosen masters for me in all branches of instruction; I learned fencing, riding, dancing, music, foreign languages. He had attended to, and he continued to attend to, the smallest details, from the New Year's gift that I was to receive—it was always very handsome—to the fixing of my allowance, my "week," as we called it, which was paid on each Thursday, at the highest figure permitted by the rules of the Lycée. Never had this man, who was so imperious by nature, raised his voice in speaking to me. Never once since his marriage had he varied from the most perfect politeness towards me; a woman who was in love with him would naturally see in this a proof of exquisite tact and devoted affection. Put my grievances against my stepfather into words? No, I could not do it. And so I was silent, and how was my mother to explain my sullenness, the absence of any demonstrativeness on my part towards my stepfather otherwise than by my selfishness and want of feeling? She did believe me, in fact, to be a selfish and unfeeling boy, and I, owing to my unhealthy mood of mind, felt that when I was in her presence I really became what she believed me. I shrank into myself like a surly animal. But why did she not spare me those trials which completed our alienation from each other? Why, when we met on those wretched Sundays, did she not contrive that I should have the five minutes alone with her that would have enabled me, not to talk to her—I did not ask so much—but to embrace her, as I loved her, with all my heart? I came into the room which she had transformed into a private sitting-room—in every corner of it I had played at my free pleasure when I, the spoiled child whose lightest wish was a command, was the master—and there was M. Termonde in his morning costume, smoking cigarettes and reading newspapers. It needed nothing but the rustic of the sheet in his hand, the tone of his voice as he bade me good-day, the touch of his fingers—he merely gave me their tips—and I recoiled upon myself. So strong was my antipathy that I never remember to have eaten with a good appetite at the same table with him. My wretchedness was at its height during those Sunday breakfasts and dinners. Ah, I hated everything about him; his blue eyes, almost too far apart, which were sometimes fixed, and at others rolled slightly in their orbits, his high prominent forehead, and prematurely grey hair, the refinement of his features, and the elegance of his manners, such a contrast with my natural dulness and lack of ease—yes, I hated all these, and even to the finely-shaped foot which was set off by his perfect boots. I think that even now, at this present hour, I should recognise a coat he had worn, among a thousand, so living a thing has a garment of his seemed to me, under the influence of that aversion. Only too well did I, with my filial instinct, realise that he, with his slender graceful figure, his feline movements, his flattering voice, his native and acquired aristocratic ways, was the true husband of the lovely, highly-adorned, almost ideal creature whom I, her son, resembled as little as my poor father had resembled her. Ah, how bitter was that knowledge!

Out of the depths of the silence which I preserved on those wretched half-holidays, I followed with intense interest all the conversations that took place before me, especially during breakfast and dinner, in the dining-room—newly furnished, like all the rest of the house. The hours of those meals were no longer the hours of my father's time. This change, and the new furnishing of our dwelling, typified the newness of my mother's life. M. Termonde, who was the son of a stockbroker, and had been for some time in diplomacy, had kept up social relations of a kind quite different from our former ones. My mother and he went frequently into that mixed and cosmopolitan society which was then, and is now, called "smart." What had become of the familiar faces at the dinners, few and far between, which my father used to give at the Rue Tronchet? Those dinner parties consisted of three or four persons, the ladies in high gowns, and the gentlemen in morning dress. The talk was of politics and business; a former Minister of King Louis Philippe's, who had gone back to his practice at the bar, was the oracle of the little circle; and the dinner hour was half-past six, instead of seven, on those days, because the old statesman always retired to rest at ten o'clock. In the wealthy but plain bourgeois life of our home, to go to a theatre was an event, and a ball formed an epoch. Thus, at least, did things represent themselves to my childish mind. Now the old ex-Minister came to the house no more, nor Mdme. Largeyx, the engineer's widow, whom papa was always quoting to mamma as a model, and whom my mother laughingly called her "mother-in-law." Now, my mother and my stepfather went out almost every evening. They had horses and several carriages, instead of the coupé hired by the month with which the wife of the renowned lawyer had been content. All the men who came in after dinner, all the women whom I met at six o'clock in my mother's drawing-room, were young and full of life and spirits, and their talk was solely of amusements; new plays, fancy balls, races, and dress. My father, who was full of the ideas of the Monarchy of July, like his old political friend, used to speak severely of the imperial régime; but now, my mother was invited to the great receptions at the Tuileries. How could I have ventured to talk to her about the small miseries of my school life, which seemed to me so mean when I contrasted them with her brilliant and opulent existence? Formerly, when I was a day pupil at the Bonaparte, I used to relate to her every trifle concerning the school and my fellow pupils; but now, I should have been ashamed to bore her with Rocquain, Gervais, Leyreloup, and the rest. It seemed to me that she could not possibly be interested in the story of how Joseph Dediot had been traitorously deserted by his faithless cousin Cécile; and yet, how tragic the case was, to my mind! Notwithstanding that two locks of hair had been exchanged, a bouquet offered and accepted, a kiss snatched and returned, the false girl had married an apothecary at Avranches. Dediot had even written two poems, inspired by his misfortune, and one of them, dedicated to me, began thus:

How could I have talked of all these small things to a lady who dined with the Duchesse d'Arcole, whose intimate friends were a Maréchale and two Marquises, and whose entertainments were described in the society journals? My mother was now the beautiful Madame Termonde, and so completely had her new name replaced the old, that I was almost the only person who remembered she was also the widow of M. Cornélis, he whose tragical death had been related in the very same newspapers. Had she herself forgotten it?

"Forgetfulness! Is this then in all reality the world's law?" I asked myself, with the indignant revolt of a young heart, which does not admit the inevitable compromises of feeling. And I made answer to myself, No! There was one person who remembered as well as I did, one person to whom my father's death still remained a hideous nightmare, one person to whom I could tell all my thoughts and all my grief—my dear, good, kind aunt. In her case at least all the fond and tender things of the past remained unchanged. When August came, and I went to Compiègne for a portion of my holidays, I found everything in its place, both in the house and in the heart of the dear old maid.

For my sake, I knew it well, she had consented to keep up her former relations with my mother, and she dined with her three or four times a year. Dear Aunt Louise! She would listen with the utmost kindness to all my childish complaints, and she always sent me home softened, almost appeased; more indulgent towards my mother, and convinced that I was wrong in my judgment of M. Termonde.

Nevertheless, I did not tell Aunt Louise anything about my reprisals upon the man whom I accused of having stolen my mother's heart from me. I had perceived, very soon, certain signs of an antipathy towards myself on the part of my stepfather, similar to that which I entertained towards him. When I came rather suddenly into the salon, and he was engaged in a conversation either with my mother or one of his friends, my presence sufficed to cause a slight alteration in his voice; a change which, most likely, no one else would have perceived, but which did not escape me, for did not my own throat contract, and my lips quiver with sheer abhorrence?

I should not have been the sullen and resentful boy I then was, if I had not planned how to utilise my strange power of disturbing the man whom I execrated, in the interest of my enmity. My system was to force him to feel the acute sensation which my presence inflicted on him, by keeping silence, and steadily pursuing him with my gaze. Great as his self-control was, I never fixed my eyes upon him from the far end of the room, but, after a while, he would turn his eyes towards me. Then his glance avoided mine, and he would go on talking; but still he was looking at me, and presently our eyes would meet, and his would shift away again. I knew, by a frown which gathered on his forehead, that he was on the point of forbidding me to look at him in that way; but then he would put strong restraint upon himself, and sometimes he would leave the room.

That abstention from any kind of struggle with me was a fixed resolution on his part, I guessed, because I knew him to be very determined by nature, and especially incapable of enduring that any one should brave him. He was fond of relating how, in his youth, when he was attached to the Embassy at Madrid, he had killed a bull at an amateur "ring," on being "dared" to do it by a young Spaniard. It must have hurt his pride severely to permit me the silent insolence of my eyes; he did allow me to indulge it, however, and I did not acknowledge that petty triumph to Aunt Louise. I must set down everything here, and the truth is I was most unhappy; I knew myself to be so, and I did not lessen my trouble in the least in dilating upon it; on the contrary, I rather exaggerated it so as to win that tender sympathy which did my sore heart good.

I once spoke to her of the vow I had taken, the solemn promise I had made to myself that I would discover the murderer of my father, and take vengeance upon him, and she laid her hand upon my mouth. She was a pious woman, and she repeated the words of the gospel: "Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord." Then she added: "We must leave the punishment of the crime to Him; His will is hidden from us. Remember the divine precept and promise, 'Forgive and you shall be forgiven.' Never say: 'An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth.' Ah, no; drive this enmity out of your heart, Cornélis; yes, even this." And there were tears in her eyes.

VII

My poor aunt! She thought me made of stronger stuff than I really was. There was no need of her advice to prevent my being consumed by the desire for vengeance which had been the fixed star of my early youth, the blood-coloured beacon aflame in my night. Ah! the resolutions of boyhood, the "oaths of Hannibal" taken to ourselves, the dream of devoting all our strength to one single and unchanging aim—life sweeps all that away, together with our generous illusions, ardent enthusiasm, and noble hopes. What a difference there is between the boy of fifteen, unhappy indeed, but so bold and proud in 1870, and the young man of eight years later, in 1878! And to think, only to think, that but for chance occurrences, impossible to foresee, I should still be, at this hour, the young man whose portrait hangs upon the wall above the table at which I am writing. Of a surety, the visitors to the Salon of that year (1878) who looked at this portrait among so many others, had no suspicion that it represented the son of a father who had come to so tragic an end. And I, when I look at that commonplace image of an ordinary Parisian, with eyes unlit by any fire or force of will, complexion paled by senseless dissipation, hair cut in the fashion of the day, strictly correct dress and attitude, I am astonished to think that I could have lived as I actually did live at that period. Between the misfortunes that saddened my childhood, and those of quite recent date which have finally laid waste my life, the course of my existence was colourless, monotonous, vulgar, just like that of anybody else. I shall merely note the stages of it.

In the second half of 1870 the Franco-Prussian war takes place. The invasion finds me at Compiègne, where I am passing my holidays with my aunt. My stepfather and my mother remain in Paris during the siege. I go on with my studies under the tuition of an old priest belonging to the little town, who prepared my father for his first communion. In the autumn of 1871 I return to Versailles; in August, 1873, I take my bachelor's degree, and then I do my one year's voluntary service in the army at Angers under the easiest possible conditions. My colonel was the father of my old schoolfellow, Rocquain. In 1874 I am set free from tutelage by my stepfather's advice. This was the moment at which my task was to have been begun, the time appointed with my own soul; yet, four years afterwards, in 1878, not only was the vengeance that had been the tragic romance, and, so to speak, the religion of my childhood, unfulfilled, but I did not trouble myself about it.

I was cruelly ashamed of my indifference when I thought about it; but I am now satisfied that it was not so much the result of weakness of character as of causes apart from myself which would have acted in the same way upon any young man placed in my situation. From the first, and when I faced my task of vengeance, an insurmountable obstacle arose before me. It is equally easy and sublime to strike an attitude and exclaim: "I swear that I will never rest until I have punished the guilty one." In reality, one never acts except in detail, and what could I do? I had to proceed in the same way as justice had proceeded, to reopen the inquiry which had been pushed to its extremity without any result.

I began with the Judge of Instruction, who had had the carriage of the matter, and who was now a Counsellor of the Court. He was a man of fifty, very quiet and plain in his way, and he lived in the Ile de Paris, on the first floor of an ancient house, from whose windows he could see Nôtre Dame, primitive Paris, and the Seine, which is as narrow as a canal at that place.

M. Massol, so he was named, was quite willing to resume with me the analysis of the data which had been furnished by the Instruction. No doubt existed either as to the personality of the assassin, or the hour at which the crime was committed. My father had been killed between two and three o'clock in the day, without a struggle, by that tall, broad-shouldered personage whose extraordinary disguise indicated, according to the magistrate, "an amateur." Excess of complication is always an imprudence, for it multiplies the chances of failure. Had the assassin dyed his skin and worn a wig because my father knew him by sight? To this M. Massol said "No; for M. Cornélis, who was very observant, and who, besides, was on his guard—this is evident from his last words when he left you—would have recognised him by his voice, his glance, and his attitude. A man cannot change his height and his figure, although he may change his face." M. Massol's theory of this disguise was that the wearer had adopted it in order to gain time to get out of France, should the corpse be discovered on the day of the murder. Supposing that a description of a man with a very brown complexion and a black beard had been telegraphed in every direction, the assassin, having washed off his paint, laid aside his wig and beard, and put on other clothes, might have crossed the frontier without arousing the slightest suspicion. There was reason to believe that the pretended Rochdale lived abroad. He had spoken in English at the hotel, and the people there had taken him for an American; it was therefore presumable either that he was a native of the United States, or that he habitually resided there. The criminal was, then, a foreigner, American or English, or perhaps a Frenchman settled in America. As for the motive of so complicated a crime, it was difficult to admit that it could be robbery alone. "And yet," observed the Judge of Instruction, "we do not know what the note-case carried off by the assassin contained. But," he added, "the hypothesis of robbery seems to me to be utterly routed by the fact that, while Rochdale stripped the dead man of his watch, he left a ring, which was much more valuable, on his finger. From this I conclude that he took the watch merely as a precaution to throw the police off the scent. My supposition is that the man killed M. Cornélis for revenge."

Then the former Judge of Instruction gave me some singular examples of the resentment cherished against medical experts employed in legal cases, Procureurs of the Republic, and Presidents of Assize. His theory was, that in the course of his practice at the bar my father might have excited resentment of a fierce and implacable kind; for he had won many suits of importance, and no doubt had made enemies of those against whom he employed his great powers. Supposing one of those persons, being ruined by the result, had attributed that ruin to my father, there would be an explanation of all the apparatus of this deadly vengeance. M. Massol begged me to observe that the assassin, whether he were a foreigner or not, was known in Paris. Why, if this were not so, should the man have so carefully avoided being seen in the street? He had been traced out during his first stay in Paris, when he bought the wig and the beard, and that time he put up at a small hotel in the Rue d'Aboukir under the name of Rochdale, and invariably went out in a cab. "Observe also," said the Judge, "that he kept his room on the day before the murder, and on the morning of the actual day. He breakfasted in his apartment, having breakfasted and dined there the day before. But, when he was in London, and when he lived at the hotel to which your father addressed his first letters, he came and went without any precautions."

And this was all. The addresses of three hotels—such were the meagre particulars that formed the whole of the information to which I listened with passionate eagerness; the magistrate had no more to tell me. He had small, twinkling, very light eyes, and his smooth face wore an expression of extreme keenness. His language was measured, his general demeanour was cold, obliging, and mild, he was always closely shaven, and in him one recognised at once the well-balanced and methodical mind which had given him great professional weight. He acknowledged that he had been unable to discover anything, even after a close analysis of the whole existing situation of my father, as well as his past.

"Ah, I have thought a great deal about this affair," said he, adding that before he resigned his post as Judge of Instruction he had carefully reperused the notes of the case. He had again questioned the concierge of the Imperial Hotel and other persons. Since he had become Counsellor to the Court, he had indicated to his successor what he believed to be a clue; a robbery committed by a carefully made up Englishman had led him to believe the thief to be identical with the pretended Rochdale. Then there was nothing more. These steps had, however, been of use inasmuch as they barred the rule of limitation, and he laid stress on that fact. I consulted him then as to how much time still remained for me to seek out the truth on my own account. The last Act of Instruction dated from 1873, so that I had until 1883 to discover the criminal and deliver him up to public justice. What madness! Ten years had already elapsed since the crime, and I, all alone, insignificant, not possessed of the vast resources at the disposal of the police, I presumed to imagine that I should triumph, where so skilful a ferret as he had failed! Folly! Yes; it was so. Nevertheless, I tried.

I began a thorough and searching investigation of all the dead man's papers. With that unbounded tenderness of hers for my stepfather, which made me so miserable, my mother had placed all these papers in M. Termonde's keeping. Alas! Why should she have understood those niceties of feeling on my part, which rendered the fusion of her present with her past so repugnant to me, any more clearly on this point than on any other? M. Termonde had at least scrupulously respected the whole of those papers, from plans of association and prospectuses to private letters. Among the latter were several from M. Termonde himself, which bore testimony to the friendship that had formerly subsisted between my mother's first husband and her second. Had I not known this always? Why should I suffer from the knowledge? And still there was nothing, no indication whatever to put me on the track of a suspicion.

I evoked the image of my father as he lived, just as I had seen him for the last time; I heard him replying to M. Termonde's question in the dining-room of the Rue Tronchet, and speaking of the man who awaited him to kill him: "A singular man whom I shall not be sorry to observe more closely." And then he had gone out and was walking towards his death while I was playing in the little salon, and my mother was talking to the friend who was one day to be her master and mine. What a happy home-picture, while in that hotel room—— Ah! was I never to find the key of the terrible enigma? Where was I to go? What was I to do? At what door was I to knock?

At the same time that a sense of the responsibility of my task disheartened me, the novel facilities of my new way of life contributed to relax the tension of my will. During my school days, the sufferings I underwent from jealousy of my stepfather, the disappointment of my repressed affections, the meanness and penury of my surroundings, many grievous influences, had maintained the restless ardour of my feelings; but this also had undergone a change. No doubt I still continued to love my mother deeply and painfully, but I now no longer asked her for what I knew she would not give me, my unshared place, a separate shrine in her heart. I accepted her nature instead of rebelling against it. Neither had I ceased to regard my stepfather with morose antipathy; but I no longer hated him with the old vehemence. Mis conduct to me after I had left school was irreproachable. Just as in my childhood, he had made it a point of honour never to raise his voice in speaking to me, so he now seemed to pique himself upon an entire absence of interference in my life as a young man. When, having passed my baccalaureate, I announced that I did not wish to adopt any profession, but without a reason—the true one was my resolution to devote myself entirely to the fulfilment of my task of justice—he had not a word to say against that strange decision; nay, more, he brought my mother to consent to it. When my fortune was handed over to me, I found that my mother, who had acted as my guardian, and my stepfather, her co-trustee, had agreed not to touch my funds during the whole period of my education; the interest had been re-invested, and I came into possession, not of 750,000 francs, but of more than a million. Painful as I felt the obligation of gratitude towards the man whom I had for years regarded as my enemy, I was bound to acknowledge that he had acted an honourable part towards me. I was well aware that no real contradiction existed between these high-minded actions and the harshness with which he had imprisoned me at school, and, so to speak, relegated me to exile. Provided that I renounced all attempts to form a third between him and his wife, he would have no relations with me but those of perfect courtesy; but I must not be in my mother's house. His will was to reign entirely alone over the heart and life of the woman who bore his name. How could I have contended with him? Why, too, should I have blamed him, since I knew so well that in his place, jealous as I was, my own conduct would have been exactly similar? I yielded, therefore, because I was powerless to contend with a love which made my mother happy; because I was weary of keeping up the daily constraint of my relations with her and him, and also because I hoped that when once I was free I should be better fitted for my task as a doer of justice. I myself asked to be permitted to leave the house, so that at nineteen I possessed absolute independence, an apartment of my own in the Avenue Montaigne, close to the round-point in the Champs Élysées, a yearly income of 50,000 francs, the entrée to all the salons frequented by my mother, and the entrée, too, to all the places at which one may amuse one's self. How could I have resisted the influences of such a position?

Yes, I had dreamed of being an avenger, a justiciary, and I allowed myself to be caught up almost instantly into the whirlwind of that life of pleasure whose destructive power those who see it only from the outside cannot measure. It is a futile and exacting existence which fritters away your hours as it fritters away your mind, ravelling out the stuff of time thread by thread with irreparable loss, and also the more precious stuff of mental and moral strength. With respect to that task of mine, my task as an avenger, I was incapable of immediate action—what and whom was I to attack? And so I availed myself of all the opportunities that presented themselves of disguising my inaction by movement, and soon the days began to hurry on, and press one upon the other, amid those innumerable, amusements of which the idle rich made a code of duties to be performed. What with the morning ride in the Bois, afternoon calls, dinner parties, parties to the theatre and after midnight, play at the club, or the pursuit of pleasure elsewhere—how was I to find leisure for the carrying out of a project? I had horses, intrigues, an absurd duel in which I acquitted myself well, because, as I believe, the tragic ideas that were always at the bottom of my life favoured me. A woman of forty persuaded me that I was her first love, and I became her lover; then I persuaded myself that I was in love with a Russian great lady, who was living in Paris. The latter was—indeed she still is—one of those incomparable actresses in society, who, in order to surround themselves with a sort of court, composed of admirers who are more or less rewarded, employ all the allurements of luxury, wit, and beauty; but who have not a particle of either imagination or heart, although they fascinate by a display of the most refined fancies and the most vivid emotions. I led the life of a slave to the caprices of this soulless coquette for nearly six months, and learned that women of "the world" and women of "the half-world" are very much alike in point of worth. The former are intolerable on account of their lies, their assumption, and their vanity; the others are equally odious by reason of their vulgarity, their stupidity, and their sordid love of lucre. I forgot all my absurd relations with women of both orders in the excitement of play, and yet I was well aware of the meanness of that diversion, which only ceases to be insipid when if becomes odious, because it is a clever calculation upon money to be gained without working for it. There was in me something at once wildly dissipated and yet disgusted, which drove me to excess, and at the same time inspired me with bitter self-contempt. In the innermost recesses of my being the memory of my father dwelt, and poisoned my thoughts at their source. An impression of dark fatalism invaded my sick mind; it was so strange that I should live as I was living, nevertheless, I did live thus, and the visible "I" had but little likeness to the real. Upon me, then, poor creature that I was, as upon the whole universe, a fate rested. "Let it drive me," I said, and yielded myself up to it. I went to sleep, pondering upon ideas of the most sombre philosophy, and I awoke to resume an existence without worth or dignity, in which I was losing not only my power of carrying out my design of reparation towards the phantom which haunted my dreams, but all self-esteem, and all conscience. Who could have helped me reascend this fatal stream? My mother? She saw nothing but the fashionable exterior of my life, and she congratulated herself that I had "ceased to be a savage." My stepfather? But he had been, voluntarily or not, favourable to my disorderly life. Had he not made me master of my fortune at the most dangerous age? Had he not procured me admission, at the earliest moment, to the clubs to which he belonged, and in every way facilitated my entrance into society? My aunt? Ah, yes, my aunt was grieved by my mode of life; and yet, was she not glad that at any rate I had forgotten the dark resolution of hate that had always frightened her? And, besides, I hardly ever saw her now. My visits to Compiègne were few, for I was at the age when one always finds time for one's pleasures, but never has any for one's nearest duties. If, indeed, there was a voice that was constantly lifted up against the waste of my life in vulgar pleasures, it was that of the dead, who slept in the day, unavenged; that voice rose, rose, rose unceasingly, from the depths of all my musings, but I had accustomed myself to pay it no heed, to make it no answer. Was it my fault that everything, from the most important to the smallest circumstance, conspired to paralyse my will? And so I existed, in a sort of torpor which was not dispelled even by the hurly-burly of my mock passions and my mock pleasures.

The falling of a thunderbolt awoke me from this craven slumber of the will. My aunt Louise was seized with paralysis, towards the end of that sad year 1878, in the month of December. I had come in at night, or rather in the morning, having won a large sum at play. Several letters and also a telegram awaited me. I tore open the blue envelope, while I hummed the air of a fashionable song, with a cigarette between my lips, untroubled by an idea that I was about to be apprised of an event which would become, after my father's death and my mother's second marriage, the third great date in my life. The telegram was signed by Julie, my former nurse, and it told me that my aunt had been taken ill quite suddenly, also that I must come at once, although there was a hope of her recovery. This bad news was the more terrible to me because I had received a letter from my aunt just a week previously, and in it the dear old lady complained, as usual, that I did not come to see her. My answer to her letter was lying half-written upon my writing-table. I had not finished it; God knows for what futile reason. It needs the advent of that dread visitant, Death, to make us understand that we ought to make good haste and love well those whom we do love, if we would not have them pass away from us for ever, before we have loved them enough. Bitter remorse, in that I had not proved to her sufficiently how dear she was to me, increased my anxiety about my aunt's state. It was two o'clock A.M., the first train for Compiègne did not start until six; in the interval she might die. Those were very long hours of waiting, which I killed by turning over in my mind all my shortcomings towards my father's only sister, my sole kinswoman. The possibility of an irrevocable parting made me regard myself as utterly ungrateful! My mental pain grew keener when I was in the train speeding through the cold dawn of a winter's day, along the road I knew so well. As I recognised each familiar feature of the way, I became once more the schoolboy whose heart was full of unuttered tenderness, and whose brain was laden with the weight of a terrible mission. My thoughts outstripped the engine, moving too slowly, to my impatient fancy, which summoned up that beloved face, so frank and so simple, the mouth with its thickish lips and its perfect kindliness, the eyes out of which goodness looked, with their wrinkled, tear-worn lids, the flat bands of grizzled hair. In what state should I find her? Perhaps, if on that night of repentance, wretchedness, and mental disturbance, my nerves had not been strained to the utmost—yes, perhaps I should not have experienced those wild impulses when by the side of my aunt's death-bed, which rendered me capable of disobeying the dying woman. But how can I regret my disobedience, since it was the one thing that set me on the track of the truth? No, I do not regret anything, I am better pleased to have done what I have done.

VIII

My good old Julie was waiting for me at the station. Her eyes had failed her of late, for she was seventy years old, nevertheless she recognised me as I stepped out of the train, and began to talk to me in her usual interminable fashion so soon as we were seated in the hired coupé, which my aunt had sent to meet me whenever I came to Compiègne, from the days of my earliest childhood. How well I knew the heavy old vehicle, with its worn cushions of yellow leather, and the driver, who had been in the service of the livery stable keeper as long as I could remember. He was a little man with a merry roguish face, and eyes twinkling with fun; but he tried to give a melancholy tone to his salutation that morning.

"It took her yesterday," said Julie, while the vehicle rumbled heavily through the streets, "but you see it had to happen. Our poor demoiselle had been changing for weeks past. She was so trustful, so gentle, so just; she scolded, she ferreted about, she suspected—there, then, her head was all astray. She talked of nothing but thieves and assassins; she thought everybody wanted to do her some harm, the tradespeople, Jean, Mariette, myself—yes, I too. She went into the cellar every day to count the bottles of wine, and wrote the number down on a paper. The next day she found the same number, and she would maintain the paper was not the same, she disowned her own handwriting. I wanted to tell you this the last time you came here, but I did not venture to say anything; I was afraid it would worry you, and then I thought these were only freaks, that she was a little crazy, and it would pass off. Well, then, I came down yesterday to keep her company at her dinner, as she always liked me to do, because, you know, she was fond of me in reality, whether she was ill or well. I could not find her. Mariette, Jean, and I searched everywhere, and at last Jean bethought him of letting the dog loose; the animal brought us straight to the wood-stack, and there we found her lying at full length upon the ground. No doubt she had gone to the stack to count the logs. We lifted her up, our poor dear demoiselle! Her mouth was crooked, and one side of her could not move. She began to talk. Then we thought she was mad, for she said senseless words which we could not understand; but the doctor assures us that she is perfectly clear in her head, only that she utters one word when she means another. She gets angry if we do not obey her on the instant. Last night when I was sitting up with her she asked for some pins, I brought them and she was angry. Would you believe that it was the time of night she wanted to know? At length, by dint of questioning her, and by her yeses and noes, which she expresses with her sound hand, I have come to make out her meaning. If you only knew how troubled she was all night about you; I saw it, and when I uttered your name her eyes brightened. She repeats words, you would think she raves; she calls for you. Now look here, M. André, it was the ideas she had about your poor father that brought on her illness. All these last weeks she talked of nothing else. She would say: 'If only they do not kill André also. As for me, I am old, but he is so young, so good, so gentle.' And she cried—yes, she cried incessantly. 'Who is it that you think wants to harm M. André?' I asked her. Then she turned away from me with a look of distrust that cut me to the heart, although I knew that her head was astray. The doctor says that she believes herself persecuted, and that it is a mania; he also says that she may recover, but will never have her speech again."

I listened to Julie's talk in silence; I made no answer. I was not surprised that my aunt Louise had begun to be attacked by a mental malady, the trials of her life sufficiently explained this, and I could also account for several singularities that I had observed in her attitude towards me of late. She had surprised me much by asking me to bring back a book of my father's which I had never thought of taking away. "Return it to me," she said, insisting upon it so strongly, that I instituted a search for the book, and at last unearthed it from the bottom of a cupboard where it had been placed, as if on purpose, under a heap of other books. Julie's prolix narrative only enlightened me as to the sad cause of what I had taken for the oddity of a fidgety and lonely old maid. On the other hand, I could not take the ideas of my aunt upon my father's death so philosophically as Julie accepted them. What were those ideas? Many a time, in the course of conversation with her, I had vaguely felt that she was not opening her heart quite freely to me. Her determined opposition to my plans of a personal inquiry might proceed from her piety, which would naturally cause her to disapprove of any thought or project of vengeance, but was there nothing else, nothing besides that piety in question? Her strange solicitude for my personal safety, which even led her to entreat me not to go out unarmed in the evening, or get into an empty compartment in a train, with other counsels of the same kind, was no doubt caused by morbid excitement; still her constant and distressing dread might possibly rest upon a less vague foundation than I imagined. I also recalled, with a certain apprehension, that so soon as she ceased to be able completely to control her mind these strange fears took stronger possession of her than before. "What!" said I to myself, "am I becoming like her, that I let such things occur to me? Are not these fixed ideas quite natural in a person whose brain is racked by the mania of persecution, and who has lost a beloved brother under circumstances equally mysterious and tragical?"

Thus reasoning with myself, almost in spite of myself, and listening to Julie, I arrived at my aunt's house. A gloomy place it looked on that bitter cold morning, sunk in the grimmest kind of silence, that of the country in winter. The dog, a big black-and-white Newfoundland, whom I had named Don Juan, whereat my aunt had been scandalised, jumped upon me when I got out of the old coupé; but I pushed him away almost roughly, so sore was my heart at the thought of what I was about to see in my aunt's room, whither I proceeded at once.

When I entered, the maid-servant, who was seated at the bed's foot, stopped me with a gesture at the threshold; my aunt was sleeping. I stole softly over the carpet to an easy-chair beside the fire, and looked at the invalid from that distance. She lay, with her face turned towards the wall, in the middle of the old bed with four carved posts, which had belonged to my grandmother. The curtains, of thick red stuff brocaded with black velvet, half hid her from my sight. I watched her sleeping; now listening to her short breathing, and again looking about the room, which was as familiar to me as the salon below stairs, where I had written my letter of congratulation to my stepfather on his marriage. Those red curtains were of an old-fashioned shade, which harmornised with the antiquated shape of the furniture, the faded paper of the screen before the window, the white ground of the carpet, the discoloured reps with which the chairs were covered; in short, with all the waifs from the wreck of our family life, that had been piously preserved by the dear old maid. She was so exact and orderly; her black-mittened hands were so skilful in pouncing upon any dust overlooked by Jean, who combined the functions of gardener and house-servant, that these old worn things, owing to the deep shining brown of the bedstead, the chairs, and the brass-handled chest of drawers, lent a homely aspect to the room such as the primitive painters loved to give to their pictures of the Nativity. The contrast between my apartment—the typical fashionable young man's rooms—and this peaceful retreat was striking indeed. I had passed from the one to the other too suddenly not to feel that contrast, and also the mute reproach that was conveyed to me by the sick room, with its atmosphere tainted by a medicinal odour instead of the fresh scent of lavender which I had always recognised there. How bitterly I reproached myself in that half hour, during which I listened to her breathing as she slept, and meditated upon her lonely life. What resolutions I formed! I would come here for long weeks together, when she should be better—for I would not admit that she was in danger of death—and I eagerly awaited the moment of her awakening, to beg her forgiveness, to tell her how much I loved her. All of a sudden she heaved a deep sigh, and I saw her raise the free arm and move it up and down several times with a gesture that had something of despair in it.

"She is awake," said Julie, who had taken the maid's place at the foot of the bed. I approached my aunt and called her by her name. I then clearly saw her poor face distorted by paralysis. She recognised me, and as I bent down to kiss her, she stroked my cheek with her sound hand. This caress, which was habitual with her, she repeated slowly several times. I placed her, with Julie's assistance, on her back, so that she could see me distinctly; she looked at me for a long time, and two heavy tears fell from the eyes in which I read boundless tenderness, supreme anguish, and inexpressible pity. I answered them by my own tears, which she dried with the back of her hand; then she strove to speak to me, but could only pronounce an incoherent sentence that struck me to the heart. She saw, by the expression of my face, that I had not understood her, and she made a desperate effort to find words in which to render the thought evidently precise and lucid in her mind. Once more she uttered an unintelligible phrase, and began again to make the feeble gesture of despairing helplessness which had so shocked me at her waking. She appeared, however, to take courage when I put the question to her: "What do you want of me, dear aunt?" She made a sign that Julie was to leave the room, and no sooner were we alone than her face changed. With my help she was able to slip her hand under her pillow, and withdraw her bunch of keys; then separating one key from the others she imitated the opening of a lock. I immediately remembered her groundless fears of being robbed, and asked her whether she wanted the box to which that key belonged. It was a small key of a kind that is specially made for safety locks. I saw that I had guessed aright; she was able to get out the word "yes," and her eyes brightened.

"But where is this box?" I asked. Once more she replied by a sentence of which I could make nothing; and, seeing that she was relapsing into a state of agitation, with the former heart-rending movement, I begged her to allow me to question her and to answer by gestures only. After some minutes, I succeeded in discovering that the box in question was locked up in one of the two large cupboards below stairs, and that the key of the cupboard was on the ring with the others. I went downstairs, leaving her alone, as she had desired me by signs to do. I had no difficulty in finding the casket to which the little key adapted itself; although it was carefully placed behind a bonnet-box and a case of silver forks. The casket was of sweet-scented wood, and the initials J.C. were inlaid upon the lid in gold and platinum. J.C., Justin Cornélis—so, it had belonged to my father. I tried the key in the lock, to make quite sure that I was not mistaken. I then raised the lid, and glanced at the contents almost mechanically, supposing that I was about to find a roll of business papers, probably shares, a few trinket-cases, and rouleaux of napoleons, a small treasure in fact, hidden away from motives of fear. Instead of this, I beheld several small packets carefully wrapped in paper, each being endorsed with the words, "Justin's Letters," and the year in which they were written. My aunt had preserved these letters with the same pious care that had kept her from allowing anything whatever belonging to him in whom the deepest affection of her life had centred, to be lost, parted with, or injured. But why had she never spoken to me of this treasure, which was more precious to me than to any one else in the world? I asked myself that question as I closed the box; then I reflected that no doubt she desired to retain the letters to the last hour of her life; and, satisfied with this explanation, I went upstairs again. From the doorway my eyes met hers, and I could not mistake their look of impatience and intense anxiety. I placed the little coffer on her bed and she instantly opened it, took out a packet of letters, then another, finally kept only one out, replaced those she had removed at first, locked the box, and signed to me to place it on the chest of drawers. While I was clearing away the things on the top of the drawers, to make a clear space for the box, I caught sight, in the glass opposite to me, of the sick woman. By a great effort she had turned herself partly on her side, and she was trying to throw the packet of letters which she had retained into the fireplace; it was on the right of her bed, and only about a yard away from the foot. But she could hardly raise herself at all, the movement of her hand was too weak, and the little parcel fell on the floor. I hastened to her, to replace her head on the pillows and her body in the middle of the bed, and then with her powerless arm she again began to make that terrible gesture of despair, clutching the sheet with her thin fingers, while tears streamed from her poor eyes.

Ah! how bitterly ashamed I am of what I am going to write in this place! I will write it, however, for I have sworn to myself that I will be true, even to the avowal of that fault, even to the avowal of a worse still. I had no difficulty in understanding what was passing in my aunt's mind; the little packet—it had fallen on the carpet close to the fender—evidently contained letters which she wished to destroy, so that I should not read them. She might have burned them, dreading as she did their fatal influence upon me, long since; yet I understood why she had shrunk from doing this, year after year, I, who knew with what idolatry she worshipped the smallest objects that had belonged to my father. Had I not seen her put away the blotting-book which he used when he came to Compiègne, with the paper and envelopes that were in it at his last visit? Yes, she had gone on waiting, still waiting, before she could bring herself to part for ever with those dear and dangerous letters, and then her sudden illness came, and with it the terrible thought that these papers would come into my possession. I could also take into account that the unreasonable distrust which she had yielded to of late had prevented her from asking Jean or Julie for the little coffer. This was the secret—I understood it on the instant—of the poor thing's impatience for my arrival, the secret also of the trouble I had witnessed. And now her strength had betrayed her. She had vainly endeavoured to throw the letters into the fire, that fire which she could hear crackling, without being able to raise her head so as to see the flame. All these notions which presented themselves suddenly to my thoughts took form afterwards; at the moment they melted into pity for the suffering of the helpless creature before me.

"Do not disturb yourself, dear aunt," said I, as I drew the coverlet up to her shoulders, "I am going to burn those letters."

She raised her eyes, full of eager supplication, I closed the lids with my lips and stooped to pick up the little packet. On the paper in which it was folded, I distinctly read this date: "1864—Justin's Letters." 1864! that was the last year of my father's life. I know it, I feel it, that which I did was infamous; the last wishes of the dying are sacred. I ought pot, no, I ought not to have deceived her who was on the point of leaving me for ever. I heard her breathing quicken at that very moment. Then came a whirlwind of thought too strong for me. If my aunt Louise was so wildly, passionately eager that those letters should be burned, it was because they could put me on the right track of vengeance. Letters written in the last year of my father's life, and she had never spoken of them to me! I did not reason, I did not hesitate, in a lightning-flash I perceived the possibility of learning—what? I knew not; but—of learning. Instead of throwing the packet of letters into the fire, I flung it to one side, under a chair, returned to the bedside and told her in a voice which I endeavoured to keep steady and calm, that her directions had been obeyed, that the letters were burning. She took my hand and kissed it. Oh, what a stab that gentle caress inflicted upon me! I knelt down by her bedside, and hid my head in the sheets, so that her eyes should not meet mine. Alas! it was not for long that I had to dread her glance. At ten she fell asleep, but at noon her restlessness recurred. At two the priest came, and administered the last sacraments to her. She had a second stroke towards evening, never recovered consciousness, and died in the night.

Will you pardon me that falsehood which I told you in your last hours, O my beloved dead? Your desire that I should never read those fatal letters, which have begun to shed so terrible a light upon the past, arose from your solicitude to spare me the suspicions that had tortured yourself. On your death-bed your sole thought was for my happiness. Will you forgive me for having frustrated that foresight of the dying? I must speak to you, although I know not whether you can see me this day, or hear me, or even feel the emotion which goes out to you, beloved one, from my inmost soul. But, I am ashamed of having lied to you, when you thought only of being good to me, so good, so good that no human creature was ever better to another; and I am forced to tell you this. You, at least, I have never doubted; there is only one touch of bitterness in my thoughts of you; it is that I did not cherish you sufficiently while you were here with me, that I betrayed you in the matter of the last earthly desire of your pure soul.

I see you now, and those eyes which revealed your stainless but sorely wounded heart. You come to me, and you pardon me; your hand strokes my check with that sad, sad caress which you gave me before you went away into the darkness, where hands may no more be clasped or tears mingled. If death had not come to you too quickly, if I had obeyed your last desire, you would have carried the secret of your most painful doubts to the grave. You do not blame me now for having wanted to know? You no longer blame me for having suffered? A destiny exists, and weighs upon us, which requires that light shall be cast upon the darkness of that crime, that justice shall resume its rights, and the avenger come. By what road? That power knows, and uses strange weapons for its task of reparation. It was decreed, dear and pious sister of my murdered father, that your faithful cherishing of his dear memory should at last arouse my slumbering will. Reproach me not, O tender, unquiet spirit, with the torments which I have inflicted upon myself, with the tragic purpose to which I have sacrificed my youth. Rest, I say, rest! May peace descend upon the grave in which you sleep beside my father, in the cemetery at Compiègne, where I too shall find repose one day. And to think that to-morrow might be that day!

IX

My aunt died at nine o'clock in the evening. I closed her eyes, and sat by her side until eleven, when Julie came to me and persuaded me to go downstairs and eat something. I had taken nothing but a cup of coffee at noon. What a mournful meal was that in the dining-room, with its walls adorned with old china plates, where I had so often sat opposite to my dear aunt! A lamp stood on the table and threw a light upon the table-cloth just in front of me, but did not dispel the shadows in the room, which was warmed by a big earthenware stove, cracked by the heat. I listened to the noise of this stove, and it brought back the evenings in my childhood, when I used to roast chestnuts in the ashes of just such a fire, after I had split them, lest they should burst. I looked at Julie, who insisted on waiting upon me herself, and found her drying the big tears that rolled down her wrinkled cheeks with the corner of her blue apron. I have passed hours that were more cruel, but have never known any more poignant; and I may do myself the justice to record that grief absorbed every other feeling in me at first. During the whole of that dismal night I never for an instant thought of opening the packet of letters which I had obtained by so shameful a falsehood. I had forgotten its existence, although I had taken care to pick it up and take it to my own room. Where was now my curiosity to learn the secrets of those letters? I knew that I had just lost for ever the only being who had loved me entirely, and that knowledge crushed me. I wished to keep the watch by the side of the dead for part of the night, and I could not turn my gaze from that motionless face which had looked upon me for so many years with absolute and unbounded tenderness, but now lay before me with rigid features, closed lips, shut eyelids, and wearing an expression of profound sorrow such as I have never seen upon any other dead face. All the melancholy thoughts which had distilled their slow poison into her heart while she lived, were revealed by that countenance now restored to its truth. Ah! that expression of infinite sadness ought to have driven me on the instant to seek for its mysterious cause in the letters which had occupied her mind to the very brink of the grave, but how could I have had strength to reason while gazing on that mournful face? I could only feel that the lips which had never spoken any words but those of tenderness to me would utter them no more, that the hands which had caressed me so tenderly would clasp mine no more for ever. The nun who was watching the dead repeated the appointed prayers, and I found myself uttering the old forms in which I no longer believed. As I recited the Paternoster and the Ave, I thought of all the prayers which she, who lay at rest before me, had put up to God for my peace and welfare.

At three o'clock in the morning Julie came in to take my place, and I retired to my room, which was on the same floor as my aunt's. A box-room divided the two. I threw myself on my bed, worn out with fatigue, and nature triumphed over my grief. I fell into that heavy sleep which follows the expenditure of nerve power, and from which one awakes able to bear life again and to carry the load that seemed unendurable. When I awoke it was day, and the wintry sky was dull and dark like that of yesterday, but it also wore a threatening aspect, from the great masses of black cloud that covered it. I went to the window and looked out for a long time at the gloomy landscape closed in by the edge of the forest. I note these small details in order that I may more faithfully recall my exact impression at the time. In turning away from the window and going towards the fire which the maid had just lighted, my eye fell upon the packet of letters stolen from my aunt. Yes, stolen—'tis the word. It was in the place where I had put it last night, on the mantelshelf, with my purse, rings, and cigar-case. I took up the little parcel with a beating heart. I had only to stretch out my hand and those papers would fall into the flames and my aunt's dying wish be accomplished. I sank into an easy-chair and watched the yellow flame gaining on the logs, while I weighed the packet in my hand. I thought there must be a good many letters in it. I suffered from the physical uneasiness of indecision. I am not trying to justify this second failure of my loyalty to my dear aunt, I am trying to understand it.

Those letters were not mine, I never ought to have appropriated them. I ought now to destroy them unopened; all the more that the excitement of the first moment, the sudden rush of ideas which had prevented me from obeying the agonised supplication of my poor aunt, had subsided. I asked myself once more what was the cause of her misery, while I gazed at the inscription upon the cover, in my aunt's hand: "1864—Justin's Letters." The very room which I occupied was an evil counsellor to me in this strife between an indisputable duty and my ardent desire to know; for it had formerly been my father's room, and the furniture had not been changed since his time. The colour of the hangings was faded, that was all. He had warmed himself by a fire which burned upon that self-same hearth, and he had used the same low, wide chair in which I now sat, thinking my sombre thoughts. He had slept in the bed from which I had just risen, he had written at the table on which I rested my arms. No, that room deprived me of free will to act, it made my father too living. It was as though the phantom of the murdered man had come out of his grave to entreat me to keep the oft-sworn vow of vengeance. Had these letters offered me no more than one single chance, one against a thousand, of obtaining one single indication of the secrets of my father's private life, I could not have hesitated. With such sacrilegious reasoning as this did I dispel the last scruples of pious respect; but I had no need of arguments for yielding to the desire which increased with every moment.

I had there before me those letters, the last his hand had traced; those letters which would lay bare to me the recesses of his life, and I was not to read them! What an absurdity! Enough of such childish hesitation. I tore off the cover which hid the papers; the yellow sheets with their faded characters shook in my hands. I recognised the compact, square, clear writing, with spaces between the words. The dates had been omitted by my father in several instances, and then my aunt had repaired the omission by writing in the day of the month herself. My poor aunt! this pious carefulness was a fresh testimony to her constant tenderness; and yet, in my wild excitement, I no longer thought of her who lay dead within a few yards of me.

Presently Julie came to consult me upon all the material details which accompany death; but I told her I was too much overwhelmed, that she must do as she thought fit, and leave me quite alone for the whole of the morning. Then I plunged so deeply into the reading of the letters, that I forgot the hour, the events taking place around me, forgot to dress myself, to eat, even to go and look upon her whom I had lost while yet I could behold her face. Traitor and ingrate that I was! I had devoured only a few lines before I understood only too well why she had been desirous to prevent me from drinking the poison which entered with each sentence into my heart, as it had entered into hers. Terrible, terrible letters! Now it was as though the phantom had spoken, and a hidden drama of which I had never dreamed unfolded itself before me.

I was quite a child when the thousand little scenes which this correspondence recorded in detail took place. I was too young then to solve the enigma of the situation; and, since, the only person who could have initiated me into that dark history was she who had concealed the existence of the too-eloquent papers from me all her life long, and on her death-bed had been more anxious for their destruction than for her eternal salvation—she, who had no doubt accused herself of having deferred the burning of them from day to day as of a crime. When at last she had brought herself to do this, it was too late.

The first letter, written in January, 1864, began with thanks to my aunt for her New Year's gift to me—a fortress with tin soldiers—with which I was delighted, said the letter, because the cavalry were in two pieces, the man detaching himself from his horse. Then, suddenly, the commonplace sentences changed into utterances of mournful tenderness. An anxious mind, a heart longing for affection, and discontent with the existing state of things, might be discerned in the tone of regret with which the brother dwelt upon his childhood, and the days when his own and his sister's life were passed together. There was a repressed repining in that first letter that immediately astonished and impressed me, for I had always believed my father and mother to have been perfectly happy with each other. Alas! that repining did but grow and also take definite form as I read on. My father wrote to his sister every Sunday, even when he had seen her in the course of the week. As it frequently happens in cases of regular and constant correspondence, the smallest events were recorded in minute detail, so that all our former daily life was resuscitated in my thoughts as I perused the lines, but accompanied by a commentary of melancholy which revealed irreparable division between those whom I had believed to be so closely united. Again I saw my father in his dressing-gown, as he greeted me in the morning at seven o'clock, on coming out of his room to breakfast with me before I started for school at eight. He would go over my lessons with me briefly, and then we would seat ourselves at the table (without a table-cloth) in the dining-room, and Julie would bring us two cups of chocolate, deliciously sweetened to my childish taste. My mother rose much later, and, after my school days, my father occupied a separate room in order to avoid waking her so early. How I enjoyed that morning meal, during which I prattled at my ease, talking of my lessons, my exercises, and my school-mates! What a delightful recollection I retained of those happy, careless, cordial hours! In his letters my father also spoke of our early breakfasts, but in a way that showed how often he was wounded by finding out from my talk that my mother took too little care of me, according to his notions—that I filled too small a place in her dreamy, wilfully frivolous life. There were passages which the then future had since turned into prophecies. "Were I to be taken from him, what would become of him?" was one of these. At ten I came back from school; by that time my father would be occupied with his business. I had lessons to prepare, and I did not see him again until half-past eleven, at the second breakfast. Then mamma would appear in one of those tasteful morning costumes which suited her slender and supple figure so well. From afar, and beyond the cold years of my boyhood, that family table came before me like a mirage of warm homelife; how often had it become a sort of nostalgia to me when I sat between my mother and M. Termonde on my horrid half-holidays.