"He will tell you."
"I am listening."
There was a pause on this, a long pause; which was broken at length by a third speaker, in a tone half sullen, half miserable. "I have robbed my master," he said.
"Of how much?"
"Fifty livres."
"Why?"
"I lost it at play."
"And you are sorry."
"I must be sorry," the man panted with sudden fierceness, "or hang!"
Hidden though he was from us, there was a tremor in his voice that told a tale of pallid cheeks and shaking knees, and a terror fast rising to madness.
"He makes up his accounts to-morrow?"
"Yes."
Someone in the room groaned; it should have been the culprit, but unless I was mistaken the sound came through the curtains. A long pause followed. Then, "And if I help you," the m.u.f.fled voice resumed, "will you swear to lead an honest life?"
But the answer may be guessed. I need not repeat the a.s.surances, the protestations and vows of repentance, the cries and tears of grat.i.tude which ensue; and to which the poor wretch, stripped of his sullen indifference, completely abandoned himself. Suffice it that we presently heard the clinking of coins, a word or two of solemn advice from the cure, and a man"s painful sobbing; then the King touched my arm, and we crept down the stairs. I was for stopping on the landing where we had hidden ourselves before; but Henry drew me on to the foot of the stairs and into the street.
He turned towards home, and for some time did not speak. At length he asked me what I thought of it.
"In what way, sire?"
"Do you not think," he said in a voice of much emotion, "that if we could do what he does, and save a man instead of hanging him, it would be better?"
"For the man, sire, doubtless," I answered drily; "but for the State it might not be so well. If mercy became the rule and justice the exception--there would be fewer bodies at Montfaucon and more in the streets at daylight. I feel much greater doubt on another point."
Shaking off the moodiness that had for a moment overcome him, Henry asked with vivacity what that was.
"Who he is, and what is his motive?"
"Why?" the King replied in some surprise--he was ever of so kind a nature that an appeal to his feelings displaced his judgment. "What should he be but what he seems?"
"Benevolence itself?"
"Yes."
"Well, sire, I grant that he may be M. de Joyeuse, who has spent his life in pa.s.sing in and out of monasteries, and has performed so many tricks of the kind that I could believe anything of him. But if it be not he--"
"It was not his voice," Henry said, positively.
"Then there is something here," I answered, "still unexplained.
Consider the oddity of the conception, sire, the secrecy of the performance, the hour, the mode, all the surrounding circ.u.mstances! I can imagine a man currying favour with the basest and most dangerous cla.s.s by such means. I can imagine a conspiracy recruited by such means. I can imagine this shibboleth of the shutter grown to a watchword as deadly as the "TUEZ!" of "72. I can imagine all that, but I cannot imagine a man acting thus out of pure benevolence."
"No?" Henry said, thoughtfully. "Well, I think that I agree with you." and far from being displeased with my warmth (as is the manner of some sovereigns when their best friends differ from them), he came over to my opinion so completely as to halt and express his intention of returning and probing the matter to the bottom. Midnight had gone, however; it would take some little time to retrace our steps; and with some difficulty I succeeded in dissuading him, promising instead to make inquiries on the morrow, and having learned who lived in the house, to turn the whole affair into a report, which should be submitted to him.
This amused and satisfied him, and, expressing himself well content with the evening"s diversion--though we had done nothing unworthy either of a King or a Minister--he parted from me at the a.r.s.enal, and went home with his suite.
It did not occur to me at the time that I had promised to do anything difficult; but the news which my agents brought me next day--that the uppermost floor of the house in the Rue Pourpointerie was empty--put another face upon the matter. The landlord declared that he knew nothing of the tenant, who had rented the rooms, ready furnished, by the week; and as I had not seen the man"s face, there remained only two sources whence I could get the information I needed--the child, and the cure of St. Marceau.
I did not know where to look for the former, however; and I had to depend on the cure. But here I carne to an obstacle I might easily have foreseen. I found him, though an honest man, obdurate in upholding his priest"s privileges; to all my inquiries he replied that the matter touched the confessional, and was within his vows; and that he neither could, nor dared--to please anyone, or for any cause, however plausible--divulge the slightest detail of the affair. I had him summoned to the a.r.s.enal, and questioned him myself, and closely; but of all armour that of the Roman priesthood is the most difficult to penetrate, and I quickly gave up the attempt.
Baffled in the only direction in which I could hope for success, I had to confess my defeat to the King, whose curiosity was only piqued the more by the rebuff. He adjured me not to let the matter drop, and, suggesting a number of persons among whom I might possibly find the unknown, proposed also some theories. Of these, one that the benevolent was a disguised lady, who contrived in this way to give the rein at once to gallantry and charity, pleased him most; while I favoured that which had first occurred to me on the night of our sally, and held the unknown to be a clever rascal, who, to serve his ends, political or criminal, was corrupting the commonalty, and drawing people into his power.
Things remained in this state some weeks, and, growing no wiser, I was beginning to think less of the affair--which, of itself, and apart from a whimsical interest which the King took in it, was unimportant--when one day, stopping in the Quartier du Marais to view the works at the new Place Royale, I saw the boy. He was in charge of a decent-looking servant, whose hand he was holding, and the two were gazing at a horse that, alarmed by the heaps of stone and mortar, was rearing and trying to unseat its rider. The child did not see me, and I bade Maignan follow him home, and learn where he lived and who he was.
In an hour my equerry returned with the information I desired. The child was the only son of Fauchet, one of the Receivers-General of the Revenue; a man who kept great state in the largest of the old-fashioned houses in the Rue de Bethisy, where he, had lately entertained the King. I could not imagine anyone less likely to be concerned in treasonable practices; and, certain that I had made no mistake in the boy, I was driven for a while to believe that some servant had, perverted the child to this use. Presently, however, second thoughts, and the position of the father, taken, perhaps, with suspicions that I had for a long time entertained of Fauchet--in common with most of his kind--suggested an explanation, hitherto unconsidered. It was not an explanation very probable at first sight, nor one that would have commended itself to those who divide all men by hard and fast rules and a.s.sort them like sheep. But I had seen too much of the world to fall into this mistake, and it satisfied me. I began by weighing it carefully; I procured evidence, I had Fauchet watched; and, at length, one evening in August, I went to the Louvre.
The King was dicing with Fernandez, the Portuguese banker; but I ventured to interrupt the game and draw him aside. He might not have taken this well, but that my first word caught his attention.
"Sire," I said, "the shutter is open."
He understood in a moment. "St. Gris!" He exclaimed with animation.
"Where? At the same house?"
"No, sire; in the Rue Cloitre Notre Dame."
"You have got him, then?"
"I know who he is, and why he is doing this."
"Why?" the King cried eagerly.
"Well, I was going to ask for your Majesty"s company to the place," I answered smiling. "I will undertake that you shall be amused at least as well as here, and at a cheaper rate."
He shrugged his shoulders. "That may very well be," he said with a grimace. "That rogue Pimentel has stripped me of two thousand crowns since supper. He is plucking Ba.s.sompierre now."
Remembering that only that morning I had had to stop some necessary works through lack of means, I could scarcely restrain my indignation.
But it was not the time to speak, and I contented myself with repeating my request. Ashamed of himself, he consented with a good grace, and bidding me go to his: closet, followed a few minutes later. He found me cloaked to the eyes, and with a soutane and priest"s hat; on my arm.
"Are those for me?" he said.
"Yes, sire."
"Who am I, then?"
"The cure of St. Germain."
He made a wry face. "Come, Grand Master," he said; "he died yesterday.
Is not the jest rather grim?"
"In a good cause," I said equably.