CHAPTER XXIII. THE TESTAMENT.
When Gabriel, Rodin, and Father d"Aigrigny entered the Red Room, they were differently affected. Gabriel, pale and sad, felt a kind of painful impatience. He was anxious to quit this house, though he had already relieved himself of a great weight, by executing before the notary, secured by every legal formality, a deed making over all his rights of inheritance to Father d"Aigrigny. Until now it had not occurred to the young priest, that in bestowing the care upon him, which he was about to reward so generously, and in forcing his vocation by a sacrilegious falsehood, the only object of Father d"Aigrigny might have been to secure the success of a dark intrigue. In acting as he did, Gabriel was not yielding, in his view of the question, to a sentiment of exaggerated delicacy. He had made this donation freely, many years before. He would have looked upon it as infamy now to withdraw it. It was hard enough to be suspected of cowardice: for nothing in the world would he have incurred the least reproach of cupidity.
The missionary must have been endowed with a very rare and excellent nature, or this flower of scrupulous probity would have withered beneath the deleterious and demoralizing influence of his education; but happily, as cold sometimes preserves from corruption, the icy atmosphere in which he had pa.s.sed a portion of his childhood and youth had benumbed, but not vitiated, his generous qualities, which had indeed soon revived in the warm air of liberty. Father d"Aigrigny, much paler and more agitated than Gabriel, strove to excuse and explain his anxiety by attributing it to the sorrow he experienced at the rupture of his dear son with the Order. Rodin, calm, and perfectly master of himself, saw with secret rage the strong emotion of Father d"Aigrigny, which might have inspired a man less confiding than Gabriel with strange suspicions. Yet, notwithstanding his apparent indifference, the socius was perhaps still more ardently impatient than his superior for the success of this important affair. Samuel appeared quite desponding, no other heir but Gabriel having presented himself. No doubt the old man felt a lively sympathy for the young priest; but then he was a priest, and with him would finish the line of Rennepont; and this immense fortune, acc.u.mulated with so much labor, would either be again distributed, or employed otherwise than the testator had desired. The different actors in this scene were standing around the table. As they were about to seat themselves, at the invitation of the notary, Samuel pointed to the register bound in black s.h.a.green, and said: "I was ordered, sir, to deposit here this register. It is locked. I will deliver up the key, immediately after the reading of the will."
"This course is, in fact, directed by the note which accompanies the will," said M. Dumesnil, "as it was deposited, in the year 1682, in the hands of Master Thomas Le Semelier, king"s counsel, and notary of the Chatelet of Paris, then living at No. 13, Place Royale."
So saying, M. Dumesnil drew from a portfolio of red morocco a large parchment envelope, grown yellow with time; to this envelope was annexed, by a silken thread, a note also upon vellum.
"Gentlemen," said the notary, "if you please to sit down, I will read the subjoined note, to regulate the formalities at the opening of the will."
The notary, Rodin, Father d"Aigrigny, and Gabriel, took seats. The young priest, having his back turned to the fireplace, could not see the two portraits. In spite of the notary"s invitation, Samuel remained standing behind the chair of that functionary, who read as follows:
""On the 13th February, 1832, my will shall be carried to No. 3, in the Rue Saint-Francois.
""At ten o"clock precisely, the door of the Red Room shall be opened to my heirs, who will no doubt have arrived long before at Paris, in antic.i.p.ation of this day, and will have had time to establish their line of descent.
""As soon as they are a.s.sembled, the will shall be read, and, at the last stroke of noon, the inheritance shall be finally settled in favor of those of my kindred, who according to my recommendation (preserved, I hope, by tradition in my family, during a century and a half); shall present themselves in person, and not by agents, before twelve o"clock, on the 13th of February, in the Rue Saint-Francois.""
Having read these words in a sonorous voice, the notary stopped an instant, and resumed, in a solemn tone: "M. Gabriel Francois Marie de Rennepont, priest, having established, by legal doc.u.ments, his descent on the father"s side, and his relationship to the testator, and being at this hour the only one of the descendants of the Rennepont family here present, I open the testament in his presence, as it has been ordered."
So saying, the notary drew from its envelope the will, which had been previously opened by the President of the Tribunal, with the formalities required by law. Father d"Aigrigny leaned forward, and resting his elbow on the table, seemed to pant for breath. Gabriel prepared himself to listen with more curiosity than interest. Rodin was seated at some distance from the table, with his old hat between his knees, in the bottom of which, half hidden by the folds of a shabby blue cotton handkerchief, he had placed his watch. The attention of the socius was divided between the least noise from without, and the slow evolution of the hands of the watch, which he followed with his little, wrathful eye, as if hastening their progress, so great was his impatience for the hour of noon.
The notary, unfolding the sheet of parchment, read what follows, in the midst of profound attention:
Hameau de Villetaneuse,
""February 13th, 1682.
""I am about to escape, by death, from the disgrace of the galleys, to which the implacable enemies of my family have caused me to be condemned as a relapsed heretic.
""Moreover, life is too bitter for me since the death of my son, the victim of a mysterious crime.
""At nineteen years of age--poor henry!--and his murderers unknown--no, not unknown--if I may trust my presentiments.
""To preserve my fortune for my son, I had feigned to abjure the Protestant faith. As long as that beloved boy lived, I scrupulously kept up Catholic appearances. The imposture revolted me, but the interest of my son was concerned.
""When they killed him, this deceit became insupportable to me. I was watched, accused, and condemned as relapsed. My property has been confiscated, and I am sentenced to the galleys.
""Tis a terrible time we live in! Misery and servitude! sanguinary despotism and religious intolerance! Oh, it is sweet to abandon life!
sweet to rest and see no more such evils and such sorrows!
""In a few hours, I shall enjoy that rest. I shall die. Let me think of those who will survive--or rather, of those who will live perhaps in better times.
""Out of all my fortune, there remains to me a sum of fifty thousand crowns, deposited in a friend"s hands.
""I have no longer a son; but I have numerous relations, exiled in various parts of Europe. This sum of fifty thousand crowns, divided between them, would profit each of them very little. I have disposed of it differently.
""In this I have followed the wise counsels of a man, whom I venerate as the image of G.o.d on earth, for his intelligence, wisdom, and goodness are almost divine.
""Twice in the course of my life have I seen this man, under very fatal circ.u.mstances--twice have I owed him safety, once of the soul, once of the body.
""Alas! he might perhaps have saved my poor child, but he came too late--too late.
""Before he left me, he wished to divert me from the intention of dying--for he knew all. But his voice was powerless. My grief, my regret, my discouragement, were too much for him.
""It is strange! when he was convinced of my resolution to finish my days by violence, some words of terrible bitterness escaped him, making me believe that he envied me--my fate--my death!
""Is he perhaps condemned to live?
""Yes; he has, no doubt, condemned himself to be useful to humanity, and yet life is heavy on him, for I heard him repeat one day, with an expression of despair and weariness that I have never forgotten: "Life!
life! who will deliver me from it?"
""Is life then so very burdensome to him?
""He is gone. His last words have made me look for my departure with serenity. Thanks to him, my death shall not be without fruit.
""Thanks to him, these lines, written at this moment by a man who, in a few hours, will have ceased to live, may perhaps be the parents of great things a century and a half hence--yes! great and n.o.ble things, if my last will is piously followed by my descendants, for it is to them that I here address myself.
""That they may understand and appreciate this last will--which I commend to the care of the unborn, who dwell in the future whither I am hastening--they must know the persecutors of my family and avenge their ancestor, but by a n.o.ble vengeance.
""My grandfather was a Catholic. Induced by perfidious counsels rather than religious zeal, he attached himself, though a layman, to a Society whose power has always been terrible and mysterious--the Society of Jesus--""
At these words of the testament, Father d"Aigrigny, Rodin, and Gabriel looked involuntarily at each other: The notary, who had not perceived this action, continued to read:
""After some years, during which he had never ceased to profess the most absolute devotion to this Society, he was suddenly enlightened by fearful revelations as to the secret ends it pursued, and the means it employed.
""This was in 1510, a month before the a.s.sa.s.sination of Henry IV.
""My grandfather, terrified at the secret of which he had become the unwilling depositary, and which was to be fully explained by the death of the best of kings, not only broke with the Society, but, as if Catholicism itself had been answerable for the crimes of its members, he abandoned the Romish religion, in which he had hitherto lived, and became a Protestant.
""Undeniable proofs, attesting the connivance of two members of the Company with Ravaillac, a connivance also proved in the case of Jean Chatel, the regicide, were in my grandfather"s possession.
""This was the first cause of the violent hatred of the Society for our family. Thank Heaven, these papers have been placed in safety, and if my last will is executed, will be found marked A. M.C. D. G., in the ebony casket in the Hall of Mourning, in the house in the Rue Saint-Francois.
""My father was also exposed to these secret persecutions. His ruin, and perhaps his death, would have been the consequence, had it not been for the intervention of an angelic woman, towards whom he felt an almost religious veneration.
""The portrait of this woman, whom I saw a few years ago, as well as that of the man whom I hold in the greatest reverence, were painted by me from memory, and have been placed in the Red Room in the Rue Saint-Francois--to be gratefully valued, I hope, by the descendants of my family.""
For some moments Gabriel had become more and more attentive to the reading of this testament. He thought within himself by how strange a coincidence one of his ancestors had, two centuries before, broken with the Society of Jesus, as he himself had just done; and that from this rupture, two centuries old, dated also that species of hatred with which the Society of Jesus had always pursued his family. Nor did the young priest find it less strange that this inheritance, transmitted to him after a lapse of a hundred and fifty years, from one of his kindred (the victim of the Society of Jesus), should return by a voluntary act to the coffers of this same society. When the notary read the pa.s.sage relative to the two portraits, Gabriel, who, like Father d"Aigrigny, sat with his back towards the pictures, turned round to look at them. Hardly had the missionary cast his eyes on the portrait of the woman, than he uttered a loud cry of surprise, and almost terror. The notary paused in his reading, and looked uneasily at the young priest.
CHAPTER XXIV. THE LAST STROKE OF NOON.