The Mysteries of Paris, Volume 3 of 6

"Threats! And that you may learn they are not vain ones, learn, first, that I have no sister – "

"What, madame?"

"I am the mother of this child!"

"You?"

"I – I made a circuitous route to reach my end – coined a tale to excite your interest; but you are pitiless. I raise the mask, you are for war. Well, war be it then!"

"War! Because I refuse to associate myself with you in a criminal machination! What audacity!"

"Listen to me, sir! Your reputation as an honest man is established, acknowledged, undisputed – "

"Because deserved; and, therefore, you must have lost your reason to make me such a proposal as you have done, and then threaten me because I will not accede to it."

"I know, sir, better than any one how much reputations for immaculate virtue are to be distrusted; they often mask wantonness in women and roguery in men."

"Madame?"

"Ever since our conversation began, – I do not know why, but I have mistrusted your claim to the esteem and consideration which you enjoy."

"Really, madame, your mistrust does honour to your penetration!"

"Does it not? For this mistrust is based on mere nothings – on instinct – on inexplicable presentiments; but these intimations have rarely beguiled me."

"Madame, let us terminate this conversation."

"First learn my determination. I begin by telling you that I am convinced of the death of my poor daughter. But, no matter, I shall pretend that she is not dead: the most unlikely things do happen. You are at this moment in a position of which very many must be envious, and would be delighted at any weapon with which to assail you. I will supply one."

"You?"

"I, by attacking you under some absurd pretext, some irregularity in the declaration of death; say – no matter what – I will insist that my child is not dead. As I have the greatest interest in making it believed that she is still alive, though lost, this action will be useful to me in giving a wide circulation to the affair. A mother who claims her child is always interesting; and I should have with me those who envy you, – your enemies, and every sensitive and romantic mind."

"This is as mad as it is malevolent! What motive could I have in making your daughter pass for dead, if she were not really defunct?"

"That is true enough, and the motive may be difficult to find; but, then, have we not the attorneys and barristers at our elbows? Now I think of it (excellent idea!), desirous of sharing with your client the sum sunk in the annuity on this unfortunate child, you caused her disappearance."

The unabashed notary shrugged his shoulders.

"If I had been criminal enough for that, instead of causing its disappearance, I should have killed it!"

Sarah started with surprise, remained silent for a moment, and then said, with bitterness:

"For a pious man, this is an idea of crime deeply reflective! Can I by chance, then, have hit the mark when I fired at random? I must think of this, – and think I will. One other word. You see the sort of woman I am: I crush without remorse all obstacles that lie in my onward path. Reflect well, then, for to-morrow this must be decided on. You may do what I ask you with impunity. In his joy, the father of my daughter will not think of doubting the possibility of his child's restoration, if our falsehoods, which will make him happy, are adroitly combined. Besides, he has no other proofs of the death of our daughter than those I wrote to him of fourteen years ago, and I could easily persuade him that I had deceived him on this subject; for then I had real causes of complaint against him. I will tell him that in my grief I was desirous of breaking every existing tie that bound us to each other. You cannot, therefore, be compromised in any way. Affirm only, irreproachable man. Affirm that all was in former days concerted between us, – you and me and Madame Séraphin, – and you will be credited. As to the fifteen thousand francs sunk in an annuity for my child, that is my affair solely. They will remain acquired by your client, who must be kept profoundly ignorant of this; and, moreover, you shall yourself name your own recompense."

Jacques Ferrand maintained all his sang-froid in spite of the singularity of his situation, remarkable and dangerous as it was. The countess, really believing in the death of her daughter, had proposed to the notary to pass off the dead child as living, whom, living, he had declared to have died fourteen years before. He was too clever, and too well acquainted with the perils of his position, not to understand the effect of all Sarah's threats. His reputation, although admirably and laboriously built up, was based on a substructure of sand. The public detaches itself as easily as it becomes infatuated, liking to have the right to trample under foot him whom but just now it elevated to the skies. How could the consequences of the first assault on the reputation of Jacques Ferrand be foreseen? However absurd the attack might be, its very boldness might give rise to suspicions. Wishing to gain time to determine on the mode by which he would seek to parry the dangerous blow, the notary said, frigidly, to Sarah:

"You have given me, madame, until to-morrow at noon; I give you until the next day to renounce a plot whose serious nature you do not seem to have contemplated. If, between this and then, I do not receive from you a letter informing me that you have abandoned this criminal and crazy enterprise, you will learn to your cost that Justice knows how to protect honest people who refuse guilty associations, and what may happen to the concoctors of hateful machinations."

"You mean to say, sir, that you ask from me one more day to reflect on my proposals? That is a good sign, and I grant the delay. The day after to-morrow, at this hour, I will come here again, and it shall be between us peace or war, – I repeat it, – but a 'war to the knife,' without mercy or pity."

And Sarah left the room.

"All goes well," she said. "This miserable girl, in whom Rodolph capriciously takes so much interest, and has sent to the farm at Bouqueval, in order, no doubt, to make her his mistress hereafter, is no longer to be feared, – thanks to the one-eyed woman who has freed me from her. Rodolph's adroitness has saved Madame d'Harville from the snare into which I meant she should fall; but it is impossible that she can escape from the fresh plot I have laid for her, and thus she must be for ever lost to Rodolph. Thus, saddened, discouraged, isolated from all affection, will he not be in a frame of mind such as will best suit my purpose of making him the dupe of a falsehood to which, by the notary's aid, I can give every impress of truth? And the notary will aid me, for I have frightened him. I shall easily find a young orphan girl, interesting and poor, who, taught her lesson by me, will fill the character of our child so bitterly mourned by Rodolph. I know the expansiveness, the generosity of his heart, – yes, to give a name, a rank to her whom he will believe to be his daughter, till now forsaken and abandoned, he will renew those bonds between us which I believed indissoluble. The predictions of my nurse will be at length realised, and I shall thus and then attain the constant aim of my life, – a crown!"

Sarah had scarcely left the notary before M. Charles Robert entered, after alighting from a very dashing cabriolet. He went like a person on most intimate terms to the private room of Jacques Ferrand.

The commandant, as Madame Pipelet called him, entered without ceremony into the notary's cabinet, whom he found in a surly, bilious mood, and who thus accosted him:

"I reserve the afternoon for my clients; when you wish to speak to me come in the morning, will you?"

"My dear lawyer" (this was a standing pleasantry of M. Robert), "I have a very important matter to talk about in the first place, and, in the next, I was anxious to assure you in person against any alarms you might have – "

"What alarms?"

"What! Haven't you heard?"

"What?"

"Of my duel – "

"Your duel?"

"With the Duke de Lucenay. Is it possible you have not heard of it?"

"Quite possible."

"Pooh! pooh!"

"But what did you fight about?"

"A very serious matter, which called for bloodshed. Only imagine that, at a very large party, M. de Lucenay actually said that I had a phlegmy cough!"

"That you had – "

"A phlegmy cough, my dear lawyer; a complaint which is really most ridiculously absurd!"

"And did you fight about that?"

"What the devil would you have a man fight about? Can you imagine that a man could stand calmly and hear himself charged with having a phlegmy cough? And before a lovely woman, too! Before a little marchioness, who – who – In a word, I could not stand it!"

"Really!"

"The military men, you see, are always sensitive. My seconds went, the day before yesterday, to try and obtain some explanation from those of the duke. I put the matter perfectly straight, – a duel or an ample apology."

"An ample apology for what?"

"For the phlegmy cough, pardieu!– the phlegmy cough that he fastened on me."