Théophile Gautier
Captain Fracasse (Le Capitaine Fracasse)
Part III: Chapters XI-XV
Translated by A. S. Kline © Copyright 2025 All Rights Reserved
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Contents
- Chapter XI: The Pont-Neuf.
- Chapter XII: The Crowned Radish.
- Chapter XIII: A Dual Assault.
- Chapter XIV: Lampourde’s Delicacy.
- Chapter XV: Malartic at Work.
Chapter XI: The Pont-Neuf
It would make for a long and tedious narrative if I were to follow the Chariot of Comedy step by step to the great city of Paris; nothing that deserves to be recounted occurred on the journey. Our actors possessed a well-lined purse and progressed briskly, being able to hire horses, and pay their way. The troupe halted at Tours and Orléans to deliver a few performances whose takings satisfied Herod, more sensitive in his capacity as manager and cashier to monetary success than the others. Blazius began to reassert himself, and laugh at the terrors that Vallombreuse’s vindictiveness had inspired in him. Meanwhile Isabella still trembled at the thought of the unsuccessful abduction attempt, and although at the various inns she shared a room with Zerbina, she more than once, in dream, thought she saw the wild and haggard face of Chiquita emerging from that black opening, with a show of white teeth. Frightened by the vision, she would wake screaming, and her companion had difficulty calming her. Without otherwise displaying concern, Sigognac slept in the nearest room, his sword under his head and fully dressed, in case of some nocturnal altercation. During the day, he usually walked on foot, ahead of the wagon, as a scout, especially when bushes, coppices, sections of walls or ruined cottages near the road might have served as a place for an ambush. If he saw a group of travellers of suspicious appearance, he would fall back to the cart where the Tyrant, Scapin, Blazius, and Leander represented a respectable garrison, though of the latter two one was old and the other as timid as a hare. At other times, like an experienced general who knows how to detect the enemy’s feints, he remained in the rearguard, since the danger might just as easily come from that direction. But his precautions were redundant and proved supererogatory. No attack came to surprise the troop, either because the Duke had not had time to organise one, or because he had relinquished the idea, or because the pain of his wound had damped his courage.
Although it was winter, the season was not too harsh. Being well-fed, and having taken care to buy warm clothes thicker than the serge of theatrical coats, the actors suffered little from the cold, and the north wind caused no other inconvenience than to make the young actresses’ cheeks appear a little more vivid than usual, sometimes even extending to their delicate noses. These winter roses, though a little out of place, did not suit them too badly, for well-nigh everything suits pretty women. As for Dame Leonarda, her complexion, created by forty years of the Duenna’s rouge, was unalterable. A north wind, and a north wind only, rendered it paler.
Finally, around four in the evening, they arrived at a place very near to the great city, on the banks of the Bièvre, where one crosses the culvert that joins the Seine, that illustrious river whose waters have the honour of bathing the palace of our kings, and many another building renowned throughout the world. The smoke disgorged from the house chimneys masked the horizon with a broad cloud of half-transparent red mist, behind which the sun was setting, dull red and stripped of its rays. Against this half-lit background, the silhouettes of the private and public buildings, and churches, embraced by the view from that point, were outlined in purplish grey. On the other side of the river, beyond the Île Louviers (no longer an island), the bastion of the Arsenal, and the Couvent des Célestins, could be seen, and in front to the left, the tip of the island of Notre-Dame. Once past the Porte Saint-Bernard (on the left bank, not extant), the spectacle was magnificent. Notre-Dame appeared in full view, the apse, with its flying buttresses resembling gigantic fish ribs and its sharp spire, planted above the intersection of the naves, fronting the two square towers. Other, humbler bell-towers, rising above the roofs of churches and chapels themselves buried amidst the crowd of houses, lifted into the clear band of sky, but the cathedral especially drew the gaze of Sigognac, who had never seen Paris, and was astonished by the building’s grandeur.
The movement of the carriages laden with various goods, the tumultuous mass of horsemen and pedestrians traversing the banks of the river, and the streets that led from it, into which the wagon sometimes entered so as to take the shortest route, and the cries of the crowd dazzled and stunned him, being accustomed to the vast solitude of the moors, and the deathly silence of his old and dilapidated castle. It seemed to him as if a millstone was turning in his head, and he felt himself to be staggering like a drunken man. Soon the beautifully crafted needle of the Sainte-Chapelle soared above the roofs of the Palais de la Cité (including the extant Palais de Justice), penetrated by the last glimmers of sunset. The lamps now being lit pricked the dark facades of the houses with red dots, and the river reflected these glimmers stretching like serpents of fire over its black waters.
Soon, the church and cloister of the Grands-Augustins appeared amidst the shadows along the quayside, and on the platform of the Pont-Neuf, Sigognac saw to his right the outline of the equestrian statue of Henry IV, visible despite the growing darkness; but the wagon turned the corner of the Rue Dauphine (created in 1607) piercing the convent grounds, and the rider and horse swiftly vanished.
There was at the top of the Rue Dauphine, near the gate of that name, a vast hostelry where embassies from strange and unknown lands sometimes stayed. This inn could receive numerous companies of travellers at a moment’s notice. Horses and mules were always sure to find hay in the racks, and their owners never lacked for beds. It was this hostelry that Herod had chosen, as a propitious place for his theatrical troupe to lodge.
‘The Hostelry on the Rue Dauphine.’
The brilliant condition of his purse allowed this luxury; a useful luxury, moreover, because it elevated the troupe’s standing by showing that it was not composed of vagabonds, swindlers and debauched people, forced by poverty into this unfortunate profession of provincial histrions, but rather of brave actors whose talents brought them an honest income, which is it seems possible, for the reasons given by Pierre de Corneille, in his play L’Illusion Comique (of 1636, see Alcandre’s speech at the end of Act V).
The kitchen the actors entered, while waiting for their rooms to be prepared, was large enough to accommodate, comfortably, a dinner for Gargantua or Pantagruel. At the rear of the immense fireplace, whose opening was as red and flaming as the mouth of Hell is represented in La Grande Diablerie de Doué, whole tree-trunks were burning (Rabelais mentions the Diableries which took place at Doué-la-Fontaine, Maine et Loire, and elsewhere, in ‘Gargantua and Pantagruel’, see Book 3: III, Book 4: XIII, and Book IV: LII. These were parodies of the Mysteries of the Passion, which had led to the banning of the Mystery plays in 1548). On several spits, one above the other, turned by a dog struggling like a creature possessed inside a wheel, strings of geese, pullets, and capons were turning golden, sides of beef were roasting, loins of veal were browning, not to mention partridges, snipe, quail, and other small game. A scullion, half-cooked himself and dripping with sweat though he was wearing no more than a simple canvas jacket, was basting these victuals, plunging his spoon into the dripping pan again, as soon as he had poured out its contents: a real Danaidean labour, since the liquid collected was forever released.
Around a long oak table, covered with dishes being prepared, a whole world of anatomists, cooks, and sauce-makers, busied themselves, from whose hands their assistants received the larded, trussed, spiced cuts, to carry them to the stoves which, incandescent with embers and crackling with sparks, resembled Vulcan’s forges more than culinary ovens, the boys looking like Cyclopes through the fiery mist. Along the walls shone a formidable battery of red-copper and brass cookware: cauldrons, saucepans of all sizes, fish-kettles for cooking leviathans in court-bouillon broth, pastry moulds fashioned into dungeons, domes, little temples, and Saracenic helmets and turbans, in short, all the offensive and defensive weapons that the arsenal of the god of Gastronomy contains.
Every moment some sturdy servant girl, with plump, ruddy cheeks like those the Flemish painters depicted in their art, would arrive from the pantry, carrying baskets full of provisions on head or hip.
— ‘Pass me the nutmeg!’ some cook cried — ‘A little cinnamon!’ cried another — ‘The four spices over here!’ — ‘Fill the salt shaker! Cloves! Bay leaves!’ — ‘A strip of bacon, if you please, sliced thin!’ — ‘Fire up this stove; it’s cooling! And damp the other, it’s too hot, everything will burn like chestnuts left in the pan!’ — ‘Pour some liquid into this puree!’ — ‘Thin out this butter and flour, it’s thickening!’ — ‘Beat these egg whites, as fiercely as ‘Père Fouettard’ (who on Saint Nicholas Day, 6th December, dispenses beatings to naughty children), they’re not foaming enough!’ — ‘Sprinkle breadcrumbs on that hock of ham! Draw that gosling from the spit, it’s ready! Five or six more turns for that chicken! Quick, quick, take the beef away! It should be rare. But leave the veal and the chickens:
Raw chicken, and ill-cooked veal,
Gift the graveyard worms a meal.
Remember that, you rascal. Not everyone can roast well. It’s a gift from heaven. Take this soup to the princess at table six. Who asked for the quail gratin? Quickly, ready this saddle of spiced hare!’ Thus, amidst a cheerful tumult, alimentary exchanges and culinary rants criss-crossed, justifying their title better than the icy words Panurge handed out at the melting of the Frozen Sea (see Rabelais’ Gargantua and Pantagruel, Book IV: LVI), for they all related to some dish, condiment, or delicacy.
Herod, Blazius, and Scapin, who were gourmands, and devoutly greedy like cats, licked their lips at this delivery of exceedingly plump, succulent, and well-fed eloquence, which they said they highly preferred to that of Isocrates, Demosthenes, Aeschines, Hortensius, or Cicero, and other such chatterers whose sentences were nothing but hollow bones lacking in marrow juice. ‘I have a longing’ said Blazius, ‘to kiss, and on both cheeks, that fat cook, as large and pot-bellied as a monk, who rules all these saucepans with such a superb air. Never was a captain more admirable under fire!’
At the very moment a servant came to inform the actors that their rooms were ready, a traveller entered the kitchen, and approached the fireplace. He was a man of about thirty, tall, thin, vigorous, with an unpleasant, though regular, physiognomy. The light from the hearth endowed his profile with a fiery edge, while the rest of his face was bathed in shadow. Its luminous touch emphasised a somewhat prominently arched eyebrow sheltering a hard and scrutinising eye, a nose of aquiline curvature whose tip curved back to form a hooked beak above a thick moustache, and a very thin lower lip which merged abruptly with a short, squat chin as if nature had lacked the material to complete the face. The lean neck, exposed by a flap of starched batiste, revealed in its thinness that protruding cartilage that old wives claim to be a piece of the fatal apple remaining in Adam’s throat, which some of his descendants have not yet swallowed. His costume consisted of a doublet of iron-grey cloth beneath a buff jacket, brown breeches, and felt boots, reaching above the knee and folding in spiral layers about his legs. Numerous specks of mud, some dry, others still fresh, indicated a long journey, and the spurs, reddened with blackish blood, said that, to reach the end of it, the rider had been forced to savagely wound the flanks of his weary mount. A long rapier, whose wrought iron basket-hilt must have weighed more than a pound, hung from a wide leather belt fastened by a copper buckle clinched about the man’s thin spine. A dark-coloured cloak and hat, both of which he had thrown onto a bench, completed the account of his attire. It would have been difficult to determine to what class the newcomer belonged. He was neither a merchant, nor a bourgeois, nor a soldier. The most plausible supposition would have placed him in the category of those poor gentlemen or minor noblemen who become servants to some great man and attach themselves to his company.
Sigognac, who was not a man of the kitchen like Herod or Blazius, and therefore not absorbed in contemplation of those magnificent victuals, looked with a certain curiosity at this tall fellow whose physiognomy seemed somehow familiar to him, though he could not remember where or when he had encountered it. In vain he summoned up his memories, but failed to find what he was searching for. However, he felt, confusedly, that this was not the first time he had found himself in contact with this enigmatic personage who, little concerned about the former’s inquisitive examination of his features, of which he seemed to be aware, turned his back completely upon the room and leant towards the fireplace under the guise of warming his hands more effectively.
As his memory provided him with nothing precise, and any longer insistence might have given rise to a useless quarrel, the Baron followed the actors, who took possession of their respective lodgings, and after having made a brief toilette, gathered in a lower room where supper was served, which they celebrated being hungry and thirsty people. Blazius, clicked his tongue, proclaimed the wine good, and poured himself numerous full glasses, without forgetting those of his comrades, for he was not one of those selfish drinkers who worship Bacchus alone; he loved to drink with others almost as much as drinking by himself; the Tyrant and Scapin granted him the opportunity; Leander feared, by indulging in too frequent libations, that he might impair the whiteness of his complexion, while adorning his nose with those bumps and pimples unsuitable as ornaments for a lover. As for the Baron, the long periods of abstinence suffered at the castle of Sigognac had developed in him a habitual Castilian sobriety which he was able to forego only with difficulty. He too was preoccupied with the character glimpsed in the kitchen, whom he found to be suspicious without being able to say why, since nothing was more natural than the arrival of a traveller at a well-stocked inn.
The meal was a cheerful one. Enlivened by wine and good food, joyful at being, at last, in Paris, the Eldorado of all people with ambitions to fulfil, and imbued with a warm glow, so pleasant after long hours spent in the cold wagon, the actors indulged in the wildest hopes. They rivalled in their opinion the troupes of the Hôtel de Bourgogne (the first permanent theatre in Paris, built in 1548 on the ruins of the palace of the dukes of Burgundy, on the Rue Mauconseil, later the Rue Étienne Marcel, and home to the Comédiens du Roi, from 1628) and the Théâtre du Marais (on the Vieille Rue du Temple, founded 1634). They saw themselves applauded, feted, summoned to court, able to commission plays from the finest minds of the time, treating poets as mere scribblers, invited to feasts by great lords, and riding in carriages. Leander dreamed of the most elevated conquests, and it was even uncertain if he would consent not to seduce the queen. Though he had drunk nothing, he was intoxicated with vanity. Since his affair with the Marquise de Bruyères, he believed himself utterly irresistible, and his self-esteem knew no bounds. Serafina promised herself that she would remain faithful to the Chevalier de Vidalinc only until the day a finer, and more eligible, suitor presented himself. As for Zerbina, she had her marquis who was soon to join her, and no further ambition. Dame Leonarda, being excluded by reason of her age, and able only to serve as a messenger, like Iris (female messenger to the Greek gods, embodied by the rainbow), found these trivialities unamusing, and failed to waste a single bite of the dinner before her. Blazius loaded her plate and filled her goblet to the brim with comical rapidity, a jest that the old woman accepted with good grace.
Isabella, who had long since stopped eating, absentmindedly rolled a ball of bread-crumbs between her fingers, shaping it into a dove and rested her eyes, bathed in chaste love and angelic tenderness, on her dear Sigognac, seated at the other end of the table. The warmth of the room had brought a delicate blush to her cheeks, which had recently been somewhat pale from the fatigue of the journey. She looked adorably beautiful like that, and if the young Duke of Vallombreuse had been able to see her at that moment, his emotions would have been exasperated to the point of rage.
For his part, Sigognac contemplated Isabella with respectful admiration; the beautiful feelings expressed by this charming girl touched him as much as the attractions with which she was abundantly endowed, and he regretted that, through excess of delicacy, she had refused him as a husband.
When supper was over, the women withdrew, along with Leander and the Baron, leaving the trio of accomplished drunkards to finally empty the bottles, a procedure which seemed far too meticulous to the servant in charge of serving drinks, but a thoroughness for which a solid silver coin consoled him.
‘…The women withdrew…leaving the trio of accomplished drunkards.’
— ‘Barricade yourself in your chamber,’ said Sigognac, escorting Isabella to the door of her room. ‘There are so many strangers in these inns one cannot take too many precautions.’
— ‘Fear not, dear Baron,’ replied the young actress, ‘my door is locked with a triple lock that would secure a prison-cell. There is a bolt as long as my arm as well; the window is barred, and there is no hole like a bull’s-eye in the wall gazing out of its dark pupil. Travellers often have valuables that might tempt thieves’ greed, so the rooms in hostelries are always hermetically sealed. Never has a fairy-tale princess threatened with a spell been safer in her tower guarded by dragons.’
— ‘Sometimes,’ replied Sigognac, ‘enchantment is not needed, and the enemy enters without the use of charms, incantations, or conjurations.’
— ‘Because the princess,’ Isabella replied, smiling, ‘chose to favour that enemy through her own curiosity or amorous complicity, wearying of being so secluded, even though it was for her own good; which is not my case. Therefore, since I am not afraid, I who am by nature as timid as a doe at the sound of the hunting-horn and the baying of hounds, you should be reassured, you who are equal in courage to Alexander or Caesar. Sleep soundly.’
And as a sign of farewell, she extended to Sigognac’s lips a soft and slender hand whose whiteness she knew how to preserve as well as any duchess, by the use of talcum-powder, cucumber cream, and gloves treated with a preparation. Once she was within, Sigognac heard the key turn in the lock, the latch slide home, and the bolt creak in its slot in the most reassuring way; yet, as he reached the threshold of his own room, he saw the shadow of a man, cast by the light from the lantern that illuminated the corridor, pass along the wall, a man whom he had not heard approaching and whose body almost brushed against his. Sigognac turned his head quickly. It was the stranger from the kitchen, doubtless on his way to the lodgings that the host had assigned him. All quite normal. However, the Baron, feigning not to locate the keyhole at once, followed this mysterious personage, whose appearance strangely preoccupied him, with his eyes, until a bend in the corridor hid him from view. A door closing, with a noise that the silence descending on the inn made more perceptible, informed him that the stranger had located his room, and that he was lodged in a region of the inn quite distant from his own.
Not desirous of sleeping, Sigognac began to write a letter to the brave Pierre, which he had promised to do on his arrival in Paris. He took care to form the characters very distinctly, for the faithful servant was no great scholar and could hardly make out anything other than block letters. The epistle was worded thus:
‘My good Pierre, here I am at last in Paris, where, it is said, I shall make my fortune and re-establish my ruined House, though to tell the truth I hardly see the means. However, some fortunate opportunity may bring me closer to the Court, and if I succeed in speaking to the king, from whom all grace emanates, the services rendered by my ancestors to his predecessors will doubtless be taken into account. His Majesty will surely not allow a noble family that rendered itself destitute in the wars to become extinct in so miserable a manner. In the meantime, for lack of other resources, I am acting on the stage, and have, by this trade, earned a few pistoles, a share of which I will send you as soon as I have found a secure method. I would perhaps have done better to enlist as a soldier in some company, but I had no wish to constrain my freedom, and besides, however poor he may be, obeying orders is repugnant to someone whose ancestors issued them, and who has never accepted such from anyone. And then solitude has made me somewhat wild and untameable. The only notable adventure I have had during this long journey was a duel with a certain very unpleasant duke, though a fine swordsman, from which I emerged to my glory, thanks to your excellent teaching. My blade passed straight through his arm, and nothing would have been easier than to lay him dead on the field, since his skill in parrying scarcely matched his skill in lunging, he being more fiery than prudent, and less firm than nimble. Several times he left himself undefended, and I could have dispatched him with one of those inexorable strokes that you taught me with such patience during those long bouts we mounted in the basement room at Sigognac, the only one whose floor was solid enough for us to maintain our footing, so as to kill time, stretch our arms, and gain sleep through fatigue. Your pupil does you honour, and I have grown greatly in general esteem after this victory which in truth was all too easy. It seems that I am decidedly a fine blade, a first-rate swordsman. But let us leave that subject. I often think, despite the distractions of this new life, of the poor old castle whose ruins crumble above the tombs of my family, and where I spent my sad youth. From a distance, it no longer seems as ugly or gloomy to me; there are even moments when I wander, in thought, through those deserted rooms, gazing at the yellowed portraits which, for so long, were my only company, and causing a shard of glass fallen from a collapsed window to crackle underfoot; the reverie brings me a sort of melancholic pleasure. It would give me great joy, too, to see again your good old face, browned by the sun, light at the sight of me in a cordial smile. And, why should I blush to say it? I would like to hear the purring of Beelzebub, the barking of Miraut, and the neighing of that poor Bayard, who gathered his last strength to carry me along, though I was scarcely heavy. Those who are unfortunate, and whom men abandon, give a part of their soul to those creatures, more faithful than they, whom misfortune fails to scare away. Do those brave creatures who loved me still live, and do they seem to recall me, and miss me? Are you able, in that miserable dwelling, to at least prevent them from dying of hunger, by tossing them a few morsels from your own meagre fare? Try to stay alive all of you until I return, whether rich or poor, happy or desperate, to share my fortune or my desolation with you, and end together, as the fates decide, in the place where we have suffered together. If I must be the last of the Sigognacs, may God’s will be done! There is still an empty place for me in the ancestral vault.
Baron de Sigognac.’
The Baron sealed this letter with a ring, the only jewel he had inherited from his father, which bore the three storks on an azure field engraved upon it; he penned the address, and placed the letter in a wallet to be sent when some courier or other left for Gascony. From the castle of Sigognac, to which his thoughts of Pierre had transported him, his mind returned to Paris, and his present situation. Though the hour was late, he heard around him the dull, vague murmur of a great city which, like the ocean, is never silent even when it seems at rest. It was the hooves of a horse, the rumble of a carriage dying away in the distance, the song of a late drunkard, the clatter of rapiers against each other, the cry of a passer-by assailed by the thieves of the Pont-Neuf, the howl of a lost dog or some other indistinct noise. Among these sounds, Sigognac thought he could distinguish the footsteps of a booted man walking the corridor, cautiously, as if seeking not to be heard. He extinguished his candle, so the light would not give him away, and, half-opening his door, saw, in the depths of the corridor, an individual carefully wrapped in a dark-coloured cape, who was heading for the room of that unknown traveller whose appearance had seemed so suspicious. A few moments later, another companion, whose shoes creaked, though he tried to lighten his tread, took the same path as the first. Half an hour had not passed when a third fellow, possessed of a rather truculent air, appeared beneath the wavering light of the lantern, which was about to die, and entered the corridor. He was armed like the other two, a long sword lifting the border of his cloak behind. The shadow cast over his face by the rim of a felt hat with a black feather made it impossible to distinguish his features.
This procession of ruffians seemed strange and untimely to Sigognac, and the group of four recalled the ambush of which he had almost been the victim in the alley at Poitiers, on leaving the theatre after his quarrel with the Duke of Vallombreuse. His awareness was roused, and he recognised in the man who had intrigued him in the kitchen the scoundrel whose previous assault could have been fatal to him if he had not been expecting the like. It was indeed that same fellow with his hat sloped down to his shoulders, who had rolled about, legs and arms in the air, beneath the blows that Captain Fracasse had bravely administered to him with the flat of his sword. The others must have been his companions, valiantly routed by Herod and Scapin. What chance, or rather what plot, had brought them together at the inn where the troupe had taken up its quarters, and on the very evening of his arrival? They must have followed his journey step by step. Sigognac had watched the road diligently; but how is one to perceive an adversary in a cavalier who passes with an indifferent air, and pursuing his way, barely throws you the vague glance that any encounter excites when travelling? What was certain was that the hatred towards himself, and the love of the young duke for Isabella, were undimmed, and the duke was seeking to satisfy both. His vengeance was aimed at catching Isabella and Sigognac in the same net. Exceptionally brave by nature, the Baron felt no fear, on his own account, of these hired rascals’ mission, whom a waft of his good blade would put to flight, and who would prove no more courageous with the sword than the stick; but he feared some subtle and cowardly move against the young actress. He therefore took his precautions accordingly, and resolved not to rest. Lighting all the candles in his room, he opened his door so that a flood of light projected onto the opposite wall of the corridor, at the very point where Isabella’s door stood; then he seated himself quietly after drawing his sword and dagger, so as to be ready if anything untoward occurred. He waited for a long time without noting anything. Two o’clock had already struck on the carillon of La Samaritaine (the pumping station built 1602-8) and on the clock nearer the Grands-Augustins, when a slight rustling was heard, and soon, against the illuminated area of wall, appeared the first individual, uncertain, hesitant, and possessed of a very sheepish air, who was indeed none other than Mérindol, one of the Duke of Vallombreuse’s swordsmen. Sigognac stood at the threshold, sword in hand, ready for attack or defence, with a face so heroic, so proud and so triumphant, that Mérindol passed without saying a word, lowering his head.
‘Sigognac stood at the threshold…’
The other three, approaching in line, and surprised by the sudden flood of light, in the centre of which stood the Baron simmering quietly, slipped away as nimbly as they could, and the last one dropped a crowbar, no doubt intended to force open Captain Fracasse’s door while he slept. The Baron bid them farewell with a derisory gesture, and soon the noise of horses clattering from the stable could be heard in the courtyard. The four rogues, their attempt having failed, scampered off at full speed.
At breakfast, Herod addressed Sigognac. ‘Captain, does not curiosity compel you to go and tour this city, one of the principal ones in this world, and of which so many stories are told? If it is agreeable to you, I will serve as your guide and pilot, knowing from long experience, having navigated them in my adolescence, the reefs, shoals, shallows, Euripi (the Euripus Strait separates Euboea in the Aegean Sea from Boeotia in mainland Greece), Charybdises and Scyllae (Charybdis and Scylla were two sea-monsters, in Greek mythology, located on opposite sides of the Strait of Messina) of this sea, perilous to foreigners and provincials. I will be your Palinurus (Aeneas’ helmsman in Virgil’s ‘Aeneid’), but will not permit myself to fall head-first into the waves, like he of whom Virgil speaks. We are well placed to view the spectacle, the Pont-Neuf being to Paris what the Sacred Way (the Appian Way) was to Rome, the thoroughfare, meeting-place and peripatetic gallery of news-writers, innocents, poets, swindlers, thieves, entertainers, courtesans, gentlemen, bourgeoisie, soldiers, and people of all ranks.’
— ‘Your proposal pleases me greatly, brave Herod,’ replied Sigognac, ‘but warn Scapin that he is to remain at the hotel, and with his fox’s eye observe anyone who appears whose status is unclear. He must not leave Isabella undefended. Vallombreuse’s vengeance-seekers prowl around us, seeking to devour us. Last night I saw those four marauders again, whom we accommodated so fully in the alley at Poitiers. Their plan was, I imagine, to force my door, surprise me in my sleep, and do me an ill deed. As I was awake in fear of an abduction of our young friend, their plan failed, and, finding themselves discovered, they fled in haste, their horses having been fully saddled in the stable under the pretext that they wished to leave early in the morning.’
— ‘I doubt,’ replied the Tyrant, ‘that they will dare attempt anything by day. Help would arrive at the slightest call, and they will still be reeling from their disappointment. Scapin, Blazius and Leander will be enough of a force to guard Isabella till we return. But for fear of some quarrel or altercation in the streets, I will bear my sword in support of yours if necessary.’
Having said this, the Tyrant buckled a belt, supporting a long and solid rapier, about his ample belly. He threw over the corner of his shoulder a short cape that would not hinder his movements, and he sloped his red-feathered felt hat over his eyebrows; for one must beware, when crossing bridges, of the north-west wind or galerne, which soon blows a hat into the river, to the great delight of pages, footmen, and urchins. Such was the reason given by Herod for his defensive head-dress, though, in truth, it was because the honest actor thought it might perhaps do harm thereafter to Sigognac the gentleman to have been seen in public with a histrion. That is why he hid his face as much as possible which he deemed too well known to the people.
At the corner of Rue Dauphine, Herod pointed out to Sigognac, beneath the porch of the Convent of the Grands-Augustins, those folk who hastened to buy meat seized from the butchers on proscribed days, and so obtain a cut at a lower price. He also showed him the newsmen, discussing, among themselves, the destinies of kingdoms, rearranging borders at will, dividing empires, and reporting item by item the speeches the ministers had made when alone in their offices. There were gazettes, libels, satirical writings, and other small pamphlets being peddled from beneath various cloaks. All these odd people possessed haggard faces, a wild air, and worn clothing.
— ‘Let us not wait,’ said Herod, ‘to listen to their never-ending nonsense; unless, however, you wish to know the latest edict of the Persian Sophy, or the ceremonial employed at the court of Prester John. Let us advance a few steps and enjoy one of the most beautiful spectacles in the universe, one the theatre cannot present by means of its scenic effects.’
Indeed, the perspective which unfolded before the eyes of Sigognac and his guide, as they crossed the bridge thrown over the river, had not then, and still has, no rival in the world. The foreground was formed by the bridge itself with its graceful half-moon bastions set above the piers. The Pont-Neuf was not burdened, like the Pont au Change and the Pont Saint-Michel, with two rows of tall houses. The great monarch who completed it (Henri IV, in 1606) had not wanted feeble and gloomy buildings to obstruct the view of the sumptuous palace (the Tuileries Palace, destroyed by fire, in 1871, during the Commune) in which our kings reside, and which can be seen from this point in all its glory.
On the platform forming the tip of the island, the good king, with the calm air of a Marcus Aurelius, rode his bronze mount atop a pedestal on which at each corner leaned a bronze captive, twisting in his bonds (The extant equestrian statue was unveiled in 1613, the captives in 1618, later destroyed in 1792). A wrought iron grille, with rich volutes surrounded it, to protect its base from the undue familiarity and irreverence of the people; since, on occasion, after clambering over the grille, various rascals ventured to mount behind the debonair monarch, especially on days of royal entry to the city, or interesting executions. The severe tone of the bronze stood out strongly against the misty air, and the backcloth of distant hills that could be seen beyond the Pont Rouge (Built around 1632, and located near the present-day Pont Royal, it linked the St-Germain quarter to the Tuileries. It was washed away in 1684.)
On the left bank, above the houses, rose the spire of the old Romanesque church, Saint-Germain des Prés, and the high roofs of the Hôtel de Nevers, a grand palace still unfinished (not extant, later the Hôtel de Guénégaud then the Hôtel de Conti, it was located on the Quai de Nevers, now the Quai de Conti, on the site of the present day Hôtel des Monnaies, the Mint). A little further on, the tower (the Tour de Nesle), an ancient remnant of the Hôtel de Nesle, dipped its feet in the river, amidst a heap of rubble, and though long since in a state of ruin, still maintained a proud attitude against the horizon. Beyond, stretched La Grenouillère, and amidst a vague azure mist one could distinguish at the edge of the sky the three crosses planted at the top of the hill of Calvary, Mont Valérien (Suresnes).
The Louvre, in all its splendour, occupied the right bank, illuminated and gilded by a cheerful shaft of sunlight, more luminous than warm, like a winter sun, but which gave a singular relief to the details of its architecture, both noble and rich. The long gallery joining the Louvre to the Tuileries, a marvellous arrangement allowing the king to be, whenever he pleased, either in his good city or in the countryside, displayed its nonpareil beauties, fine sculptures, historiated cornices, vermiculated bossages, columns and pilasters equalling the efforts of the most skilful Greek and Roman architects.
From the corner where the balcony of Charles IX stands, the building in its retreat, gave way to gardens and parasitic constructions, mushrooms sprouting at the foot of the old edifice. On the quay, culverts rounded their arches, and a little further downstream than the Tour de Nesle stood a courtyard, the remains of the old Louvre of Charles V, flanking the gatehouse (the Tour de Bois) built between the river and the palace. These two old towers, coupled in the Gothic fashion, facing each other diagonally, contributed not a little to the pleasantness of the perspective. They recalled the time of feudalism, and held their place amidst the new and more tasteful architecture, like an antique pulpit or a curiously crafted old oak dresser amidst modern furniture plated with silver and gilding. These relics of vanished centuries grant cities a respectable appearance, and we should take care they are not allowed to disappear.
At the far end of the Tuileries Gardens, where the city terminated, one could see the Porte de la Conférence (not extant, it stood on the right bank, part of Louis XIII’s wall), and along the river, beyond the gardens, the trees of the Cours-la-Reine, a favourite promenade of courtesans and people of quality, who frequented it to display their carriages.
The two banks, of which I have just drawn a quick sketch, framed like two wings the animated scene presented by the river furrowed by boats crossing from shore to shore, obstructed by others moored together near the bank, some loaded with hay, some with wood or other goods. Near the quay, at the foot of the Louvre, the royal galliots (galleys) attracted the eye with their sculpted and gilded ornaments, and their flags in the colours of France.
Looking back towards the bridge, one could see above the sharp peaks of the houses, like cards leaning against one another, the steeples of Saint-Germain l’Auxerrois. Having sufficiently contemplated this view, Herod led Sigognac to La Samaritaine (the hydraulic pump, established downstream of the second arch of the Pont-Neuf, on the right bank, began operation in 1608. The facade, topped by a campanile, was decorated with a high relief representing Christ and the Samaritan woman at the well, and the building was swiftly named ‘La Samaritaine’)
— ‘Even though it is a meeting place for simpletons who stand there for long periods of time waiting for the brass bell-ringer to strike the hour on the clock, one must go there, and do as the others do. A little idleness does not go amiss as regards a newly arrived traveller. It would be more boorish than wise to despise and rebuff, in an over-scrupulous manner, that which charms the people.’
It was in these terms that the Tyrant excused himself to his companion as they stood at the foot of the facade of the little building which housed the hydraulic pump, waiting for the clock’s hand to set the joyous chime in motion, and gazing at the gilded-lead Jesus speaking to the Samaritan woman leaning on the edge of the well; the astronomical dial with its zodiac and its ebony discs marking the course of the sun and the moon; the masked face emitting the water drawn from the river; the sheathed Hercules supporting the whole mass of decoration; and the hollow statue serving as a weather-vane like that of Fortune on the Dogana in Venice, or the Giraldillo on the Giralda bell-tower in Seville.
The tip of the hour-hand finally reaching the number ten, the bells began to ring most joyously, their thin, silvery or brassy tones playing a sarabande; the bell-ringer raised his brazen arm, and the hammer descended on the bell as many times as there were hours to strike. This mechanism, ingeniously devised by the Fleming, Jean Lintlaër, greatly amused Sigognac, who, though naturally intelligent, was experiencing much that he did not know, having never left his manor house amidst the moors.
— ‘Now,’ said Herod, ‘let us turn in the other direction; upstream, the view is not quite so magnificent. The houses on the Pont au Change obstruct it too much. The buildings on the Quai de la Mégisserie (which stretches from the Pont au Change to the Pont Neuf) are worthless; however, the Saint-Jacques tower, the Saint-Méderic (the church of Saint Merri, on Rue Saint Martin) bell-tower, and those distant church spires clearly proclaim the great city. Meanwhile, on l’Île du Palais, (l’Île de la Cité) along the quay beside the river, those regular red-brick houses, linked by bonds of white stone, have a monumental appearance which is happily completed by the old Clock Tower (the Tour de l’Horlogue) topped with its candle-snuffer roof, which often pierces the mist alone. The Place Dauphine, its triangle extending beyond the bronze statue of Henri IV, and allowing a view of the Palace gates, can be ranked among the most orderly and cleanest. See how the spire of the Sainte-Chapelle, that church on two levels, so famous for its treasure and its relics, dominates the high slate roofs nearby most gracefully, pierced as they are with ornamented dormer vents, and which still shine with a brand new splendour, for these houses were not built long ago, and in my childhood I played hopscotch on the land they occupy; thanks to the munificence of our kings, Paris is becoming more beautiful every day, and is greatly admired by foreigners, who, upon returning to their own countries, tell of her wonders, while finding her improved, enlarged and well-nigh new on every visit.’
— ‘What astonishes me,’ replied Sigognac, ‘even more than the grandeur, wealth, and sumptuousness of the buildings, both public and private, is the streets, squares, and bridges amidst which an infinite number of people swarm and teem, like ants whose anthill has been overturned, and who race about wildly, here and there, in a manner whose purpose one cannot suspect. It is strange to think that among the individuals who make up this inexhaustible multitude, each has a room, a bed good or bad, and eats almost every day, without which they would die of starvation. What a prodigious pile of provisions, how many herds of oxen, barrels of flour and of wine are needed to feed all these people piled up in the one place, while on our moors one scarcely meets a single inhabitant, now and then!’
Indeed, the crowd of people circulating on the Pont-Neuf was more than large enough to surprise a provincial. In the middle of the roadway, carriages with two or four horses followed or passed each other, some freshly painted and gilded, upholstered in velvet with mirrors in the doors, and gently swaying on their springs, attended by footmen at the rear, and driven by coachmen with crimson faces, in full livery, who could barely restrain, amidst the crowd, the impatience of their teams; others less brilliant, with tarnished paint, leather curtains, and taut springs, were drawn by far more docile horses whose ardour had to be roused by the whip, and who announced the lesser wealth of their masters. In the former, behind the windows, one could see magnificently dressed courtiers, and coquettishly attired ladies; in the latter, those of lesser means, doctors and other serious-looking people. Amidst all this, carts passed, loaded with stone, wood or barrels, and driven by brutal carters whose difficulties in doing so led them to deny their God with frenzied energy. Our cavaliers tried to force a passage through this moving maze of wagons, unable to avoid on occasion finding their boots scraped and muddied by a wheel-hub. Sedan chairs, some owned by their masters, others hired, attempted to keep to the edges of the current, so as not to be swept away by it, skirting the parapets of the bridge as much as possible. A herd of oxen chanced to pass, and the disorder was then at its height. The horned beasts, and by that I do not mean any married bipeds who were then crossing the Pont-Neuf, but rather the oxen, swung to and fro, lowering their heads, frightened, harassed by the dogs, and beaten by the drivers. At the sight of them the horses, also fearful, stampeded or reared. Passers-by ran for their lives, for fear of being gored, while the dogs, slipping between the legs of those less agile, upset their centre of gravity, and caused them to fall flat as pancakes. A lady, painted and speckled with beauty-spots, and trimmed with jet and flame-coloured ribbons, who looked like a priestess of Venus in search of adventure, even stumbled from her high-arched pattens and fell flat on her back, without hurting herself, ‘as if accustomed to such falls’, the jokers who gave her a hand to help her up, did not fail to say. At another time, a company of soldiers on its way to some post, standards unfurled and drummer at the head, passed by, and it was necessary that the crowd make way for these Sons of Mars unaccustomed to encountering any resistance.
— ‘All this,’ said Herod to Sigognac, who was absorbed by the spectacle, ‘is merely commonplace. Let us try to pierce the crowd, and attain those places where the eccentrics of the Pont-Neuf are to be found, extravagant, entertaining figures whom it is good to examine more closely. No other city but Paris produces such heterogeneous ones. They flourish amidst its paving stones like weeds, or rather, like deformed and monstrous fungi for which no soil is as well suited as this black mud. Ah! Look, here, as I speak, comes the Périgourdin, Du Maillet, called ‘the muddy poet’, who is paying court to the bronze king on his horse. Some claim he is an ape escaped from some menagerie; others that he is one of the camels brought back by Monsieur de Nevers (Charles I Gonzaga, Duke of Mantua and Montferrat, who was also titled Charles III, Duke of Nevers, had laid claim to the throne of Constantinople. He died in 1637). The problem has not yet been resolved: I consider him to be human, given his madness, arrogance, and uncleanliness. Monkeys groom themselves, seek out the insects amidst their fur, and eat them, out of revenge and retaliation; he takes no such care of himself; camels cleanse and sprinkle themselves with dust as if it were iris powder; they have several stomachs and chew their food; which this fellow cannot do, for his crop is always as empty as his head. Toss him a coin; he will take it, grumbling and cursing you. He is therefore a man indeed, since he is mad, dirty and ungrateful.’
‘Ah! Look, here, as I speak, comes the Périgourdin, Du Maillet.’
Sigognac took a silver coin from his purse and proffered it to the poet, who, lost in a deep reverie, as these folk of feeble brains, and fantastical moods commonly are, failed at first to see the Baron standing before him. He finally did so and, emerging from his empty meditation, took the coin with a wild and abrupt gesture and plunged it into his pocket, muttering a few vague insults, then, the demon of verse taking hold of him again, he began to grind his lips, roll his eyes, and grimace in at least as curious a manner as those grotesque masks (replaced by copies and dispersed) sculpted by Germain Pilon (1525-1590) beneath the cornice of the Pont-Neuf, accompanying the whole with movements of the fingers to mark the feet of the verse he was murmuring between his teeth, which made him look like a man playing Morra (a finger game) and delighted the rascals gathered in a circle around him.
This poet, it must be said, was more singularly attired than the Mardi Gras effigy, when it is taken to be burned on Ash Wednesday, or one of those mannequins raised in orchards or vineyards to frighten away greedy birds. One would have said, on seeing him, that the bell-ringer of the Samaritaine, the little Moor of the Marché-Neuf (a former market on the Île de la Cité) and the Jacquemart of Saint-Paul (in the Marais) had visited a second-hand shop and left their clothes there to provide his garb. An old felt hat, scorched by the sun, washed by the rain, girded with a greasy cord, topped, by way of a plume with a moth-eaten cockerel’s feather, and more comparable to an apothecary’s filtering-bag than a piece of human head-gear, hung down over his eyebrows, forcing him to raise his head to see, for his eyes were almost hidden under its flabby and filthy rim. His doublet, of an indescribable fabric and colour seemed in a better mood than himself, since the comical garment was gaping openly, at every seam, and appeared bursting with laughter, and due to old age too, having doubtless existed for more years than Methuselah. A strip of frieze cloth served as his belt and baldric and supported, as a sword, a fencing foil shorn of its button whose point dug, like a ploughshare, into the pavement behind him. Breeches made of the yellow satin which had once adorned the masked dancers in some ballet scene, were swallowed by boots, one an oyster fisherman’s, of black leather, the other of white Russian leather with a knee-pad, this latter with a flat sole, the other, which was equipped with a spur, an arched and peeling sole which would have long since departed its boot without the help of a piece of string twisted several around the foot like the bands of an antique buskin. A red goat-skin coat, which every season found at its post, completed his attire, which would have shamed an apple-picker from Perche, and of which our poet seemed not a little proud. Beneath the folds of the coat, next to the pommel of the sword doubtless charged with protecting him, a stick of bread showed its nose.
Further on, in one of the bastions set above each pier, stood a blind man, accompanied by a fat female companion who served as his eyes, and bawled out boisterous couplets or, in a comically lugubrious tone, intoned a lament on the life, crimes and death of some famous criminal. In another place, a charlatan, dressed in a red serge costume, was struggling, with a pair of pliers for extracting teeth in his hand, on a platform adorned with garlands of canine, incisor, and molar teeth threaded on brass wires. He delivered a speech to the gathered onlookers in which he undertook to remove without any pain (to himself) the most stubborn and deeply-rooted stumps, with a stroke of a sabre or a pistol, at the patient’s discretion, unless, however, they preferred to be operated on by ordinary means. ‘I don’t pull them...’ he cried, in a screeching voice, ‘I pluck them! Come now, let any of you who has bad teeth enter the circle without fear, and I will cure him instantly!’
‘…I will cure him instantly!’
A sort of boor, whose swollen cheek showed that he was suffering from an abscess, came and seated himself on the chair, and the operator plunged his formidable pair of polished-steel pliers into his mouth. The unfortunate man, instead of holding onto the arms of the chair, followed the trajectory of his tooth, which was separated from him with great difficulty, raising himself more than two feet in the air, which greatly amused the crowd. A sudden jerk ended his torment, and the operator brandished his bloody trophy above their heads!
During this grotesque scene, a monkey attached to the platform by a chain riveted to a leather belt which encircled his kidneys, imitated, comically, the patient’s cries, gestures and contortions.
This ridiculous spectacle did not detain Herod and Sigognac for long, who were more inclined to stop before the sellers of newspapers (Theophraste Renaudot, a Protestant physician and protégé of Cardinal Richelieu, founded the first weekly newspaper in France, La Gazette, in 1631), and second-hand books, installed on the parapets. The Tyrant pointed out to his companion a ragged beggar who had settled himself before the bridge, against the solid cornice, his crutch and bowl beside him, and who from there, raising his arm, thrust his filthy hat beneath the noses of those bending over to leaf through a book, or watch the flow of the river, so that, if they chose, they could throw into it a copper or two, or even a silver tester, or more still if they wished, for he refused nothing, being quite capable of passing off a counterfeit coin.
— ‘In our country,’ said Sigognac, ‘only swallows haunt the ledges; here it’s men!’
— ‘You call this fellow a man!’ said Herod. ‘That’s most polite, though as Christians, we should not despise any. Besides, all kinds of people cross this bridge, perhaps even honest ones, since we ourselves are here. According to the proverb, one cannot cross it without meeting a monk, a white horse, and a whore. Here is a friar hurrying along, his sandals clicking; the white horse is not far off; there, look, in front of you, by God; that nag, who is curveting as if between the training-posts. All that’s missing is the whore. We won’t have long to wait. Instead of one, here come three, bare-throated, painted like carriage-wheels, and laughing affectedly to show their teeth. The proverb proves true.’
‘You call this fellow a man!’ said Herod.’
Suddenly a tumult was heard at the far end of the bridge, and the crowd ran towards the noise. Four swordsmen were fencing on the platform at the foot of the statue, as the freest and most open place. They shouted: ‘Death! Death! and pretended to charge furiously. But theirs were only simulated thrusts, restrained and courteous thrusts as in comedy duels, from which, whether killed or wounded, no one ever dies. They fought two against two, and seemed animated by extreme rage, pushing aside the swords which their companions interposed in attempts to separate them. This feigned quarrel was intended to drum up a gathering so that the thieves and cut-purses could carry out their trade, amidst the crowd, with complete ease. Indeed, more than one curious person who had entered the group with a fine coat lined with panne (fabric worked like velvet) over his shoulder, and a well-lined pocket, left the place in a plain doublet, having spent his money without knowing it. The swordsmen, who had never quarrelled at all, being as thick as thieves, which indeed they were, at a fair, soon reconciled, and shook hands with great affectations of loyalty, declaring honour satisfied. Which was not difficult; the honour of such scoundrels lacking any great points of delicacy.
Sigognac, on Herod’s advice, had not approached the combatants too closely, so could only see them vaguely through the gaps left by the heads and shoulders of the onlookers. However, he thought he recognised in these four rogues the men whose mysterious movements he had observed the previous night at the inn on Rue Dauphine, and he communicated his suspicion to Herod. But the swordsmen had already slipped away, prudently, in the crowd, and were now harder to find than a needle in a haystack.
— ‘It’s conceivable,’ said Herod, ‘that their quarrel was only a ruse to draw you to them, for it may well be that we are being followed by emissaries of the Duke of Vallombreuse. One of the swordsmen would have pretended to be embarrassed or shocked by your presence, and, without giving you time to draw his sword, he would have struck you some murderous blow, seemingly inadvertently, and, if necessary, his comrades would have finished you off. The whole thing would have been attributed to a chance encounter and a brawl. In such altercations, the one who receives the blows retains them. Premeditation and a subsequent ambush cannot be proven.’
— ‘I find it hard to believe,’ replied the generous Sigognac, ‘that a gentleman could be capable of such baseness as to have his rival assassinated by swordsmen. If he was not satisfied by our first encounter, I am ready to cross swords with him again, until the death of one or the other of us ensues. That is how things are done between men of honour.’
— ‘Doubtless,’ replied Herod, ‘but the duke well knows, however enraged and proud he may be, that the outcome of the fight could not fail to be fatal to him. He has tasted your blade, and felt its point. Believe me, he holds a diabolical grudge following his defeat, and will not be delicate about the means of taking revenge.’
— ‘If he disdains the sword, let us fight on horseback with pistols,’ said Sigognac. ‘He’ll be unable then to employ my strength in fencing as an excuse.’
While talking in this manner, the two companions reached the Quai de l’École (the name is not extant, it ran from the Pont-Neuf to the Place du Louvre), and there a carriage almost crushed Sigognac, even though he moved aside promptly. His slim build prevented him from being flattened against the wall, so close was the carriage to him, though there was plenty of room on the other side and the coachman, by directing his horses a little that way, could have avoided this passer-by whom he seemed to be assailing. The windows of this carriage were raised, and the interior curtains drawn; but whoever had pulled them aside would have revealed a magnificently dressed nobleman, his arm supported by a wide strip of black taffeta arranged as a sash. Despite the light within, reddened by passing through the closed curtains, he himself was pale, and the thin arches of his black eyebrows were prominent against the matt white of his face. His teeth, purer than pearls, had bitten his lower lip until it bled, and his thin moustache, stiffened with wax, bristled with feverish contractions, like that of a tiger scenting its prey. He was quite handsome, but his physiognomy displayed such a cruel expression that it was more likely to inspire fear than admiration, at least at that moment, when evil and hateful passions distorted it. In this portrait, sketched while lifting the curtain of the carriage passing at full speed, the reader has undoubtedly recognised the young Duke of Vallombreuse.
— ‘Another failure,’ he cried, as the carriage carried him along the Tuileries towards the Porte de la Conférence. ‘I promised my coachman twenty-five louis if he was clever enough to trap that damned Sigognac and crush him against a post as if by accident. My star is definitely fading; this little country squire is getting the better of me. Isabella adores him, and hates me. He has beaten my men; he has wounded me. Though he seems invulnerable as if protected by some amulet, he must die, or I shall forego my name, and my title of duke.’
— ‘Hmm!’ said Herod, drawing a deep breath from his chest, ‘the horses drawing that carriage seem to have the same temper as Diomedes’ horses (in Greek myth), which hunted men, tore them to pieces, and fed on their flesh. You are not hurt, at least? That unfortunate coachman saw you quite plainly, and I’d wager our best takings that he was seeking to kill you, deliberately setting his team against you, as part of some private design of revenge. I’m certain of it. Did you notice if there was a coat of arms painted on the door? As a gentleman, you are familiar with the noble science of heraldry, and the coats of arms of the principal families are familiar to you.’
— ‘I couldn’t say,’ replied Sigognac. ‘Even a herald at arms, in that situation, would have failed to discern the enamels and colours of a shield, much less its field and divisions, its emblems and devices. I had far too much to do, in avoiding the wheels, to see if it was decorated with guardant or issuant lions, birds or martlets, gold bezants or plain roundels, crosses clechées or vivrées, or any other designs.’
— ‘That is unfortunate,’ replied Herod, ‘such an observation would have set us on the right trail, and helped us perhaps to discover the thread of this dark intrigue; for it is evident that someone is trying to rid themselves of you, quibuscumque viis (by one means or another), as the Pedant, Blazius, would say in his Latin. Though proof is lacking, I should not be at all surprised if this carriage belonged to the Duke of Vallombreuse, who wished to give himself the pleasure of driving his chariot over the body of his enemy.’
— ‘What mean you by that, Master Herod?’ cried Sigognac. ‘That would be a base, infamous, and villainous action, all too unworthy of a gentleman of a great house, such as this Vallombreuse is, after all. Besides, did we not leave him in his hotel at Poitiers, rather unwell from his wound? How could he already be in Paris, when we only arrived yesterday?’
— ‘Did we not stop at Orléans and Tours, where we gave performances, a period long enough for him to have been able, with the carriages at his disposal, to follow us, and even arrive in advance of us? As for his wound, treated by the most excellent doctors, it will have closed and healed quickly. It was not, moreover, of a nature dangerous enough to prevent a young and vigorous man from travelling at his ease in a carriage or litter. You must therefore, my dear Captain, be on your guard, because they are plotting some kind of blow, à la Jarnac, against you, or to ambush and slay you, disguising it as some kind of accident. Your death would leave Isabella defenceless in the face of the duke’s schemes. Can we, poor actors, stand up to such a powerful lord? If it is questionable whether Vallombreuse can be in Paris as yet, his emissaries, at least, are acting in his stead here, since this night past, if you had not kept watch, while armed, roused by a valid suspicion, they would have cheerfully slit your throat in your room.’
The reasons given by Herod were too plausible to be questioned further; therefore, the Baron merely replied with a sign of assent, and placed his hand on the hilt of his sword, which he half-drew, in order to make sure that it moved smoothly, as regards the scabbard.
While talking, the two companions had passed beyond the Louvre and the Tuileries, and had reached the Porte de la Conférence, which led to the Cours-la-Reine, when they saw before them a great whirlwind of dust amidst which weapons glinted, and cuirasses gleamed. They stood aside to let the cavalry squadron go by, which preceded the king’s carriage, returning from Saint-Germain to the Louvre. They could see within, since the windows were lowered and the curtains drawn back, doubtless so that the people could contemplate to their heart’s content their monarch and the arbiter of their destinies, a pale phantom, dressed in black, with a blue ribbon on his chest, as motionless as a wax effigy. Long brown hair framed that lifeless face, its saddened expression one of incurable ennui, a Spanish boredom, à la Philip II, such as only the Escorial could concoct in its silence and solitude. It seemed as if the eyes reflected nothing; no desire, no thought, no expression of will appearing to enliven them. A profound disgust with life had slackened the lower lip, which drooped morosely in a sort of sulky pout. A pair of thin, white hands rested on the knees, in the manner of certain Egyptian statues. However, there was still a royal aura surrounding this gloomy figure which personified France, and in which the generous blood of Henry IV had congealed.
The carriage passed in a flare of light, followed by a large body of horsemen bringing up the rear. Sigognac was plunged in reverie on seeing this apparition. In his naivety, he had pictured the king as a supernatural being, radiant and powerful, shining amidst a sun formed of gold and precious stones, proud, splendid, triumphant, greater, stronger, and more beautiful, than all; and yet he had seen nothing more than a sad, puny, bored, sickly figure, poor in appearance, in a dark costume like a suit of mourning, who seemed not to notice the outside world, occupied as he was by some gloomy thought. ‘What!’ he said to himself. ‘Here is the king himself, the person in whom so many millions of men are summed up, who sits atop the pyramid, and towards whom so many hands stretch out from below, in supplication; who silences the cannons or makes them roar, elevates or demotes, punishes or rewards, pardoning, if he so wishes, when justice proclaims the death sentence; he who can change a destiny with a word! If his gaze fell upon me, I would soar from poverty to riches, from weakness to power; previously unknown, I would thereafter flourish, hailed and flattered by all. The ruined turrets of Sigognac would rise proudly once more; estates would be added to my diminished patrimony. I would be the lord of hill and plain! Yet how could he ever come to know of me, buried in this human anthill teeming distantly at his feet, and which he neglects to view? And even if he did see me, what sympathy could there be between us?’
These reflections, and many others that would take too long to recount, occupied Sigognac, as he walked, in silence, beside his companion. Herod respected his reverie, amusing himself by watching the carriages come and go. Eventually, he pointed out to the Baron that it was nearly noon, and that it was time to follow the compass needle that pointed towards the culinary pole, nothing being worse than a cold dinner except a re-heated one.
Sigognac yielded to this peremptory reasoning, and they returned to their inn. Nothing unusual had occurred in their absence. Only two hours had passed. Isabella, seated quietly at the table in front of a bowl of soup, its contents starred with more eyes than Argus’ body, welcomed her friend with her customary sweet smile and extended her white hand. The actors asked him playful questions, or expressed their curiosity, about his excursion through the city, asking if he still had with him his coat, handkerchief, and purse. To which Sigognac cheerfully replied in the affirmative. This amiable chatter soon made him forget his gloomy preoccupation, and he wondered whether he was not merely the dupe of an obsessive imagination that foresaw danger everywhere.
His instinct was correct, however, and his enemies, despite their aborted attempts, had not renounced their shadowy plans. Mérindol, threatened by the duke with a return to the galleys from which he had rescued him, if he did not overcome Sigognac, decided to request the help of a brave friend of his, to whom no enterprise was repugnant, however hazardous it might be, as long as it was well paid. He did not feel strong enough himself to defeat the Baron, who, moreover would recognise him, which rendered an attack on him difficult to achieve, since he was now on his guard.
Mérindol therefore went in search of this swordsman who dwelt in the Place du Marché-Neuf, near the Petit-Pont (rebuilt many times, the current bridge dates from 1852), an area populated mainly by swordsmen, rogues, thieves, and other folk of ill repute.
Noticing among the tall black houses, which leant on one another like drunkards afraid of falling, one blacker, more dilapidated, more leprous than the others, whose windows, overflowing with filthy rags, resembled slashed bellies leaking their entrails, he entered the dark alley which served as the entrance to this cavern. Soon the daylight from the street was lost, and Mérindol, feeling the wall, as sweaty and slimy as if snails had glued themselves to it and left their trails behind, sought in the shadows the rope that served as a banister for the staircase, a rope which one might have thought had been detached from the gallows, coated as it was with human grease. He hoisted himself up this miller’s ladder as best he could, stumbling at every step over the bumps and callouses formed on each step by the ancient mud piled there, layer on layer, since the days when Paris was called Lutetia (the Gallo-Roman town of the Parisii, which preceded the later city).
However, as Mérindol advanced in his perilous ascent, the darkness became less intense. A pale light filtered through the opaque yellow panes of the fixed windows intended to light the staircase, and which looked out onto a courtyard as dark and deep as a mineshaft. Finally, he arrived at the top floor, half suffocated by the mephitic vapours exhaled by the leading. A trio of doors opened onto the landing whose dirty plaster ceiling was embellished with obscene arabesques, curlicues, and more-than-Rabelaisian flourishes traced by the candle-smoke; frescoes well worthy of such a hovel.
One of these doors was ajar. Mérindol pushed it open with a kick, not wanting to touch it with his hand, and entered, without further ceremony, the only room constituting the palace of the swordsman Jacquemin Lampourde.
Acrid smoke so stung his eyes and throat that he began to cough like a cat that had swallowed a feather while devouring a bird, and it was a good two minutes before he could speak. Taking advantage of the open door, the smoke spread onto the landing, and the fog becoming less thick, the visitor was able to discern, more or less, the interior of the room.
This den deserves special description, because it is doubtful whether the honest reader has ever set foot in such a hovel, and therefore may be unable to imagine its destitute state.
The place consisted of four walls on which infiltrations from the roof had drawn islands and rivers unknown to any geographical map. In places within reach, the successive tenants of the hovel had amused themselves by engraving with a knife their names, incongruous, baroque, or hideous, following that urge which drives the most obscure to leave a trace of their passage through this world. To these names was often attached a woman’s name, Iris of the Crossroads, surmounted by a heart pierced by an arrow like a fishbone. Others, more artistic, had attempted, with a piece of coal removed from the ashes, to sketch some grotesque profile, a pipe between its teeth, or a hanged man with protruding tongue frolicking on the arm of the gallows.
On the edge of the chimney, where pieces of a stolen bundle of wood were smoking and spurting, a world of bizarre objects was piled in the dust: a bottle with a half-consumed candle, the tallow of which had run in wide sheets over the glass, stuck in its neck, a true torch of the prodigal son and the drunkard; a trictrac cup (trictrac is a points-scoring game with similarities to backgammon), three lead-dice (often made from spent musket balls), Robert Beinières’ manual for players at lansquenet (the card game), a bundle of old pipe-ends, a stoneware pot for tobacco, a slipper containing a toothless comb, a dark lantern its lens as round as the pupil of a nocturnal bird, bundles of keys, doubtless false for there were no drawers in the room to lock or unlock, a moustache-curler, a corner of a mirror, its silver plate scratched as if by the claws of the Devil, in which only one eye at a time was visible, if slenderer that is than those of Juno, whom Homer calls Βοῶπις (cow-eyed), and a thousand other trinkets tedious to describe.
Opposite the fireplace, on a section of wall less damp than the rest, and covered with a hanging of green serge, shone a bundle of carefully polished swords, tempered, tested, and bearing on their steel the marks of the most famous armourers of Spain and Italy. There were double-edged blades, triangular blades, blades hollowed in the middle to allow the blood to drain; daggers with large basket-hilts, cutlasses, daggers, stilettos and other expensive weapons whose richness made a singular contrast with the dilapidation of the den. Not a speck of rust, not a speck of dust soiled them; they were the tools of the killer, and could not have been better maintained in a princely arsenal, rubbed with oil as they were, sponged with wool, and preserved in their original state. One would have said they came fresh from the forge. In them Lampourde, so careless about everything else, invested his self-esteem and they were his absorbing interest. This professionalism, when one thought of the trade he practiced, took on a dreadful character, and over those well-polished pierces of metal a reddish play of the light seemed to flicker.
There were no seats in the room, and one was free to stand upright, unless one preferred to employ, so as to spare the soles of one’s shoes, an old battered basket, a trunk, or the lute-case lying in a corner.
The table consisted of a shutter placed on two trestles. It also served as a bed. After having caroused, the master of the house would lie down on it, and, taking the corner of the tablecloth, which was none other than the tail of his coat, the upper portion of which he had sold to line his stomach, he would turn towards the wall so as to avoid seeing the empty bottles, a singularly melancholic spectacle for a drunkard.
It was in this position that Mérindol found our Jacquemin Lampourde, who was snoring like an organ-pipe, though all the clocks in the vicinity had struck four in the afternoon.
An enormous venison pie, which showed in its vermilion ruins the marks of pistachios, and was more than half-devoured, lay disembowelled on the floor, like a corpse left behind by wolves in the depths of a wood, surrounded by a fabulous number of flasks from which the soul had been extracted, and which were now nothing more than the ghosts of bottles, hollow apparitions good only for broken glass.
A companion, whom Mérindol had not at first seen, was sleeping, fists outstretched, beneath the table, still holding in his teeth the broken stem of a pipe, the bowl of which stuffed with tobacco had fallen to the ground, and which, in his drunkenness, he had forgotten to light.
— ‘Hey there, Lampourde!’ cried Vallombreuse’s officer, ‘enough of this sleeping; don’t look at me with those eyes, rounder than marbles. I’m no commissioner or agent come to fetch you to the Châtelet (The Grand Châtelet was a fortress on the right bank of the Seine, on the site of the current Place du Châtelet; with a court and police headquarters, and a number of prisons.) The matter is important: try to rescue your reason sunk to the bottom of the glass, and pay attention.’
The person thus summoned rose, with the slowness of the newly awakened, sat up, stretched out his long arms, the fists of which almost touched the two walls of the room, opened an immense mouth toothed with sharp fangs, and, clicking his jaws, gave a formidable yawn, like that of a bored lion, accompanied by inarticulate, guttural clucking noises.
Jacquemin Lampourde was no Adonis, though he claimed to be favoured by women as greatly as many another, and even, according to him, by the noblest and best-placed. His great height, of which he took pride, his thin, heron-like legs, his bony spine, his chest reddened with drink which was visible at that moment through his half-open shirt, and his monkey-like arms long enough for him to tie his garters almost without bending, scarcely made for a pleasing physique; as for his face, a prodigious nose, reminiscent of that of Cyrano de Bergerac, the pretext for so many historic duels, occupied the most important place. But Lampourde consoled himself with the popular axiom: ‘A large nose never spoiled a face.’ The pupils of his eyes, though still clouded with drunkenness and sleep, displayed cold flashes of steel announcing courage and resolution. On his gaunt cheeks two or three perpendicular furrows, like sword-strokes, that were scarcely love-bites, traced their rigid lines. A mop of intricately tangled black hair rained about this physiognomy fit to be sculpted on a violin neck, which, however, none chose to mock, so disturbing, mocking and ferocious was his expression.
— ‘May the plague take the creature that comes to disturb my joys, and muddy my Anacreontic dreams! I was happy; the most beautiful princess on earth greeted me graciously. You’ve driven her away!’
— ‘Enough of your nonsense,’ cried Mérindol, impatiently, ‘lend an ear, and your attention, for a moment or two.’
— ‘I never listen to anyone when I’m drunk,’ Lampourde replied majestically, propping himself on his elbow. ‘Besides, I have funds, ample funds. Last night we robbed an English lord decked out with pistoles; I’m eating and drinking my share. But a game or two of lansquenet, and it will soon be gone. So, tonight, to serious business. Meet me at midnight at the centre of the Pont-Neuf, by the foot of the statue of the bronze horse. I shall be there, fresh, clear, alert, in full possession of my faculties. We will tune our flutes, and agree on my share, which should be considerable, for I like to believe that no one bothers a brave man like me for the sake of base rascality, insignificant theft, or petty peccadilloes. Decidedly, theft bores me; I only commit murders now; it’s nobler. We are leonine carnivores, not predatory beasts. If it’s a matter of killing, I’m your man, and even then, the victim must be allowed to defend himself. My victims are so cowardly sometimes, it disgusts me. A little resistance heartens the work.’
‘If it’s a matter of killing, I’m your man…’
— ‘Oh! Have no fear on that score,’ replied Mérindol with a wicked smile. ‘You’ll find an opponent to address.’
— ‘So much the better,’ replied Lampourde, ‘it’s been long since I’ve fought with someone of a skill to equal mine. But that’s enough. On that note, goodnight, and allow me to sleep.’
Once Mérindol had departed, Jacquemin Lampourde attempted to rest, but in vain. Sleep, once interrupted, failed to return. The swordsman rose, shook his companion, roughly, who was still snoring beneath the table, and the pair went off to a gambling den where lansquenet and basset (both card games involving a banker) were played.
‘…The pair went off to a gambling den where lansquenet and basset were played.’
The participants were drunkards, swordsmen, rogues, lackeys, clerks, and a few naive bourgeois brought there by loose women, poor pigeons destined to be plucked alive. One heard only the sound of dice rolling about in their cup, and the rustle of cards being shuffled, for the players were customarily silent, except, in the event of a loss, when they emitted a few blasphemous interjections. After his luck alternating between good and bad, a vacuum, which Nature and Man especially abhor, occupied Lampourde’s purse. He wanted to play on account, but that was not common currency in the place, where the players, on receiving their winnings, bit hard on the coins to prove the louis were not gilded lead, nor the silver testers made of the tin from which spoons were cast. He was forced to withdraw naked as an infant Saint John, having entered like a great lord, brandishing a pistol in each hand!
— ‘Ah!’ he sighed, as the fresh air of the street struck his face, and restored his composure. ‘Well, I’m rid of it now; strange how wealth intoxicates and stupefies me! I’m no longer surprised at tax-farmers who buy their right so dearly. Now I’m penniless, my spirit is roused; ideas buzz in my brain like bees round a hive. From Laridon I become César again! (The kitchen-dog and the hunting-hound, respectively, in Jean La Fontaine’s fable ‘L’Éducation’ Book VIII: 24) But now the mechanical bell-ringer of the Samaritaine is striking twelve; Mérindol will be waiting for me in front of the bronze king.’ And he headed towards the Pont-Neuf.
Mérindol was at his post, idly watching his shadow in the moonlight. The two swordsmen, having looked around to see if anyone might hear them, nonetheless spoke in low voices for quite some time. What they said, I know not, but, as he parted from the Duke of Vallombreuse’s agent, Lampourde jingled gold coins in his pocket with an impudent air that showed how much he was feared on the Pont-Neuf.
‘Now I’m penniless, my spirit is roused…’
Chapter XII: The Crowned Radish
As he left Mérindol, Jacquemin Lampourde was gnawed by uncertainty, and when he reached the end of the Pont-Neuf, he stopped and remained perplexed for some time, like Buridan’s donkey between the pail of water and the pile of hay, or, if that comparison pleases you not, like a piece of iron between two magnets of equal strength. On the one hand, lansquenet exerted an imperious pull on him, with its distant clink of gold coins; on the other, the tavern presented itself no less seductively, with its chiming tankards. An embarrassing alternative! Though theologians assert that free will is man’s finest prerogative, Lampourde, mastered by these two irresistible attractions, for he was equally a gambler and a drunkard, really knew not what to decide. He took three paces towards the gambling den; but the pot-bellied bottles, covered with dust, draped in cobwebs, and topped with a red wax helmet-like seal, appeared to his imagination in such a vivid light that he took three paces towards the tavern. Then the game, in fantasy, rattled its cup full of lead dice in his ears, and fanned out before his eyes a semicircle of bevelled cards, mottled like a peacock’s tail, an enchanting vision that nailed his feet to the ground.
— ‘Come now! Am I to stand here like a statue?’ the swordsman admonished himself, impatient with his own tergiversation. ‘I must look like an idiot gazing at a flight of coquecigrues (imaginary creatures, see Rabelais), with a bewildered and quizzical expression. Damn it! What if I went neither to the tavern nor the gambling den, but paid a visit to my goddess, my Iris, the peerless beauty who holds me in her net? But perhaps, at this hour, she may be occupied at some ball or nocturnal feast, and away from home. And besides, voluptuousness lessens one’s courage, and the greatest captains have repented of having given themselves to womanising too much. Witness Hercules and his Deianira, Samson and Delilah, Mark Antony and Cleopatra, not to mention many others whose names I forget, for a deal of water has flowed under the bridge since I was in school. So, let me renounce that lascivious and enervating fantasy. And yet, how to choose between those two former objects of attraction? Whoever selects one exposes himself to regret as regards the other.’
While spending time on this monologue, Jacquemin Lampourde, his hands buried in his pockets, his chin resting on his ruff causing his goatee to curl upwards, seemed to be sending down roots between the paving stones and turning into a statue, as happens to more than one character in Ovid’s Metamorphoses. Suddenly he gave such a start that a bourgeois out late, who was passing by, was alarmed and quickened his pace, believing that he was about to be attacked and robbed at the very least. Lampourde had no intention of assailing this simpleton, whom in his distracted reverie he did not even notice; for a brilliant idea had just crossed his mind. His uncertainty was over.
He swiftly pulled a doubloon from his pocket, and tossed it in the air, saying: ‘Heads for the tavern, tails for lansquenet!’
The coin spun around several times and, falling to the ground under its own weight, landed on a paving stone, its gold disc gleaming in the silvery rays shed by the moon, which at that moment was free of clouds. The swordsman knelt to decipher this oracle delivered by chance. The coin had answered the question posed in precise fashion. Bacchus had triumphed over Fortuna.
— ‘Very well, I’ll get drunk,’ said Lampourde, dropping the doubloon, which he wiped clean of mud, into his purse as deep as the abyss, destined to swallow up many things, and with long strides, headed towards the Crowned Radish tavern, the usual sanctuary reserved for his libations to the god of the vine. The Crowned Radish had the advantage for Lampourde of being situated at the corner of the Marché-Neuf, a stone’s throw from his dwelling, which he could return to, though zigzagging somewhat, when he had drunk enough to fill him from the soles of his boots to his Adam’s-apple.
It was the most abominable hole imaginable. Squat pillars, coated in a lurid, wine-like red, supported the enormous beam that served for a frieze, on the rough surface of which appeared certain shapes indicative of ancient carvings half-erased by time. Gazing attentively, one could make out a tangle of vine leaves and branches, amidst which monkeys were frolicking, pulling foxes by their tails. On the keystone of the door was painted an enormous naked radish, topped by green leaves, and adorned with a gold crown, the whole much eroded, which for generations of drinkers had served as the tavern’s sign and designation.
The bays formed by the space between the pillars were covered, at that moment, by shutters with heavy ironwork capable of supporting a seat, but not so hermetically sealed that they prevented rays of reddish light filtering through to the outside, and the dull murmur of singing and quarrelling to escape; these gleams of light, reflecting from the pavement’s muddy mirror, produced a strange effect the picturesque aspect of which Lampourde was impervious to, but which indicated to him that a large company still occupied the Crowned Radish.
Striking the door with the pommel of his sword, the swordsman, made himself recognised as a regular of the house by the rhythm of the blows he struck, and the door opened slightly to allow him passage.
The room in which the drinkers stood had the look of a cavern. It was low, and the main beam that crossed the ceiling, having buckled due to the settling of the upper floors, seemed ready to break, though it was strong enough to support a belfry, much like the tower of Pisa, or the Asinelli tower in Bologna, which always lean and never fall. Smoke from the candles and the customers’ pipes had turned the ceiling as black as the inside of those fireplaces where red herrings, bottarga (salted, cured fish-roe pouches), and hams are prepared. Formerly, the walls had been painted red, and framed with vine shoots and twigs, by the brush of some Italian artist who had arrived in France in the wake of Catherine de Medici. The paint at the top of the walls was a in a decent state of preservation, though much darkened, and resembling patchy congealed blood more than the joyful scarlet hue with which it must have shone in its prime. Humidity, friction from the backs of the customers, and the filthy heads of hair that had leaned on them, had spoiled or erased the whole of the lower part, where the plaster appeared dirty, scratched and bare. Formerly the tavern had been more generally popular; but, little by little, the courtiers and captains, their moral scruples becoming more delicate, had been replaced by gamblers, swindlers, cut-purses, and cut-throats, a whole clientele of dangerous rogues who had placed their revolting imprint on the hole, and turned a cheerful tavern into a sinister den. A wooden staircase, leading to a gallery onto which opened the doors of small rooms so low that one could only enter them by drawing in one’s head and horns like a snail, occupied the wall facing the entrance. Under the stairwell, in the shadows, a few casks, some full, others empty, were arranged in a symmetry more pleasing to the drunkard than any other form of ornamentation. In the fireplace, with a large hood, bundles of small branches were blazing, the ends of which fell, burning, to the floor, that being tiled with old bricks, was not at risk. The fire was reflected from and illuminated the counter made of tin placed opposite, at which the innkeeper reigned behind a rampart of pots, pint-glasses, bottles and jugs. Its bright glow, outdoing the yellow halos of the candles that crackled amidst the smoke, set the drinkers’ shadows dancing along the walls, in the form of caricatures, with extravagant noses, pointed chins, tufts of hair like Riquet (see Charles Perrault’s version of the fairytale ‘Riquet à la houppe’ in his ‘Histoires ou Contes du Temps Passé’, 1697), deformed in a manner as bizarre as in the Songes Drolatiques de Pantagruel, published under the name of Master Alcofribas Nasier (an anagram of François Rabelais. ‘The Droll Dreams’ are a series of a hundred and twenty engraved phantasmagoria published by Richard Breton in 1565 and probably created by François Desprez). This Black Sabbath of silhouettes, swarming behind the real figures, seemed to mock them, in witty parody. The dive’s regulars sat on benches, leaning on tables the wood of which, slashed and scored, adorned with names engraved with knives, and burned-in tattoos, was greasy with spilt sauce and wines; while the sleeves that wiped at them, being soiled for the most part, some even being pierced at the elbow, merely compromised the flesh of the arms they were supposed to cover. Awakened by the din of the tavern, two or three hens, feathered Lazaruses, who at this hour should have been seated on their perches, had slipped into the room by a door communicating with the courtyard, and were pecking, beneath the feet and between the legs of the drinkers, at the crumbs that had fallen from the feast.
‘The Crowned Radish.’
When Jacquemin Lampourde entered, the air of the establishment was filled with triumphant uproar. Brawny fellows, holding out their empty pots, were banging on the tables with fists that could have killed an ox, making the tallow candles, in their iron holders, rattle. Others shouted ‘A Toast’, or ‘Your Health!’ while raising theirs. All this was accompanied by a Bacchanalian song, shouted in chorus by voices as lamentably out of tune as dogs howling at the moon, the clinking of knives on the sides of glasses, and the clatter of plates rotated like millstones. The drinkers assailed the modesty of the serving-girls, who, arms raised above the crowd, carried platters of steaming victuals, and were unable to defend themselves against these gallant assaults, being more anxious to preserve the food than their virtue. Some of the clients were smoking long Dutch pipes, and amusing themselves by blowing smoke through their nostrils.
The crowd was not only comprised of men, the fair sex was also represented, by some rather ugly specimens; for vice sometimes possesses no better a mask than virtue. These Phyllises, to whom the first-comer, in exchange for a coin, could play the Thyrsis or Tityrus (see Virgil’s ‘Eclogues’), walked about in pairs, stopping at the tables, and drank like familiar doves from each other’s cup. These copious gulps, combined with the warmth of the place, turned their cheeks crimson under the brick-red rouge with which they were painted, so that they looked like idols covered with double layers of paint. False or real hair, twisted into heart-shaped curls, was plastered on foreheads shining with white lead; or, waved with an iron, extended in spirals down to their breasts which were largely uncovered and powdered white, though not without some small vein of azure drawn on their false whiteness. Their attire affected a dainty and gallant bravura. It was nothing but ribbons, feathers, embroidery, braid, studs, and aiguillettes, all in bright colours; yet it was easy to see that this luxury, adopted for show, was scarcely real, and their clothes second-hand: their pearls were only blown glass, the gold jewels copper, the silk dresses old skirts turned inside-out and re-dyed; but their elegance, though of a lowly quality, was enough to dazzle the drunken eyes of the companions gathered in that den. As for their perfume, if those ladies failed to smell of roses, they smelled of musk like a polecat’s burrow, it being the only odour strong enough to overcome the foul exhalations of that slum, and which by comparison seemed sweeter than balm, ambrosia, or benzoin. Sometimes a ‘cavalier’ heated by lust and drink would pull one of these not very shy beauties onto his knee, whisper in her ear, and plant a large kiss on her cheek, Anacreontic propositions were received with affected laughter and a ‘no’ that assented, then, pairs were seen to ascend the staircase, the man with his arm around the woman’s waist, the woman holding onto the banister and making childish gestures, for even in the most abandoned debauchery a woman still retains some semblance of modesty. Others descended, the men with muddled expressions, while the Amaryllis of the pair would fluff up her skirt with the most detached air in the world.
Lampourde, long accustomed to these scenes which, moreover, seemed natural to him, paid no attention to the picture of which I have just drawn a quick sketch. Seated at a table, his back against the wall, he gazed with an eye full of tenderness and desire at a bottle of Canary Island wine that a serving-girl had just brought, an ancient and commendable bottle, extracted from behind the faggots and the heap of barrels, reserved for experienced gluttons and drinkers. Although the swordsman was alone, two glasses had been placed on the table, for his horror of the solitary ingestion of liquor was well known, and at any moment a drinking companion might appear. While waiting for this chance guest, Lampourde slowly raised, to the height of his eyes, the glass, with a tapered leg, its bowl shaped like a small bindweed flower, in which, glittering with a luminous point of light, shone the blond and genial liqueur. Then, having satisfied the sense of sight by admiring its warm colour, a burnt topaz, he passed on to the sense of smell, and, stirring the wine with a gentle shake that set it rotating a little, he inhaled its aroma with nostrils as wide as the pits of a heraldic dolphin. There remained the sense of taste. The papillae of the palate, suitably excited, were impregnated with a mouthful of this nectar; the tongue ran it around the lips and finally sent it to the throat with an approving clap. Thus, Master Jacquemin Lampourde, by means of a single glass, flattered three of the five senses that man possesses, which was the work of a consummate epicurean extracting the pleasurable sensation that such things provide to the last drop of juice, and veritable quintessence. He might have yet claimed that touch and hearing could share the enjoyment: touch, through the polish, clarity and shape of the crystalline glass; hearing, through the music, vibration, and perfect harmony that is produced when striking it with the back of a blade or running one’s wet finger in a circular motion on the edge of the glass. But such are the nonsensical and fantastic paradoxes, of an over-subtle refinement, demonstrating nothing, through wishing to demonstrate too much, except the vicious refinement of this scoundrel.
Our swordsman had been there for but a few minutes when the door of the tavern opened a crack; a man, dressed in black from head to toe, with not a trace of white but his collar and a flow of linen that hung over his stomach between his jacket and his breeches, made his appearance in the establishment. Some half-unravelled jet embroidery showed an ineffectual inclination to embellish the dilapidated state of his costume, the cut of which, however, betrayed a remnant of former elegance.
This character possessed a face the peculiarity of which was its pallid whiteness, as if it had been sprinkled with flour, combined with a nose as red as a burning coal. Small purple fibrils veined it, and testified to an assiduous cult for the Divine Bottle. The calculation of how many barrels of wine and flasks of brandy were needed to bring it to that intensity of erubescence would have troubled the imagination. This bizarre mask resembled a cheese into which a cherry had been stuck. To complete the portrait, two apple-pips in place of eyes, and a thin gash representing a mouth as narrow as that of a money-box will suffice. Such was Malartic, the bosom friend, the Pylades (Orestes’ companion, in Greek myth), the Euryalus (the companion of Nisus in Virgil’s ‘Aeneid’), the fidus Achates (‘faithful Achates’, companion of Aeneas in the ‘Aeneid’) of Jacquemin Lampourde; he was scarcely handsome, but his qualities more than made up for these minor physical inconveniences. After Jacquemin, for whom he professed the deepest admiration, he was the finest swordsman in Paris. In chess, he toppled the king with a delight that none dared find insolent; he drank deep without ever appearing drunk, and though he was not known to possess a tailor, he was better supplied with coats than the best-dressed courtier. Moreover, a delicate man in his own way, possessing in full the probity of the haunters of taverns, capable of risking death to support a comrade, and of enduring the strappado without a murmur, or the boot, the rack, even water-torture the most unpleasant of all for a drinker of his calibre, rather than compromise his peers by an indiscreet word. A most charming fellow in that way! Moreover, he enjoyed general esteem in the sphere where his trade was practiced.
Malartic advanced straight to Lampourde’s table, took a stool, sat down opposite his friend, silently seized the full glass that seemed to be waiting for him, and emptied it in a gulp. His system differed from Jacquemin’s, but was no less effective, as the cardinal purple of his nose proved. At the end of the session, the two friends counted the same number of chalk marks on the innkeeper’s slate, and good Father Bacchus, astride the barrel, smiled at them without preference, as if at two devotees of different faiths, but equal fervour. One hurried his mass, the other made it last; but still the mass was said.
Lampourde, who knew his companion’s habits, filled his glass several times to the brim. This manoeuvre required the appearance of a second bottle, which, like the first, quickly ran dry; it was followed by a third, which held out a little longer, and made a little more fuss in surrendering. After which, to catch their breath, the two swordsmen called for pipes, and commenced sending up to the ceiling, through the condensing fog above their heads, long corkscrews of smoke, like those spirals children add to the chimneys of the houses they scribble in their school books, and notebooks. After a certain number of puffs, inhaled and exhaled, they seemed to vanish, like the gods of Homer and Virgil, behind a cloud in which Malartic’s nose blazed alone like a red meteor.
Enveloped in this mist, the two companions, isolated from the other drinkers, began a conversation that it would have been dangerous for the head of the city-watch to overhear. Happily, The Crowned Radish was a safe place, no guard would have dared venture there, and the cellar trapdoor would have opened beneath the feet of any sergeant bold enough to enter that lair. He would only have emerged in chopped-up form like a pile of minced meat.
— ‘How’s business,’ Lampourde asked of Malartic, in the tone of a merchant inquiring about the price of goods, ‘given it’s the low season? The king holds court in Saint-Germain, to which the courtiers follow him. Most damaging to trade; there are now only bourgeoisie, and people with little or nothing, left in Paris.’
— ‘Tell me!’ Malartic replied. ‘It’s an indignity. The other evening, I stopped a rather good-looking fellow on the Pont-Neuf. I asked him for his purse or his life. He threw me his purse; there were only three or four silver sixpences within, and the coat he left me was but serge with false gold braid. Instead of being the thief, I was the one who was robbed. In the gambling dens, you’ll only meet footmen, attorneys’ clerks, or precocious children who have taken a few pistoles from their father’s drawer to try their luck. Two deals of the cards, or three throws of the dice, and all’s over. It’s outrageous to display one’s talents for such a meagre result! The Lucindas, the Dorimènes, the Cidalises, usually so helpful to us warriors, refuse to pay our bills, even though we beat them soundly, on the pretext that since the court is no longer here, they receive neither places at dinner nor gifts, and are obliged to pawn their clothes in order to live. If it weren’t for a jealous old bastard who employs me to thump his wife’s lovers, I’d barely have earned enough this month to drink water, a necessity to which no destitution will force me, an upright death seeming a hundred times sweeter. I have not been offered the least ambush, the slightest kidnapping, the smallest assassination. What times these are, by God! Hatreds wane, grudges go to waste, the feeling of revenge is lost; insults are forgotten as well as kindnesses; the bourgeois century is enervating us, and society is becoming so bland it disgusts me.’
— ‘The good times are over,’ replied Jacquemin Lampourde. ‘In the past, a great man would have taken us, as courageous fellows, into his service. We would have helped him with his affairs, and secret tasks; now we must work for the public. However, there are still some decent opportunities.’
And as he said these words he shook some gold coins in his pocket. This melodious ringing made Malartic’s eye sparkle strangely; but soon his gaze returned to its usual placid expression, a comrade’s wealth being a sacred thing, and he contented himself with heaving a sigh which could be translated by the words: ‘You lucky dog, you!’
— ‘I think I’ll be able to find you some work soon,’ Lampourde continued, ‘since you’re not idle given a task, and are quick to roll up your sleeves when it comes to delivering a thrust, or discharging a pistol. A man of order, you carry out the orders handed to you within the time required, and you take the risk of discovery upon yourself. I’m surprised that Fortune hasn’t descended from her glass globe and tapped at your door; it’s true that, with the bad taste common to women, the drab favours a bunch of dandies and idiots to the detriment of folk of merit. While we wait for the hussy’s whims to turn in your direction, let’s spend the time drinking, papaliter (like the Pope), till the cork on our shoe-soles swells.’
This philosophical resolution was undeniably too reasonable for Jacquemin’s companion to raise the slightest objection. The two swordsmen filled their pipes, and refilled their glasses, leaning on the table like people settling in comfortably, who wish none to disturb their tranquility.
They were, however, disturbed. In the corner of the room, a murmur of voices rose from a group surrounding two men who were agreeing the terms of a bet between them, regarding the impossibility of the one believing something claimed by the other unless he saw it with his own eyes.
The group opened itself to observation. Malartic and Lampourde, their attention aroused, saw a man of medium height, but singularly alert and vigorous in appearance, his face tanned like a Spanish Moor, his hair tied with a handkerchief, who was dressed in a brown pea-coat which, when opened, revealed a buff jerkin and brown breeches adorned at the seam with a row of copper buttons in the shape of bells. A wide red woollen belt cinched his waist, and from it he had taken out a Valencian navaja (a long, folding knife) which, when opened, was the length of a sabre. He squeezed the catch, tested the point with his fingertip, and seemed satisfied with this examination, for he said to his adversary: ‘I’m ready,’ and then, with a guttural accent, hissed an odd name unknown to the clients of The Crowned Radish, but which has already figured more than once in these pages: ‘Chiquita! Chiquita!’
At the second cry, a thin, haggard little girl, asleep in a dark corner, rid herself of the cape she had carefully wrapped about her, which made her look like a bundle of rags, and advanced towards Agostin, for it was he, and, fixing on the bandit her large sparkling eyes, further enlivened by a halo of bistre, said to him in a deep, serious voice which contrasted with her puny appearance:
— ‘Master, what do you wish? Here I am, ready to obey, here as on the moor, for you are brave and your navaja shows many red stripes (marking acts of murder).’ Chiquita said these words in Euskara, or Basque dialect, as unintelligible to the French as High German, Hebrew, or Chinese.
Agostin took Chiquita by the hand, and had her stand against the door, ordering her to remain motionless. The little girl, accustomed to this display, showed neither fear nor surprise; she remained there, her arms dangling, looking straight ahead, with perfect serenity, while Agostin, placing himself at the other end of the room, one foot forward, the other back, raised the long knife whose handle rested on his forearm.
‘The little girl, accustomed to this display, showed neither fear nor surprise…’
A double row of onlookers formed a sort of hedged alley from Agostin to Chiquita, and those rogues with a prominent stomach drew it in, holding their breath for fear that it might be over the line. Their noses, like the pipe of an alembic, retreated cautiously, so as not to be sliced off in mid-air.
Then Agostin’s arm, uncoiling like a spring, sent a flash of lightning through the air, and the formidable weapon planted itself in the door just above Chiquita’s head, without cutting away a hair, and with such precision that it seemed as if it had wanted to ascertain her precise height.
As the navaja whizzed past, the spectators could not help but lower their eyes; but the girl’s densely-fringed eyelashes barely fluttered. The bandit’s skill excited a murmur of admiration among this exacting audience. Even the adversary who had doubted the blow possible clapped his hands enthusiastically.
Agostin retrieved the still-vibrating knife, returned to his post, and this time ran the blade between Chiquita’s impassive arm and her body. If the point had deviated three or four inches, it would have pierced her heart. Though the onlookers cried it proof enough, Agostin repeated the experiment on the other side of her body to show that his skill was no accident.
Chiquita, filled with pride by this applause, which was as much in praise of her courage as Agostin’s dexterity, glanced about her with a look of triumph; her swollen nostrils drew in the air forcefully, and her teeth, pristine as those of a young wild creature, shone in her half-open mouth with a ferocious whiteness. The brightness of those teeth, and the phosphorescent gleam of her pupils, formed a triangle of luminous points in her dark face, tanned by the open air, illuminating it. Her unkempt hair was twined around her forehead and cheeks in long black snakes, restrained a little by a crimson ribbon that her rebellious curls overflowed and concealed, here and there. Round her neck, tawnier than Cordoba leather, the necklace of pearls she had received from Isabella shone like a string of milk-white beads. As for her costume, it was altered, if not improved. Chiquita no longer wore the canary-yellow skirt embroidered with a parrot, which would have given her an altogether too strange and remarkable appearance in Paris. She had on a short, dark blue dress with small pleats gathered at the hips, and a sort of jacket or vest made of black barragan (a twill weave), fastened at the base of the chest with a trio of buttons made of horn. Her feet, accustomed to treading flowering and fragrant heather, were shod in shoes much too large for her, as the cobbler had been unable able to find any in his shop small enough. The luxury of her footwear seemed to bother her; but it had been necessary to make this concession to the cold Parisian mud. She was just as wild as she had been at the Auberge du Soleil Bleu, yet one could see that a greater number of thoughts were passing through her untutored mind, and, in the child, hints of the young girl were already appearing. She had seen many things since leaving the moor, and her naive imagination still experienced a kind of dazzlement.
She returned to the corner she had been occupying and, wrapping herself in her mantle, resumed her interrupted sleep. The fellow who had lost the bet paid his five pistoles, the amount of the stake, to Chiquita’s companion. The latter slipped the coins into his belt, and sat down again at his table in front of the half-emptied jug, which he finished slowly, for, having no fixed lodging, he preferred to stay at the tavern than sleep beneath the arch of a bridge or a convent porch, while waiting for daylight so slow to appear at that time of year. This was also the case of several other poor devils who snored with closed fists, some on the benches, others below, rolled up in their capes for a blanket. It was a comical spectacle to see all these boots lined up on the floor like the feet of corpses after a battle. A battle, indeed, after which those wounded by Bacchus, piteously mocked by their more robust companions, staggered to some obscure corner, and, their heads resting against the wall, emptied their bladders, pouring forth wine instead of blood.
— ‘By the Sainct San Breguoy (‘Sacred blood of God’, see Rabelais, ‘Gargantua and Pantagruel’, Book 3: XVIII),’ Lampourde said to Malartic, ‘here’s a fellow who isn’t one-armed, and whom I’ll make a note of so I can find him again if necessary for tricky operations. That knife-throw from a distance would work better against subjects who approach aggressively than a pistol-shot which creates fire, smoke, and a loud noise and seemingly summons the aid of the guards.’
— ‘Yes, indeed,’ replied Malartic, ‘a fine piece of work and properly executed; but if you miss your aim, you’re disarmed and left for a fool. For me, what charmed me about the affair and showed courage under fire was the young girl’s bravery. That shrimp! She hasn’t two ounces of flesh on her bones, yet lodged in the narrow cage of that thin chest is the true heart of a lioness, or an ancient heroine. She pleases me, moreover, with her large, soot-black, feverish eyes, and her quietly haggard expression. In the midst of these bustards and shelducks, these geese and other farmyard birds, she seems like a young falcon in a henhouse. I know a thing or two about women, and I can judge the flower by the bud. La Chiquita, as that swarthy rascal calls her, will be a fine girl in two to three years’ time...’
— ‘Or a thief,’ murmured Jacquemin Lampourde, philosophically. ‘Unless fate reconciles the two extremes by making this morena, as the Spaniards say, the mistress of both a rogue and a prince. It has been known, and it’s not always the prince that they love the most, such are the mischievous and wayward fancies of such maids. But let us leave these superfluous subjects, and turn to serious matters. I may need, before long, some brave men of all stripes for an undertaking that has been proposed to me, which won’t require a journey as long as that the Argonauts made in pursuit of the Golden Fleece.’
— ‘A splendid fleece!’ said Malartic, his nose in his glass, the wine of which seemed to sizzle and boil on contact with that burning coal.
— ‘It’s a somewhat complicated and risky business,’ continued the swordsman. ‘I am charged with eliminating a certain Captain Fracasse, a comic-actor by trade, who is apparently interfering with the love affairs of a very great lord. For that task, I alone would be sufficient; but there is also the matter of organising the abduction of the damsel loved by both the grandee and the actor; the latter’s friends will defend her and seek to prevent her kidnap; let us draw up a list of reliable and unscrupulous comrades. What think you of Piquenterre?’
— ‘An excellent fellow!’ replied Malartic, ‘but we can’t count on him. He’s swinging to and fro at Montfaucon (the public gallows, sited near the modern Place du Colonel Fabien), on the end of an iron chain, waiting for his carcass, torn to pieces by crows, to fall into the gallows pit, and join the bones of the comrades who preceded him.’
— ‘So that’s why no one has seen him for some time,’ said Lampourde with the greatest composure in the world. ‘What a life is ours! One evening, you are quietly carousing with a friend in a well-known tavern; you each go your separate ways and attend to your own affairs, and a week later, when you ask: ‘What’s become of so-and-so?’, they tell you: ‘He’s hanged.’
— ‘Alas, that’s how it is,’ sighed Lampourde’s friend, assuming a tragically elegiac or elegiacally tragic pose: ‘as François Malherbe said in his poem Consolation, addressed to Monsieur Duperrier:
But he was of this world, where the finest of things
Meet the worst of fates.
(See Malherbe’s poem of 1599, lines 13-14; Malartic replaces ‘she’ with ‘he’)
— ‘Let us not indulge in effeminate whining,’ said the swordsman. ‘Let us show a manly and stoic courage and continue to march through life, hats pulled down to the brow, and fists on hips, defying the gallows which, after all, apart from a small matter of honour, are scarcely more formidable than the cannon-fire, trebuchets, culverins and bombards which soldiers and captains must face, without mentioning musketeers and bladed weapons. In the absence of Piquenterre, who must now be in glory next to the good thief, let’s have Cornebœuf. He’s a stout, vigorous fellow, good for heavy work.’
— ‘Cornebœuf,’ replied Malartic, ‘is currently on a voyage along the Barbary coast under the command of Cadet la Perle (Henri de Lorraine, Count of Harcourt, 1601-1666, so nicknamed for the pearl he wore in his ear). The king holds our friend in such special esteem that he has had him emblazoned with a fleur-de-lis on his shoulder so that he might be found anywhere were he to be lost. But, Piedgris, for example, and Tordgueule, La Râpée and Bringuenarilles are free and a la disposición de usted (‘at your service’)
— ‘Those names will do me; they belong to brave men, and you shall speak to them when the time is right. On that note, let us finish this quarter of a bottle, and remove ourselves from here. The place is beginning to smell more mephitic than Lake Avernus, over which birds cannot fly without falling dead from the malignancy of its exhalations. It smells of armpits, sweaty feet, stale flesh, and grease. The fresh night air will do us good. By the way, where do you sleep tonight?’
— ‘I have not yet sent my quartermaster ahead to prepare my lodgings,’ replied Malartic, ‘so my tent is not yet pitched; I could try the Hôtel de la Limace, but I have a bill there that’s as long as my sword, and nothing is more unpleasant upon waking than to view the sullen face of an aged host who grumbles at the slightest fresh expense and demands his due, waving a handful of bills above his head as Jupiter did his thunderbolt. The sudden appearance of the police would be a less gloomy thing as far as I’m concerned.’
— ‘Purely the effect of nerves, an understandable weakness, for every great man has his own,’ said Lampourde sententiously, ‘but since you are reluctant to present yourself at the Limace, and the Hôtel de la Belle-Étoile (the open air, at night) is a little too chilly this winter, I offer you the ancient hospitality of my airy hovel and half my trestle-bed.’
— ‘I accept,’ replied Malartic, with heartfelt gratitude. ‘O thrice and four times happy is the mortal who has Lares and Penates (Roman household gods, whose statues stood before the hearth), and can seat the friend of his heart at his hearth!"’
Jacquemin Lampourde had fulfilled the promise he had made to himself after the oracular coin’s answer in favour of the tavern. He was as drunk as a thrush at the grape harvest; but no one was master of his drink like Lampourde. He ruled the wine, not the wine him. Yet when he rose, it seemed to him that his legs weighed like lead and sank into the floor. With a vigorous kick he unlocked his heavy limbs, and walked resolutely towards the door, head held high, and all of a piece. Malartic followed him with a fairly firm step, for nothing could add to his usual state of intoxication. Plunge a sponge saturated with water into the sea, and it will not absorb another drop. Such was Malartic, with this difference, that for him the liquid was not water, but the pure juice of the grape. The exit of the two comrades was therefore achieved without incident, and they managed to hoist themselves up to Lampourde’s attic by means of the Jacob’s ladder which led from the street, though angels they were not.
At that hour, the tavern presented a ridiculous and lamentable appearance. The fire was going out in the hearth. The candles, which had not been snuffed, were drunken, their wicks swaying like large black mushrooms. Stalactites of tallow dripped down the candlesticks, where they froze as they cooled. The smoke from the pipes, the mist from the customers’ breath, and the steam from the food had gathered near the ceiling into a thick fog; to clean the floor, covered with debris and mud, a river would have needed to flow over it, as in the Augean stables (one of Heracles’ Twelve Labours, in Greek myth). The tables were strewn with leftovers, carcasses, and ham-bones that looked as if they had been torn to pieces by the fangs of starving mastiffs. Here and there a remnant of wine leaked from a pitcher overturned during the tumult engendered by some quarrel or other, the drops of which, falling into the ruby-red pool they had formed, looked like drops of blood from a severed head dripping into a basin; the sound of the falling drops, intermittent but regular, punctuated the drunkards’ snores like the tick of a clock.
The little Moor of the Marché-Neuf struck four o’clock. The innkeeper, who had dozed off, his head resting on his outstretched arms, awoke, looked inquisitively around the room, and, seeing that trade had slackened, called his lads and said to them: ‘It’s late; they’ve ceased drinking; so, sweep away these rogues and whores with the peelings!’ The boys brandished their brooms, scattered the contents of a few buckets of water, and in less than five minutes, with a deal of pushing and shoving, the tavern was emptied into the street.
‘At that hour the tavern presented a ridiculous and lamentable appearance.’
Chapter XIII: A Dual Assault
The Duke of Vallombreuse was not a man to neglect his love affairs any more than his revenge. If he mortally hated Sigognac, he harboured, for Isabella, one of those furious passions that are, in haughty and violent souls unaccustomed to resistance, intensified by the challenge of the impossible. Triumphing over the actress became the dominant thought of his life; spoiled by the easy victories he had won in his career as a gallant, he failed to comprehend his defeat, and often, seized by sudden astonishment in deep reverie, amidst conversation, while walking, or during visits to the theatre or to church, the city or the Court, he said to himself: ‘How can it be that she loves me not?’
It was indeed a thing difficult to understand for a man who lacked all belief in female virtue, and even less in that of actresses. He wondered if Isabella’s coldness was not a concerted effort to obtain more from him, nothing kindling desire like feigned modesty, and a touch-me-not air. However, the disdainful manner in which she had sent away the box of jewellery placed in her room by Leonarda was abundant proof of her not being one of those women who bargain in order to sell themselves more dearly. Richer ornaments still would have produced no better an effect. Since Isabella did not even open the casket, what use was it that it contained pearls and diamonds to tempt a queen? Epistolary love could not touch her either, however elegantly and passionately the young duke’s secretaries might have portrayed their master’s affections. She refused to open, much less read, the letters. Thus, prose or verse, tirades and sonnets would fail to woo her. Besides, such languid means, good for cooler fellows, did not suit Vallombreuse’s enterprising character. He summoned Dame Leonarda, with whom he had never ceased to maintain a secret correspondence, it being always good to have a spy in the camp, even if it seems impregnable; now and then the garrison relax, and a postern may be swiftly opened, through which the enemy can insinuate himself.
Leonarda was introduced, by a hidden staircase, to the uke’s private chamber, where he received only his most intimate friends, and faithful servants. It was an oblong room, clad in wood panelling, with fluted pilasters of the Ionic order, whose interspaces were occupied by oval frames, in a luxurious and exuberant style, carved in solid wood, which appeared to hang from the cornice, decorated with ribbons and gilded love-knots of ingenious complexity, in high relief. These medallions contained, in the mythological disguise of Floras, Venuses, Graces, Dianas hunting, and woodland nymphs, portraits of the young duke’s mistresses, dressed in ancient Grecian fashion, this one showing an alabaster throat, that one a lathe-turned leg, another dimpled shoulders, another more secret charms, all with such subtle artifice, that one might have said the paintings owed more to the artist’s imagination than real life. The most prudish of them had posed for these paintings however which were by Simon Vouet (1590-1649), a famous artist of the time, believing they were performing a unique favour to the duke, not imagining that they were being added to his gallery.
On the panelled ceiling, Venus was depicted at her toilette. After having been dressed by her nymphs, the goddess gazed at herself, out of the corner of her eye, in a mirror presented to her by a large, independently drawn, Cupid, to whom the artist had given the features of the duke, but it was clear that her attention was directed more to Love than the mirror. Cabinets inlaid with Florentine pietra dura, crammed with love-letters, braids of hair, bracelets, rings, and other testaments to forgotten passion; a table of the same material where bouquets of brightly coloured flowers were incised on a black marble background, courted by butterflies winged with precious stones; armchairs with carved ebony legs covered with a salmon-coloured brocatelle fabric with silver motifs; and a thick Smyrna carpet on which perhaps Sultanas had seated themselves, brought from Constantinople by the French ambassador; composed the furnishings, as rich as they were voluptuous, of this retreat, which Vallombreuse preferred to the state apartments, and which he usually inhabited.
The duke gestured condescendingly to Leonarda, and indicated a place for her to sit. Leonarda was the ideal of a Duenna, and all this fresh, youthful luxury further emphasised her yellowed old-wax like complexion and her repulsive ugliness. Her black costume with jet-black trimmings, and her swept-back head-dress gave her at first a severe and respectable appearance; but the equivocal smile that played amidst the hairs shading the corners of her lips, the hypocritically lustful look in her eyes rimmed with brown wrinkles; the base, greedy, and servile expression of her countenance soon undeceived, and told one that here was no Dame Pernelle (a prudish woman, see e.g. Molière’s ‘Tartuffe’), but a Dame Macette (a witch, see e.g. Octave Béliard’s ‘Sorciers, Reveurs et Démoniaques’, 1920), one of those who bathe young girls for the Sabbath, and who ride on Saturdays with a broom between their legs.
— ‘Dame Leonarda,’ said the duke, breaking the silence, ‘I have summoned you because I know you are a person most expert in the ways of love, having practiced them in your youth and served them in your maturity, in order to consult with you on the means of seducing this fierce Isabella. A duenna who was once young herself must know all the rubrics.’
— ‘Monsieur le Duc,’ replied the old actress with an air of humility, ‘does great honour to my feeble knowledge, but cannot doubt my eagerness to please him in every way.’
— ‘I have no doubt of it,’ Vallombreuse said casually; ‘but, nonetheless, the affair has scarcely progressed. What of this ungracious beauty? Is she still as infatuated with her Sigognac?’
— ‘Youth,’ replied Dame Leonarda, heaving a sigh, ‘forever displays these strange and inexplicable fits of stubbornness. Isabella, moreover, does not seem to be made of ordinary clay. No temptation sways her; in the Earthly Paradise she’d not have listened to the Serpent.’
— ‘How then,’ cried the duke, with a burst of anger, ‘has this damned Sigognac made himself heard by an ear so deaf to the words of others? Does he possess some philtre, some amulet, some talisman?’
— ‘No, my lord; he was simply unhappy, and for these tender, romantic, and proud female souls, to console another is the greatest happiness they know; they prefer to give rather than receive, while pity, eyes moistened by tears, opens the door to love. Such is the case with Isabella’.
— ‘You tell me things from another world; to be lean, obscure, pitiful, shabby, poor, ridiculous, these are, according to you, reasons to be loved! The Court ladies would laugh at such a doctrine.’
— ‘Indeed, it is not common, fortunately, and few women are seen to fall for such. Your Lordship has come upon an exception.’
— ‘But it’s enough to drive one mad with rage, to think that this squire succeeds where I fail, and in the arms of his mistress mocks my disappointment.’
— ‘Your Lordship may spare yourself that annoyance. Sigognac does not enjoy his love in the sense that Monsieur the Duke understands. Isabella has not relinquished her virtue. The tenderness of these perfect lovers, although lively, is entirely platonic, and they rest content with a few kisses on the hand or the brow. That is why such love persists; if sated, it would die of itself.’
— ‘Dame Leonarda, are you quite sure of this? Is it to be credited that they live together so chastely, amidst the licentiousness of the theatre and their travels, sleeping beneath the same roof, dining at the same table, constantly brought together by the necessities of rehearsals and stage performance? They must needs be angels.’
— ‘Isabella is certainly an angel, and wholly lacks the pride that caused Lucifer to fall from heaven. As for Sigognac, he blindly obeys his mistress, and accepts every sacrifice she imposes on him.’
— ‘If that’s so,’ said Vallombreuse, ‘what can you work on my behalf? Come, search a secret drawer of your box of tricks for some ancient and invincible stratagem, some glorious trick, some intricately worked machination that will hand me the victory; you know that gold and silver are as nothing to me.’ And he plunged his hand, whiter than, and as delicate as, a woman’s, into a cup wrought by Benvenuto Cellini, on a table near him, which was full of gold coins. At the sight of them, chiming with a persuasive clink, the owl eyes of the Duenna lit with greed, piercing the swarthy leather of her dead face like two luminous holes. She seemed to think deeply and remained silent for a few moments. Vallombreuse waited impatiently for the result of this reverie; finally, the old woman spoke again.
— ‘If I can’t possess her soul, perhaps I can deliver her body to you. A wax impression of a key, an exact copy, and a strong narcotic would do the trick.’
— ‘None of that,’ interrupted the duke, unable to resist a tremor of disgust. ‘What! Possess a sleeping woman, an inert body, a veritable corpse, a statue without consciousness, will, or memory! To acquire a mistress who, on waking, would look at me with astonished eyes as if emerging from a dream, and immediately resume her aversion towards me in favour of love for another! To live a nightmare, a lustful dream one forgets in the morning! I would never sink so low.’
— ‘Your Lordship is right,’ said Leonarda, ‘possession is worthless without consent, and I only proposed the expedient being at my wit’s end. Nor do I like these shadowy methods, and these drinks that smell of the poisoner’s pharmacopoeia. But why, being as handsome as Adonis, Venus’ favourite, splendid in your attire, rich, powerful at Court, with everything that pleases women, do you not simply pay court to Isabella?’
— ‘Yes, by God, the old woman’s right,’ cried Vallombreuse, casting a complacent glance at a Venetian mirror supported by two sculpted cupids balanced on a golden spire in such a way that the glass tilted and straightened at will, so one could view oneself more comfortably therein. ‘Isabella may be cold and virtuous, but she is not blind, and Nature has not proved so vile a stepmother to me that my presence inspires horror. Her impression of me must always be that of a statue or a painting that one admires, even if one does not love it, but which draws the eye, and charms with its symmetry and pleasing colours. And then I will speak to her of those things which women cannot resist, with looks which melt icy hearts, and whose fire, let it be said without conceit, has set ablaze the most hyperborean and chilly beauties of the Court; this actress, moreover, has pride, and the pursuit of a duke can only flatter her pride. I will support her at the theatre, and will gather a coterie in her favour. It will be a miracle then if she still thinks of that little Sigognac, whom I shall know how to dispose of.’
— ‘Has Monsieur le Duc anything more to ask of me?’ said Dame Leonarda, who had risen and remained with her hands crossed on her belt in a posture of respectful expectation.
— ‘No, you may withdraw,’ Vallombreuse replied, ‘but first take these (and he held out a handful of gold louis to her), it is not your fault if some of Herod’s troupe adhere to extreme modesty.’
The old woman thanked the young nobleman, and retreated to the door, accustomed to doing so by her theatrical roles, and without getting her feet tangled in her skirts. Once there, she spun round, as if dizzied, and swiftly descended the depths of the staircase. Left alone, Vallombreuse rang for his valet to come and dress him.
— ‘Now, Picard,’ said the duke, ‘you must surpass yourself, and produce me a winning toilette; I wish to be more handsome than the Duke of Buckingham in his attempts to please Anne of Austria (Louis XIII’s queen, whom Buckingham pursued). If I return empty-handed from my chase after this beauty, you’ll receive a leathering, for I have no defect or ill feature that requires artificial disguise.’
— ‘Your Lordship has the best figure in the world,’ replied Picard, ‘and thus Art has only to reveal Nature in all her splendour. If the Duke would be pleased to sit before the mirror, and remain motionless for a few minutes, I will arrange his hair and adorn him in such a way that he will encounter no rejection.’
Having said these words, Picard dipped some curling irons into a silver bowl in which, covered with ashes, olive pits produced a gentle heat like that of Spanish braziers, and when the instrument was sufficiently hot, which he tested by bringing them close to his cheek, he began to pinch the ends of those fine ebony curls whose suppleness asked nothing better than to twist them, charmingly, in spirals.
When the Duke of Vallombreuse’s hair was done, and a cosmetic with a sweet scent, more fragrant than balm, had fixed his fine moustaches in a Cupid’s bow, the valet, satisfied with his work, leant back a little to contemplate it, like an artist gazing, one eye closed, at the last touch added to his painting.
— ‘Which outfit does the duke wish to wear today? If I were to risk an opinion before a personage who scarcely needs one, I would recommend to His Lordship the black velvet suit with satin slashes, and tufts of the same colour, silk stockings and a simple Ragusa (Sicilian lace) collar. Brocades, brocaded satins, gold and silver cloth, and precious stones might, by an untimely brightness, distract the gaze which should be directed solely to the face of the gentleman, whose charms were never more irresistible; black will highlight the delicate pallor which is a mark of his injury, and endow him with additional interest.
— ‘The fellow has good taste, and knows how to flatter like a courtier,’ Vallombreuse murmured to himself. ‘Yes, black will suit me well! Isabella, moreover, is not a woman to be dazzled by gold brocade and diamond buttons. ‘Picard,’ he continued, aloud, ‘hand me the doublet and velvet breeches, and bring me my burnished steel sword. Then, tell La Ramée to have the horses put to the carriage, all four bays, and quickly. I wish to leave in a quarter of an hour.’
Picard immediately disappeared to carry out his master’s orders. Vallombreuse, while waiting for the carriage, paced up and down the room, casting an interrogative glance at the Venetian mirror each time he passed, which, contrary to the custom of mirrors, gave him a flattering answer to each question.
— ‘This nobody would needs be incredibly haughty, morose, and disdainful not to fall madly in love with me on the instant, despite her pretence to virtue and her platonic affection for Sigognac. Yes, my dear, as Selene was driven, despite her coldness, to kiss her Endymion, you will soon appear in one of those oval frames, painted as Nature formed you. You will take your place among those deities who were, at first, no less prudish, fierce, and Hyrcanian than yourself, and who are certainly greater ladies than you will ever be. Your defeat will not be lacking to my glory for long; know, my little actress, that nothing can obstruct the will of a Vallombreuse. Frango nec frangor (‘I break, I am not broken’), such is my motto!’
A footman arrived, to announce that the carriage was ready. The distance between the Rue des Tournelles, where the Duke of Vallombreuse lived, and the Rue Dauphine, was soon covered at a trot by four vigorous Mecklenburgers, driven by a coachman from a noble house, who would not have yielded the upper hand to a prince of the blood, and who insolently cut across all the other carriages. However bold and self-assured the duke appeared during the journey he could not help feeling a certain emotion quite rare in him. The uncertainty of how he would be received by the disdainful Isabella made his heart beat a little faster than usual. The emotions he experienced were quite opposite in nature. They ranged from hatred to love, according to whether he imagined the young actress rebellious or docile to his wishes.
When his handsome gilded carriage, drawn by expensive horses and overburdened by footmen in Vallombreuse livery, entered the courtyard of the inn on the Rue Dauphine, whose doors opened wide to receive it, the innkeeper, cap in hand, rushed rather than descended from the top of the steps to meet this magnificent visitor and learn his wishes.
Despite the innkeeper’s haste, Vallombreuse, leaping from the carriage to the ground without the aid of the footboard, had already advanced towards the staircase with rapid steps. The innkeeper’s forehead, as he bowed low, almost struck his knees. The young duke, in that shrill, curt voice which was his customary tone when passion agitated him, cried:
— ‘Mademoiselle Isabella lodges here. I wish to see her. Is she home at this hour? There is no need to inform her of my visit. Just have your footman accompany me to her door.’ The innkeeper answered these questions with respectful inclinations of the head, and added:
— ‘My lord, leave to me the glory of conducting you myself; such an honour is not fit for a rogue of a servant. The master of the house barely suffices.’
— ‘As you wish,’ said Vallombreuse with haughty nonchalance, ‘but hurry; already people are standing at the windows, and leaning out to look at me as if I were that Grand Turk, the Amorabaquin.’
— ‘I shall go ahead of you, to show you the way,’ said the innkeeper, holding his cap pressed to his heart with both hands.
Having climbed the stairs, the duke and his guide entered the long corridor onto which doors opened like those in a convent cloister. Arriving in front of Isabella’s room, the host halted and said:
— ‘Who shall I have the honour of announcing?’
— ‘You can leave now,’ replied Vallombreuse, putting his hand on the door, ‘I will announce myself.’
Isabella, seated by the window in a tall chair, in her morning-coat, her feet nonchalantly stretched out on a tapestried stool, was studying the role she was to act in the new play. With her eyes closed, so as not to see the words written in her notebook, she repeated in a low voice, as a schoolboy might his lesson, the dozen verses she had just read several times. The light from the window, outlining the smooth contour of her profile, raised golden sparks in the little crimped wispy hairs on the nape of her neck, and made the translucent mother-of-pearl of her teeth gleam in her half-open mouth. Reflections tempered with their silvery glow the deep shadow bathing her flesh and clothes, which would otherwise have appeared over-dark, and produced that magical effect so sought after by painters, which they term ‘chiaroscuro’. The young woman, thus posed, formed a charming picture, which would only have needed to be copied by a skilful hand to become the honour and the pearl of any gallery.
Believing that the chambermaid had entered to carry out her tasks, Isabella had not raised her long eyelids whose lashes, traversed by the light, resembled threads of gold, and continued dreamily and drowsily to recite her lines, in mechanical fashion, as one counts a rosary, almost without thought. She suspected nothing, moreover, given it was broad daylight, the inn full of people, and she so close to her comrades, being unaware that Vallombreuse was in Paris. The attempts against Sigognac had not been renewed, and the young actress, somewhat timid as she was, had begun to regain her confidence a little. Her coldness, she felt, had doubtless discouraged the whims of the young duke, of whom at that moment she was thinking no more than of Prester John, or the Emperor of China.
Vallombreuse had advanced to the middle of the room, pausing his approach and holding his breath, so as not to disturb this graceful picture which he contemplated with readily-conceivable rapture. While waiting for Isabella to raise her eyes and notice him, he had dropped to one knee, and held his felt hat, the feather of which swept the floor, in one hand, while he pressed the other to his heart, his pose being one of that respect owed to a queen.
If the young actress was beautiful, Vallombreuse, it must be admitted, was no less handsome; the light shone fully upon his face, which was perfectly regular, like that of a young Greek god turned into a duke since the fall of Olympus. At that moment, the love and admiration painted thereon had caused the imperiously cruel expression sometimes, regrettably, seen there, to vanish. His eyes emitted fire, his mouth seemed luminous; a sort of reddened glow rose from his heart to his pallid cheeks. Bluish gleams passed over his curly hair, lustrous with pomade, like the glitter of daylight on polished jet. His neck, at once delicate yet robust, took on the whiteness of marble. Illuminated by passion, he radiated, he sparkled, and one clearly understood how a duke formed in such a way could never admit the idea that a goddess, a queen, let alone a lowly actress, could resist his presence.
Finally, Isabella turned her head and saw the Duke of Vallombreuse kneeling six paces from her. Had Perseus held up to her face the mask of Medusa, reflected in his shield, grimacing agonisingly amidst a wreath of serpents, she could have felt no greater stupor. She remained frozen, petrified, her eyes dilated with terror, her mouth half-open and her throat dry, unable to move or utter a cry. A deathly pallor spread over her features, her back was covered with cold sweat; she thought she was going to faint; but by a prodigious effort of will, she recalled herself to her senses so as not to remain exposed to the advances of this reckless man.
— ‘Do I inspire such insurmountable horror in you,’ said Vallombreuse, without rising from his kneeling position, and in the gentlest of voices, ‘that the mere sight of me produces such an effect? An African monster emerging from its cave, with crimson mouth, bared teeth, and arched claws, would certainly have frightened you less. My entry, I admit, was a little sudden and unexpected; but you must blame my passion for the incivilities it causes. To see you, I dared your wrath, and, at the risk of displeasing you, I place my humble, suppliant heart at your feet.’
‘Do I inspire such insurmountable horror in you…’
— ‘Please, rise, sir,’ said the young actress, ‘this pose does not suit you. I am only a poor provincial actress, and my feeble charms scarcely merit such a conquest. Forget your passing whim and take your pleas elsewhere which so many women would be happy to grant. Do not make queens, duchesses, and marquises jealous on my account.’
— ‘And what do all those women matter to me,’ Vallombreuse said impetuously, rising to his feet, ‘if it is your pride that I admire, if your rigour possesses more charm in my eyes than others favour, if your spirit intoxicates me, if your modesty excites my passion to the point of delirium, if I must have you love me or die! Fear nothing,’ he added, seeing that Isabella was opening the window as if to leap from it, if he were to resort to any form of violence, ‘I ask nothing, other than that you suffer my presence, that you allow me to pay court to you and seek to soften your heart towards me, as the most respectful of lovers do.’
— ‘Spare me your vain pursuit,’ replied Isabella, ‘and I will feel towards you, though love be absent, boundless gratitude.’
— ‘You have neither father, husband, nor lover,’ said Vallombreuse, ‘who could object to a gallant man seeking you out, and attempting to please you. My homage is no insult. Why reject me? Oh, you do not know what a splendid life would open before you if you would consent to receive me. Faery enchantments would pale beside the effects my loving imagination would create to please you. You would walk like a goddess amidst the clouds. Your feet would tread only azure and light. The horn of plenty would spread its treasures before your feet. Your wishes would scarcely have time to be born, ere I would surprise them in your eyes, and anticipate them. The world would fade like a dream, in the distance, and soaring, amidst the sun’s rays, we would ascend towards Olympus more joyful, more inspired, more intoxicated than Cupid and Psyche (see Apuleius’ ‘The Golden Ass’). Come, Isabella, turn not your head away like this, forego this deathly silence, do not drive to despair one who would do anything, except renounce himself and his passion.’
— ‘This passion, of which any other would be proud,’ replied Isabella modestly, ‘I cannot share. If the virtue I profess to esteem more than life were not opposed to it, I would still decline so dangerous an honour.’
— ‘Look on me favourably,’ Vallombreuse continued, ‘and I will make you an object of envy to the greatest and highest in rank. To another woman I might say: take what you please, ransack drawers filled with diamonds and pearls, raid my castles, my lands, my mansions, plunge your arms to the shoulders in the depths of my coffers, dress your servants in clothes rich enough for princes, have the horses that draw your carriage shod with fine silver, and ride like a queen; dazzle Paris, which, moreover, is rarely surprised. All such offerings are too crude for a soul of your stamp. Yet this glory may touch you, to have reduced and conquered Vallombreuse, to lead him captive behind your triumphal chariot, to call the one who has never obeyed another, and whom no chains could hold, your servant and slave.’
— ‘The prisoner would be too illustrious for me to constrain,’ said the young actress, ‘nor would I wish to rob you of a liberty so precious!’
Till then the Duke of Vallombreuse had curbed his natural violence, and forced himself to adopt a feigned gentleness, but Isabella’s firm yet respectful resistance made his anger boil over. He felt love for another behind this show of virtue, and his anger was augmented by his jealousy. He took a few steps toward the young girl, who put her hand on the window’s ironwork. His features were contracted, he bit his lips, and a look of malice reappeared on his face.
— ‘Say rather,’ he continued in a broken voice, ‘that you are mad for Sigognac! That is the reason for this display of virtue. What is it about that fortunate mortal that charms you so? Am I not handsomer, nobler, richer, as young, as witty, as amorous as he?’
— ‘He has at least one quality you lack: that of respecting what he loves,’ replied Isabella.
— ‘Because his love for you is too feeble,’ cried Vallombreuse, taking Isabella in his arms, as she strove towards the window, and, caught in the embrace of this audacious man, uttered a weak cry.
At that very moment the door swung open. The Tyrant, with outrageous bows and curtseys, entered the room, and advanced towards Isabella, whom Vallombreuse immediately released, in a profound rage at being thus interrupted in his amorous exploits.
‘At that very moment the door swung open.’
— ‘Pardon me, mademoiselle,’ said the Tyrant, casting a sideways glance at the duke, ‘I did not know you were in such fine company; but all the clocks have sounded the hour of our rehearsal, and we are only waiting for you to begin.’
Indeed, through the half-open door one could see the Pedant, Scapin, Leander, and Zerbina, who offered Isabella a reassuring means to defend her threatened modesty. The Duke conceived, for a moment, the idea of falling sword in hand upon this rabble and dispersing them, but that would create a vain scandal; by killing or wounding two or three of these buffoons he would hardly further his affair: besides, their blood was too base for him to dip his noble blade therein, he therefore restrained himself, and parting with icy politeness from Isabella, who, trembling from head to foot, had approached her friends, he left the room, though on the threshold he turned, made a sign with his hand, and said: ‘Farewell, mademoiselle!’: a straightforward enough sentence certainly, but one which took on a threatening and terrible significance given the tone of voice in which it was pronounced. Vallombreuse’s face, so charming before, had resumed an expression of diabolical perversity; Isabella could not help shuddering, though the presence of the actors protected her from assault. She felt the mortal anguish of the dove over whom the kite traces ever closer circles in the air.
Vallombreuse returned to his carriage, followed by the innkeeper, who hovered behind uttering troubled expressions of superfluous politeness, and soon the rumble of wheels indicated that the dangerous visitor had finally left.
Now, here is how the aid that arrived in so timely a manner for Isabella’s rescue is to be explained. The arrival of the Duke of Vallombreuse in a gilded carriage at the hotel on the Rue Dauphine had produced a murmur of astonishment and interest throughout the inn, which soon reached the ears of the Tyrant, who, like Isabella, was busy studying his lines in his room. In the absence of Sigognac, who had been detained at the theatre, being fitted for a new costume, brave Master Herod, knowing of Vallombreuse’s ill intentions, had promised himself to keep a close eye on things, and with his ear pressed to the keyhole, had listened, with a praiseworthy show of indiscretion, to that perilous conversation, only to intervene when the scene became too heated. His prudence had thus saved Isabella’s virtue from the outrageous endeavours of the wicked and perverse duke.
It was to be a stormy day. Lampourde, as you will recall, had been instructed by Mérindol to dispatch Captain Fracasse; so, the swordsman, watching out for an opportunity to attack, was waiting on the esplanade, where the bronze statue of the king stands, for Sigognac in returning to the inn, would necessarily have to go via the Pont-Neuf. Jacquemin had already been there for over an hour, blowing on his fingers so as not to find them numb at the point of action, and stamping the ground to warm his feet. The weather was cold, and the sun was setting behind the Pont Rouge (later rebuilt as the Pont Royal) beyond the Tuileries, in crimson clouds. Twilight was falling rapidly, and already passers-by were becoming scarce.
At last, Sigognac appeared, walking with hurried step, for a vague anxiety was stirring within him as regarded Isabella, and he was hastening to return to the inn. Due to his haste, he failed to see Lampourde who, seizing the edge of Sigognac’s cloak, pulled at it with such a sharp and abrupt movement that the cord broke. In the blink of an eye, Sigognac found himself reduced to a simple doublet. Without trying to dispute possession of his cloak with his assailant, whom he at first mistook for a common thief, he drew his sword, and with lightning speed, took up a defensive stance. For his part, Lampourde had been no less swift in showing his own weapon. He was pleased with his opponent’s readiness, and said to himself: ‘We are about to enjoy a little fun.’ The blades engaged. After a few false strokes on both sides, Lampourde tried a thrust which was immediately thwarted: ‘A fine parry,’ he thought, ‘this young man has the makings.’
Sigognac caught the swordsman’s blade on his own, and delivered a flank attack, which the latter parried with a bodily retreat, all the while admiring his adversary’s blow for its perfection, and academic precision.
— ‘This for you,’ he cried, and his sword described a glittering arc, but met that of Sigognac, already in position once more.
Seeking to evade the other’s guard, the blades linked by their tips turned about each other, sometimes slowly, sometimes quickly, malice and prudence conjoined, which proved the skill of the two combatants.
— ‘Do you know, sir,’ said Lampourde, no longer able to contain his admiration for a defence, so sure, so tightly maintained, and so correct, ‘do you know that you display superb style!’
— ‘At your service,’ replied Sigognac, thrusting hard at his opponent, who, with the flick of a wrist as taut as a crossbow’s trigger, deflected it with the pommel of his sword.
— ‘A magnificent stroke,’ said the swordsman, growing more and more enthusiastic, ‘a marvellous blow! Logically, I should be dead. I am in the wrong; my parry was a chance parry, irregular, wild, good at most to avoid being skewered in an extreme case. I almost blush to have employed it with a fine duellist like yourself.’
All these phrases were interspersed with the clash of steel, parries in quartes, in tierce, in demi-cercles; coupés; and dégagés, which increased Lampourde’s esteem for Sigognac. The swordsman valued nothing in the world but fencing, and his judgement of people was determined according to their skill in arms. Sigognac took on considerable proportions in his eyes.
— ‘Would it be an indiscretion, sir, to ask you the name of your master? Girolamo, Paraguantes, or Côte-d’Acier would be proud of such a pupil.’
— ‘I had only an old soldier named Pierre as a teacher,’ replied Sigognac, amused by this odd conversation, ‘here, try this; it’s one of his favourite strokes.’ And the baron lunged.
— ‘The Devil!’ cried Lampourde, stepping back a foot or so. ‘I was almost hit; the point slipped beneath my arm. In broad daylight you would have pierced me, but you are not yet accustomed to twilight and nocturnal duels which require the eyes of a cat. No matter! It was well done, well planned, well executed. Now, pay close attention, I am not out to surprise you. I am going to try my ultimate move on you, the result of my studies, the nec plus ultra of my method, the sum of my experience. Until now, this infallible sword thrust has always killed its man. If you parry it, I will teach it to you. It is all I have to leave, and I will bequeath it to you; otherwise, I shall take its sublime secret to the grave, for I have not yet met anyone capable of performing it, except you, you admirable young man! But perhaps you would like to rest a little and catch your breath?’
As he spoke these words, Jacquemin Lampourde lowered the tip of his sword. Sigognac did the same, and in a few moments the duel recommenced.
After a number of passes, Sigognac, who knew all the fencing tricks, sensed, from particular actions of Lampourde, whose blade evaded his with dazzling speed, that the famous thrust was about to strike his chest. Indeed, the swordsman suddenly flattened himself, as if he were falling forward, and the Baron no longer saw an opponent before him, but a lightning flash wrapped in a whistling sound, which reached his body so quickly that he only had time to respond with a demi-cercle which severed Lampourde’s blade neatly.
— ‘If the rest of my sword’s not lodged in your belly,’ Lampourde said to Sigognac, straightening up and waving the part that remained in his hand, ‘you are a great man, a hero, a god!’
— ‘No,’ replied Sigognac, ‘I am untouched, and if I wished could nail you against the wall like an owl; but that is counter to my natural generosity, and besides, you have amused me in an odd way.’
— ‘Baron, allow me to declare myself, from now on, your admirer, your dog, your slave. I was paid to kill you. I even received an advance which I consumed. It matters not! I’ll steal, to refund the money.’ With this, he gathered up Sigognac’s coat, placed it back on the latter’s shoulders, in the manner of an officious valet, bowed to him deeply and departed.
Both the Duke of Vallombreuse’s assaults had failed.
‘…The swordsman suddenly flattened himself…’
Chapter XIV: Lampourde’s Delicacy
One can easily imagine the duke’s fury after the defeat he had suffered thanks to Isabella’s virtue, so opportunely defended by the intervention of the actors. When he returned to the hotel, the look on his face, which was pale with a cold rage, made his servants’ teeth chatter, and their palms to sweat in their anxiety, since his natural cruelty, when exasperated, gave way to Neronian outbursts at the expense of the first unfortunate person who crossed his path. The Duke of Vallombreuse was no easy-going nobleman, even when he was in a good mood; but when angry, it would have been better to meet a fasting tiger face to face, on a bridge over a torrent. Each door that was opened before him he slammed shut with such force that it almost flew from its hinges, and the gilding of its decorations flew off in large flakes.
Arriving at his room, he threw his felt hat to the floor so roughly that it remained flattened and the bristling feather broke away cleanly. To give vent to his fury, he freed his chest of his doublet, without attending to the diamond buttons which scattered right and left over the parquet floor, like grey peas on a drum-head. The lace of his shirt was soon reduced, beneath the nervous twitching of his fingers, to nothing more than frayed lint, and with a kick he sent an armchair, he had encountered in his angry wanderings, flying, legs in the air, for he attacked even inanimate objects.
— ‘The impudent creature!’ he cried as he paced about in extreme agitation, ‘I’ll have her dragged away by the guards, whipped and her head shaved, and then thrown into the ditch, from which she’ll emerge, bound for the hospital or a convent for repentant girls. It would not be difficult for me to obtain the decree; but no, her constancy would only be strengthened by such punishment, and her love for Sigognac would increase along with all the hatred she seems to bear towards me. It’s pointless; what then can be done?’ And he continued his frantic course from one end of the room to the other like a wild beast in a cage, without tiring of his impotent rage.
While he was struggling thus, paying little or no attention to the flight of the hours, which pass at their own pace whether we are calm or furious, night fell, and Picard, although he had not been summoned, took it upon himself to enter and light the candles, not wishing to leave his master to nurse his melancholy in darkness, the mother of black moods.
Indeed, as if the lights of the candelabra had illuminated his intellect, Vallombreuse, distracted by his love for Isabella, suddenly recalled his hatred of Sigognac.
— ‘But how is it that this unhappy gentleman has not yet been dispatched?’ he said, stopping short. ‘Indeed, I gave Mérindol the formal order to do away with him himself, or employ a more skilful and braver swordsman than he, if he was not sufficient for the task! “End the creature, end its venom,” (a French proverb) whatever Vidalinc may say. With Sigognac eliminated, Isabella will be at my mercy, trembling with terror, and freed from a loyalty henceforth without an object. No doubt she is denying the scoundrel with the idea of having him marry her, and that is why she indulges in these antics of Hyrcanian modesty and impregnable virtue, rejecting the love of the handsomest of dukes as if he were an itinerant beggar. Once rid of him, all will soon be set to rights, and, in any case, I shall be avenged on an arrogant and outrageous fellow, who wounded my arm, and whom I ever find an obstacle between me and my desire. Now, let us have Mérindol before the court, and see how things stand.’
Mérindol, summoned by Picard, appeared before the duke, paler than a thief about to be hanged, his temples beaded with sweat, his throat dry and his tongue cleaving to his palate; it would have been useful to him, at that moment of anguish, to have held a pebble in his mouth like Demosthenes, the Athenian orator (see Plutarch’s ‘Lives’), who also harangued the sea to strengthen his voice (apocryphally), so as to produce saliva, facilitate pronunciation, and improve his eloquence, especially since the young lord’s face was more tempestuous than that of any ocean or assembly of the people in the Agora. The unfortunate fellow, making an effort to stand upright on his hocks, and staggering as if he were inebriated, though he had not drunk sufficient since morning to drown a fly, turned his hat about in front of his chest in a state of idiotic confusion, not daring to raise his eyes to his master whose glances he felt descend upon him like alternate showers of hot coals and ice.
— ‘Well then, you dumb creature,’ said Vallombreuse abruptly, ‘are you going to stand there for long with that fateful expression on your face, as if you already had the rope round your neck, which you indeed deserve, even more for your cowardice and clumsiness than your misdeeds?’
— ‘I was waiting for my lord’s command,’ said Mérindol, trying to smile. ‘Monsieur le Duc knows that I am utterly devoted to him, ‘till the last’; I permit myself that little jest because of the gracious allusion that has just been made…’
— ‘Yes, yes,’ interrupted the duke, ‘but did I not charge you with clearing away that cursed Sigognac who bothers me, and obstructs my path? You have failed, for I saw clearly from Isabella’s joy and serenity that the scoundrel must still be breathing, and that I have not, in fact, been obeyed. Truly, what is the point of retaining swordsmen in my pay, if I’m to be served like this! Should you not, without my needing to speak, divine my feelings from the flash of an eye, the flutter of an eyelash, and silently kill any who displease me? But you are only good for assailing the kitchen, and your heart is in slaughtering chickens. Continue like this, and I’ll hand you all over to the executioner who awaits you, abject scoundrels that you are, timid rascals, clumsy assassins, naught but the shameful scum of the penal colonies!’
— ‘I see, with a degree of pain,’ objected Mérindol in a humble and penetrating tone, ‘that Monsieur le Duc is unaware of the zeal, and, dare I say, skill of his loyal servants. This Sigognac is not one of those ordinary items of prey one tracks down, and slays after a short while hunting them. At a first encounter, he almost split my head from cap to chin, and if he had wielded more than a theatre foil, blunted and dulled, I’d have been done for. Our second ambush found him on his guard, and so ready to fight that I was forced, as well as my comrades, to slip away without risking a vain struggle from which he would have been rescued, and which would have caused an unhappy scandal. Now he knows my face, and I can in no way approach him without his immediately putting his hand to the hilt of his rapier. I was therefore obliged to search out a swordsman friend of mine, the best blade in the city, who is watching for him and will dispatch him, under the pretext of robbing him, at the first twilight or nocturnal opportunity without the name of Monsieur le Duc being mentioned in all this, as it would be if the blow were dealt by those who belong to His Lordship.’
— ‘The plan is not a bad one,’ Vallombreuse replied casually, softening his tone, ‘and perhaps it is better that things happen so. But are you sure of the courage and skill of this swordsman? It takes a brave man to defeat Sigognac, who, I confess, though I hate him, is no coward, since he dared to measure himself against me.’
— ‘Oh!’ replied Mérindol with an air of importance, and certainty, ‘Jacquemin Lampourde is a hero... who has strayed. He surpasses the Achilles of fable, and the Alexander of history. He is not without reproach, but he is fearless.’
Picard, who had been prowling around the room for several minutes, finding Vallombreuse’s mood somewhat calmer, could no longer avoid informing him that a man of rather odd appearance was without, urgently demanding to speak to him about something of import.
— ‘Admit the fellow,’ replied the duke; ‘but woe to him if he bothers me with nonsense. I’ll have him whipped so hard he’ll lose his skin.’
The valet departed to fetch the new visitor, and Mérindol was about to withdraw discreetly, when the entrance of the newcomer nailed his feet to the floor. There was indeed cause to remain, he being stupefied with astonishment, for the man Picard led before Vallombreuse was none other than Mérindol’s friend Jacquemin Lampourde, in person. His unexpected presence in such a place suggested that some unforeseen and singular event had occurred. Mérindol was thus quite anxious on witnessing the appearance, thus, without intermediary, in front of his master, of this secondary agent, this subordinate mechanic whose task should have been accomplished in the shadows.
Jacquemin Lampourde, however, did not seem disconcerted in the least; for as soon as he entered, he gave Mérindol a friendly wink, then halted a few steps from the duke, receiving full in the face the light of the candles which brought out the details of his characteristic mask. His forehead, on which the habitual pressure of his felt hat had traced a transverse reddish line, like the scar of a wound, showed, by the beads of sweat, which had not yet dried, that the swordsman had been walking quickly, or had just engaged in violent exercise; his eyes, a bluish-grey mixed with metallic reflections, fixed themselves on those of the young duke with a calm impudence which made Mérindol shudder. As for his nose, whose shadow covered one whole cheek, as the shadow of Mount Etna covers a large part of Sicily, that promontory of flesh dividing, in a grotesque manner, his strange and monstrous profile, was gilded at the tip by a bright ray of light that made it gleam. His moustache, coated with a coarse cosmetic, resembled a skewer drawn above his upper lip, and his royal goatee curled like an upside-down comma. All this made up the most heterogeneous physiognomy in the world, one of those that Jacques Callot loved to sketch with his original and lively burin.
His costume consisted of a buff doublet, grey breeches, and a scarlet cloak whose gold braid appeared to have recently come unstitched, as indicated by stripes of a fresher colour visible against the slightly faded background of the fabric. His heavy basket-hilted sword hung from a wide belt embroidered with copper, which encircled the scoundrel’s slender but robust waist. An inexplicable detail singularly preoccupied Mérindol: Lampourde’s arm, emerging from under his cloak like a holder springing from a panelled wall to support a candle, held in his fist a purse whose plump belly announced a respectable sum in coinage. This gesture of offering money, instead of taking it, was so far outside the physical and moral habits of Master Jacquemin that the swordsman performed it with an emphatic solemnity, and a stiff awkwardness, which was quite laughable. Then, the idea which struck Mérindol that Jacquemin Lampourde approached the Duke of Vallombreuse as if he sought to pay him for some service, was so monstrously beyond the pale of probability that his eyes widened as did his mouth, which, according to painters and physiognomists, is the proper expression of extreme surprise.
— ‘Well, scoundrel,’ said the duke, when he had considered this gift-bearing personage long enough, ‘do you wish to donate alms to me by any chance, in placing this purse under my nose with that long arm of yours, that one might take for that of a banner?’
— ‘Firstly, Monsieur le Duc’ said the swordsman, after giving the long wrinkles like sabre cuts that marked his cheeks, and the corners of his mouth, a sort of nervous quiver, ‘with all due respect to Your Highness, I am no scoundrel. My name is Jacquemin Lampourde, a swordsman. My profession is honourable; no manual labour, trade or other industry has degraded me. I have not even, in deepest misfortune, taken to blowing glass, an occupation that does not smack of the gentleman, since there is danger in it, and commoners never willingly face death. I kill for a living, at the risk of my own skin and my neck, for I always work alone, and I always pre-warn whomever I attack, having myself a horror of treachery and cowardice. What could be more noble? So, withdraw the epithet of scoundrel, if you please, which I can only accept as a friendly jest; it outrages too noticeably the ticklish delicacy attached to my self-esteem.’
— ‘Very well, Master Jacquemin Lampourde, since you insist upon it,’ replied the Duke of Vallombreuse, who was amused in spite of himself by the odd formality of this lanky fellow, so firmly posed before him, ‘now explain your presence in my house, a purse in your hand, and you shaking it like a fool his sceptre, or a leper his clapper.’
Jacquemin, satisfied with this concession to his susceptibility, inclined his head while maintaining his upright pose, and made his felt hat perform several passes which constituted, in his opinion, a salute mixing the manly freedom of a soldier with the suppleness of a courtier.
— ‘Here’s the thing, Monsieur le Duc: I received an advance from Mérindol to do away with a certain Sigognac, called Captain Fracasse. Due to circumstances beyond my control, I was unable to fulfil this task, and as I maintain probity in my dealings, I return to their rightful owner the monies I failed to earn.’
As he said these words, he placed, the purse on a corner of a fine table inlaid with Florentine pietra dura, with a gesture that was not lacking in dignity,
— ‘There you have them,’ said Vallombreuse, ‘these braggarts, good enough to feature in comedies, these breakers of open-doors, these soldiers of Herod whose valour is displayed against suckling children, and who flee when the victim bares his teeth, these donkeys covered as if with lion-skin whose roar is a bray. Come, admit it in all honesty: Sigognac frightened you.’
— ‘Jacquemin Lampourde has never known fear;’ resumed the swordsman in a tone which, despite his grotesque appearance, was not devoid of nobility, that is to say without Spanish or Gascon boastfulness or bragging, ‘in no fight has the adversary seen the shape of my back; I am unknown as regards my rear, and incognito, may be as hunchbacked as Aesop was (according to tradition). Those who have appreciated my work know that simple tasks disgust me, while danger pleases, in which I swim like a fish in water. I attacked the Sigognac secundum artem (according to practice), with one of my finest blades, Toledan blades, forged by Alonso de Sahagún the Elder (a famous sixteenth-century swordsmith)
— ‘What occurred,’ asked the young duke, ‘in this duel where you seem not to have gained the advantage sine you’re here to return the sum?’
— ‘Both in single combat and in encounters and assaults, against one or more, I have laid thirty-seven men on the ground who failed to recover, ignoring those who were crippled, or more or less seriously injured. But Sigognac’s guard is as unassailable as a brazen tower. I employed all the resources of the art of fencing against him: feints, surprises, disengagements, retreats, unusual strokes; his parries and ripostes repelled each attack, and with what firmness combined with speed! What audacity tempered with prudence! What magnificent composure! What imperturbable mastery! He is not a mere mortal; he is a god with a sword in his hand. At the risk of being skewered, I enjoyed his fine, correct, and superior style. I had before me a partner worthy of my skill; yet as it was necessary to end, after having prolonged the fight as much as possible to gain time, my admiration of his brilliant method, I seized my opportunity, and risked the Neapolitan’s secret weapon, which I alone possess in all the world, since Girolamo is now dead, and bequeathed it to me as a legacy. No one but myself, moreover, is capable of executing it in all its perfection, on which its success depends. I carried it out so well, and so thoroughly, that Girolamo himself could not have done better (Girolamo Cavalcabo, from Bologna not Naples, was fencing instructor to the young Louis XIII). Well! That devil of a Captain Fracasse, as he is called, parried the thrust with dazzling speed, and so firm a counter-stroke that he left me with nothing but the stub of my sword, which I struggled to employ, like an old woman threatening a child with a spoon. Look, here is what he did to my Sahagún sword.’
Thereupon Jacquemin Lampourde pulled from its scabbard a pitiful section of rapier bearing Sahagún’s authentic crowned ‘S’ as its mark, and showed the duke the clean break in the gleaming blade.
— ‘Was that not a prodigious blow,’ continued the swordsman, ‘one that could have been struck by Roland's blade Durendal, Oliver’s Hauteclaire, El Cid’s Tizona, or the unnamed sword of Amadis in ‘Amadis de Gaula’? Killing Captain Fracasse is beyond my talents; I admit it, in all modesty. The thrust I delivered had until then been parried in the worst manner of all, with the body. Whoever suffered it found an extra buttonhole in his doublet through which his soul fled. Furthermore, like all brave men, this captain was generous: he held me at the end of his sword, I myself quite stunned and speechless with disappointment, and he could have skewered me, like an ortolan, just by stretching out his arm. He refrained from doing so, which was very delicate on the part of a gentleman attacked at dusk, in the middle of the Pont-Neuf. I owe him my life, and even if it is not worth much in my position, I am bound to him by gratitude. I will undertake nothing more against him, and his life is sacred as far as I am concerned. Besides, even if I possessed the means, I would have scruples about harming or destroying such a fine swordsman, especially since they are rare in this age of vulgar ironmongers, where one holds a sword like a broom-handle. That is why I have come to warn Monsieur the Duke that he can no longer count on me. Perhaps I might have kept the coins as compensation for my risk and the peril involved; but my conscience was against it.’
— ‘By all the devils, keep the payment,’ said Vallombreuse in a tone that admitted no reply, ‘or I’ll have you thrown through the window, open or not, and your money with you. Never have I met with so scrupulous a rogue. You, Mérindol, would be incapable of so fine a trait, quite the example to youth.’
Noting that the swordsman hesitated, he added: ‘I give you those pistoles to drink to my health.’
— ‘That, Monsieur le Duc, will be done, and religiously,’ replied Lampourde, ‘however, I think His Lordship will not be displeased if I play at lansquenet with a few.’ With that, he took a step toward the table, stretched out his bony arm, seized the purse with the dexterity of a magician, and made it vanish as if by magic into the depths of his pocket, where it struck, with a metallic clang, a dice box, and a deck of cards in a tin. It was easy to see that this gesture was much more natural to him than the other had been, with so much ease did he execute it.
— ‘I am withdrawing from this business of Sigognac,’ said Lampourde, ‘but it will be taken up, if it suits Your Lordship, by my alter ego, the Chevalier Malartic, to whom one can entrust the most hazardous undertakings, so skilful is he. He has both a head that conceives and a hand that executes. He possesses, moreover, a mind quite free from prejudice and superstition. I sketched out a plan of sorts for the abduction of the actress whom you do the honour of taking an interest in, which he will complete with the perfection and attention to detail which characterise his style. More than one playwright applauded in the theatre for the mechanics of his dramas, should consult Malartic’s efforts, as regards the subtlety of his plots, the inventiveness of his stratagems, the play of character. Mérindol, who knows him, will vouch for his rare qualities. Certainly, the Duke could not choose better, and it is a true gift that I am making him. But I would not wish to abuse His Lordship’s patience any further. When he has decided, he only needs have one of his men draw a cross in chalk on the left pillar in The Crowned Radish. Malartic will understand and, duly disguised, will attend the Hôtel Vallombreuse to receive his final orders, and reach an agreement.’
This triumphant speech completed, Master Jacquemin Lampourde made his felt hat reverse the movements it had described on his greeting the duke at the beginning of the interview, pushing it down on his head, and lowering the brim over his eyes, and left the room with a measured and majestic stride, satisfied with his eloquence and bearing before so great a lord.
This bizarre apparition, less strange, however, in that century of refined honour and swordplay than it would have been at any other time, had amused and interested the young Duke of Vallombreuse. Jacquemin Lampourde’s character, full of originality, the man proving honest in his own way, did not displease him; he even forgave him for his failure to kill Sigognac. Since the Baron had defeated this professional swordsman, it was because he was truly invincible, and the shame of having been wounded by him was thus less painful to his self-esteem. Then, however wild Vallombreuse was, the action of having Sigognac assassinated seemed to him enormous, not because of any tenderness, or pang of conscience, but because his enemy was a gentleman, while he would have had no qualms at all about slaughtering half a dozen bourgeois who had bothered him, the blood of such people having no more worth in his eyes than the water in the fountains. He would have preferred to dispatch his rival himself, if it had not been for Sigognac’s superiority in fencing, a superiority of which his arm, barely healed, retained the memory, and which did not allow him to risk a new duel or chance an armed attack. His thoughts therefore turned to the abduction of Isabella, which appealed to him more due to the amorous perspectives it opened to his imagination. He had no doubt that the young actress, once separated from Sigognac and his comrades, would become more human and sensitive to the charms of so handsome a lord, on whom the highest ladies of the court doted. Vallombreuse’s conceit was unashamed, for never had such been better founded. His charms justified all his pretensions, and his most impertinent boasts were simple truths. Also, despite the failure of his encounter with Isabella, it seemed to the young duke illogical, absurd, incredible and outrageous for her not to love him.
— ‘Let me hold her for a few days,’ he said to himself, ‘in a retreat from which she cannot escape, and I will know how to subdue her. I will be so gallant, passionate, and persuasive, that she will soon feel astonishment at having held a grudge against me for so long. I will see her become troubled, change colour, lower those long eyelids at the sight of me, and when I have her in my arms, she will lean her head on my shoulder to hide her modesty and confusion. With a kiss, she will tell me she has always loved me, and that her resistance was only a means to inflame me more, or was merely the apprehension and timidity shown by a mortal pursued by a god, or some other such charming and delightful phrase, among those that women know how to employ in their encounters, even the most chaste. But when I possess her, body and soul, ah, it is then that I will take revenge for her former rebuffs!
Chapter XV: Malartic at Work
If the Duke’s anger had proved fierce on returning home, the Baron’s proved no less so on his learning of Vallombreuse’s escapade directed against Isabella. The Tyrant and Blazius were obliged to engage in lengthy arguments to prevent him from rushing to the nobleman’s mansion with the aim of provoking him to a duel that he would certainly have refused, for Sigognac being neither the brother, nor the husband, nor the acknowledged lover of the actress, had no right to demand an explanation for an act that, moreover, was excusable in itself. In France, men have always been free to court beautiful women. The swordsman’s attack on the Pont-Neuf was, certainly, far less legitimate; but though it was likely that the idea originated with the duke, how was one to ascertain what obscure thread linked this man of the sack and the rope, to that magnificent lord? And, even supposing that it could be discovered, how could the link be proven, and from whom could one seek justice for these cowardly attacks? In the eyes of the world, Sigognac, his rank concealed, was a vile actor, a low-class buffoon whom a gentleman like Vallombreuse could, at his whim, if he angered or hindered him in any way, have beaten, imprisoned or killed, without anyone finding the duke at fault. Isabella’s honest resistance, would have seemed ridiculous and that of a prude; the virtue of actresses being doubted by many an incredulous Thomas and sceptical Pyrrho. There was therefore no way to openly attack the duke, which enraged Sigognac, who recognised, despite himself, the truth of the reasons given by Herod and the Pedant for playing dead, but with eyes open, and ears attentive; for this damned lord, handsome as an angel and wicked as the Devil, would certainly not abandon his enterprise, though it had failed so far at every stage. A gentle look from Isabella, who took Sigognac’s trembling hands in her white ones, urging him to subdue his courage for love of her, completely pacified the Baron, and things resumed their customary course.
The troupe’s debut had been a great success. Isabella’s modest grace, the Soubrette’s sparkling verve, Serafina’s elegant coquetry, Captain Fracasse’s superb extravagance, the Tyrant’s majestic emphasis, Leander’s white teeth and pink gums, the Pedant’s grotesque bonhomie, Scapin’s cunning wit, and the Duenna’s comedic perfection produced the same effect in Paris as in the provinces; all they lacked, having won the approval of the city, was that of the Court, where the most tasteful and discerning people were to be found; there was even talk of summoning them to Saint-Germain, as the king, on hearing the rumours, wanted to see them; which greatly delighted Herod, the company’s leader and treasurer. Often people of quality asked them to perform at their mansion, on the occasion of some celebration or feast, the ladies being curious to see these actors who outshone those of the Hôtel de Bourgogne (on the Rue Mauconseil, now the Rue Étienne Marcel; from 1628, the Comédiens du Roi were the resident company) and the troupe of the Marais (the Théâtre du Marais was founded in 1634 and housed in a converted racquet-court, the Jeu de Paume des ‘Maretz’, on the Vieille Rue du Temple)
So, Herod was not surprised, accustomed as he was to such requests, when one fine morning, at the inn on the Rue Dauphine, a steward or major-domo appeared, with the venerable appearance of one of those servants grown old in the service of great houses, who asked to speak to him on behalf of his master, the Count of Pommereuil, on theatrical business.
This major-domo, dressed in black velvet from head to toe, wore a chain of gold ducats around his neck, silk stockings, and shoes with large cockades, square at the toe, and a little loose, as befitted an old man who sometimes suffered from gout. A white collar spread its flaps over the black of the doublet, and enhanced the complexion of his face, swarthy from the fresh country air, on which his eyebrows, moustaches, and goatee beard stood out like touches of snow on an ancient sculpture. His long, greyish-white hair fell to his shoulders and rendered his the most patriarchal and honest of physiognomies. He was surely one of those stewards whose line is now lost, who looked after their master’s fortune more fiercely than their own, remonstrated against foolish spending and, in times of setbacks, contributed their meagre savings to support the family that had nourished them in its prosperity.
Herod was most admiring of the fine air of loyalty possessed by this steward, who, having greeted him, addressed him courteously:
— ‘Are you indeed that Herod who governs, with a hand as firm as Apollo’s, the Muses’ troupe, that excellent company whose fame has already spread throughout the city, and even beyond its walls; for it has reached to the depths of the domain where my master lives.’
— ‘It is I who have that honour,’ replied Herod, making the most graceful bow that his forbidding and tragic expression would allow.
— ‘The Count of Pommereuil,’ the old man continued, ‘would greatly like to entertain some important guests of his by offering them a theatrical performance at his château. He thinks there to be no finer troupe than yours to fulfil that purpose, and sent me to ask if it would be possible for you to give such a performance at his estate, which is only a few leagues from here. The Count, my master, is a great nobleman who spares no expense, and who wishes to acquire your illustrious company at any cost.’
— ‘I would do anything to please so gallant a gentleman,’ replied the Tyrant, ‘though it is difficult for us to leave Paris, even for a few days, at the height of our popularity.’
— ‘Three days would suffice,’ said the major-domo, ‘one for the journey, one for the performance, and the last for your return. There is a fully equipped theatre at the castle where you will only have to set out your scenery; moreover, here are one hundred pistoles which the Count of Pommereuil has asked me to place in your hands for any small travel expenses; you will receive the same after the performance, and the actresses will no doubt be given presents of rings, pins, or bracelets, which feminine coquetry always appreciates.’
Matching his actions to his words, the Count of Pommereuil’s steward drew from his pocket a large, heavy purse, dropsical with coinage, tilted it, and poured onto the table a hundred fine new crowns of the most attractive brightness.
The Tyrant gazed at these coins, scattered one on top of another, with an air of satisfaction, stroking his broad black beard. When he had contemplated them long enough, he gathered them, arranged them in a pile, and then threw them into his pocket with a gesture of acquiescence.
— ‘So then,’ said the steward, ‘you accept, and I may tell my master that you will answer his request.’
— ‘I am at His Lordship’s disposal, along with all my companions,’ replied Herod, ‘now designate the day on which the performance and the play that the Count desires are to take place, so that we may organise the necessary costumes and accessories.’
— ‘It would be excellent,’ replied the steward, ‘if it were Thursday, for my master’s impatience is great; as for the play, he leaves the choice to your taste and convenience.’
— ‘L’Illusion Comique,’ said Herod, ‘by a young author from Normandy (Pierre Corneille, who was born in Rouen; the play dates from 1636) who promises a lot, is the newest and most popular thing at the moment.’
— ‘Let it be L’Illusion Comique: his verse is not bad, and there is a superb role for Matamore.’
— ‘Now all that remains is to describe, in a precise manner so that we cannot go astray, the location of the estate and its château, and the route we must follow to reach it.’
The steward of the Count of Pommereuil gave such exact and detailed information that it would have sufficed for a blind man, only able to feel the ground with his staff; but doubtless fearing that the actor, once on the road, would no longer remember his instructions clearly, those variants on ‘go straight ahead, then right, then left,’ he added: ‘Do not burden your memory, full of the finest verses of our best poets, with such vulgar and prosaic details; I will send a lackey, who will serve as your guide.’
The matter thus concluded, the old man withdrew with a fulsome bow, which Herod graciously returned, and which, following the actor’s response, the steward repeated by bowing even lower. They looked like two parentheses suffering from Saint Vitus’ dance, wriggling towards each other. Not wishing to be defeated in this contest in politeness, the Tyrant descended the stairs, crossed the courtyard, and halted only on the threshold, from where he addressed a final bow to the steward: his back convex, his chest as concave as his belly allowed, his arms dangling, and his head almost touching the ground.
If Herod had kept the Count of Pommereuil’s steward in sight till the latter had reached the end of the street, he might, perchance, have noticed that, contrary to the laws of perspective, the steward’s height increased in inverse proportion to his distance from him. His bent back straightened, the senile trembling in his hands disappeared, and from the liveliness of his gait he did not seem at all gouty; but Herod had already entered the house and saw none of this.
On Wednesday morning, as the lads from the inn were loading the scenery and luggage onto a cart, hired by the Tyrant for the transport of the troupe and drawn by two strong horses, a tall, rascal of a footman in very clean livery, riding a Percheron, appeared at the door of the inn, cracking his whip in order to hasten the departure of the actors and act as their courier. The women, who were always lazy, and slow to rise and dress, even though they were actresses accustomed to dressing and undressing in the blink of an eye when costume changes required it, finally left their rooms and arranged themselves as comfortably as possible on the straw-stuffed cushions of the benches hung from the insides of the cart. The Samaritaine’s little bell-ringer was pounding away, signalling eight o’clock, when the heavy wagon started to move. In less than half an hour, they had passed the Porte Saint-Antoine, and the Bastille its cluster of towers mirrored in the black waters of the moat. They then crossed the suburbs, the misted crops dotted with small houses, and journeyed through the countryside in the direction of Vincennes, the keep visible in the distance behind a light gauze of bluish vapour, a remnant of the nocturnal humidity dissipating in the sun’s rays, like artillery smoke dispersed by the wind.
Quite soon, for the horses were fresh and travelling at a good pace, they reached the old fortress whose Gothic defences still made a good show though they were no longer able to resist cannons or bombards. The golden crescents which surmounted the minarets of the chapel, which is said to have been designed by Pierre de Montreuil and Raymond du Temple, shone joyfully above the ramparts as if they were proud to stand beside the cross, the sign of redemption. Then, after admiring that monument of the ancient splendour of our kings for a few minutes, they entered the wood, where, amidst the thickets and saplings, rose some majestic old oaks, undoubtedly contemporary with the one beneath which Saint Louis (Louis IX) dispensed justice, an occupation very becoming to a monarch.
As the road was hardly ever used, the rabbits, frolicking about, or running their paws over their whiskers, were surprised by the arrival of the cart, since it moved with little noise, the ground being soft and frequently carpeted with grass. They scampered off as if the dogs were after them; to the actors’ amusement. Further on, a roe deer in utter fright, crossed the road, and they followed its flight through the leafless trees for a while. Sigognac was especially taken with these things, having been raised and nurtured in the countryside. It delighted him to see fields, bushes, woods, and wild creatures, a spectacle of which he had been deprived since he had lodged in the city, where one sees only houses, muddy streets, smoking chimneys, the work of men, and not the work of God. He would have felt ennui there, indeed, if he had not had the company of that sweet woman, whose eyes contained enough azure to replace that of the sky.
As they left the woods, a small hill presented itself. Sigognac said to Isabella: ‘Dear soul, while the coach slowly climbs this slope, might it not be convenient for you to descend, place your hand on my arm, and take a few steps? It will warm your feet, and stretch your legs. The road is level, and the weather is fine; clear, cool and crisp, but not too cold.’
The young actress accepted Sigognac’s offer, and, placing the tips of her fingers on the hand he offered her, jumped lightly to the ground. It was a way of granting her lover an innocent tête-à-tête that her modesty would have refused in the solitude of a closed room. They walked sometimes, almost elevated by their love, skimming the ground like birds, sometimes stopping at each step to contemplate each other, and enjoy being together, side by side, arms entwined and gazing deep into each other’s eyes. Sigognac told Isabella how much he loved her; this sentence, which he had repeated more than a score of times, seemed to the young woman as new as Adam’s employment of it must have seemed on trying out the verb the day after Eve’s creation. As she was the most delicate and disinterested person in the world in matters of feeling, she tried by means of petty vexations and loving denials to contain within the limits of friendship a love that she did not wish to fully reward, judging it harmful to the Baron’s future.
But these pretty debates and disputes only served to increase Sigognac’s love, who at that moment was thinking of the disdainful Yolande de Foix no more than if she had never existed.
— ‘Whatever you do, darling,’ he said to his beloved, ‘you will not succeed in exhausting my constancy. If necessary, I will wait till your scruples have dissipated of their own accord, till your beautiful golden hair has changed to silver.’
— ‘Oh! I will be a true cure for love, then, being ugly enough to frighten the proudest gallant,’ Isabella replied; I would be afraid of punishing your fidelity by rewarding it so.’
— ‘Even at sixty years of age, you will retain your charm like the beautiful old lady of François Maynard’s poem (see his ode, ‘La Belle Vieille’, his collected works were published in 1646),’ Sigognac replied gallantly, ‘since your beauty derives from the soul, which is immortal.’
— ‘All the same,’ the young woman continued, ‘you would have been truly taken in, if I took you at your word, and promised you my hand but only when I am fifty years old. Still,’ she continued, regaining her seriousness, ‘let us cease this banter; you know my resolution, be content to be loved more than any mortal has ever been since hearts have beaten on this earth.’
— ‘I should rest content with so charming a confession, I agree; but, as my love is infinite, it cannot suffer the slightest barrier. God may well tell the sea: “You shall go no further,” and be obeyed. A passion such as mine knows no shore, and like the tide always rises, even though with your heavenly voice you say to it: ‘Stop there.’
— ‘Sigognac, you are angering me with such things,’ said Isabella, giving the Baron a little pout more graceful than the most charming smile; for, in spite of herself, her soul was flooded with joy at these protestations of a love that no coldness could repel.
They walked a few steps without speaking; Sigognac, by insisting further, was afraid of displeasing the one he loved more than his life. Suddenly Isabella abruptly left his hand and, giving a childish cry, ran towards the edge of the road with the lightness of a doe. At the side of a ditch, at the foot of an oak tree, among the dry leaves piled there by winter, she had noticed a violet, the first of the year, surely, for it was still only February; she knelt down, parted the dead leaves and blades of grass, delicately, cut the frail stem with her fingernail and returned with the little flower, happier than if she had found a clasp of jewels amidst the moss, forgotten by some princess.
— ‘See how charming it is,’ she said, showing it to Sigognac, ‘with its leaves barely unfolded in these first raya of sunshine.’
— ‘It was scarcely the sun,’ Sigognac replied, ‘but your gaze that made it bloom. Its flower is exactly the colour of your eyes.’
— ‘Its odour fails to spread far because it’s cold,’ Isabella continued, putting the chilly flower in her bodice. After a few minutes she retrieved it, inhaled the scent for a long time, and handed it to Sigognac, after furtively placing a kiss on it.
— ‘How sweet it smells now! The warmth of my breast makes it exhale the perfume of its little timid, modest flowery soul.’
— ‘You have perfumed it,’ replied Sigognac, raising the violet to his lips and garnering Isabella’s kiss; ‘this delicate, sweet scent has nothing earthly about it.’
— ‘Ah! the villain,’ said Isabella, ‘I give him a scented flower in a friendly manner, and there he is, sharpening concetti in the style of Giambattista Marino (the Neapolitan poet, 1569-1625), as if, instead of being here on the path, he was flirting in an alleyway with some notorious woman full of affectation. There’s no way to restrain him; to every word, even the simplest in the world, he responds with a compliment!’
However, despite her apparent disdain, the young actress probably did not hold it against Sigognac, because she took his arm again, and perhaps even leant on it a little more than her gait, usually so light, and the path, as smooth as that in a garden, required. Which proves that the purest virtue is not insensitive to praise, and that modesty itself rewards flattery.
The cart began to slowly ascend a quite steep slope, at the foot of which a few cottages squatted, as if to save themselves the trouble of climbing higher. The country-folk who lived there were tending to the fields, and the only figures seen at the side of the road were a blind man accompanied by a young boy, who had remained there, doubtless to beg alms of the travellers.
The blind man, who seemed burdened by the years, was intoning, in a nasal tone, a kind of lament, in which he deplored his blindness and implored the charity of passers-by, promising them his prayers, and guaranteeing them paradise in return for their kindness. For some time, his melancholy voice had filled the ears of Isabella and Sigognac, an unwelcome and annoying buzzing behind their sweet and loving conversation, and even the Baron was growing impatient; for, when a nightingale is singing close by, it’s tiresome to hear a crow croaking in a corner.
‘…A blind man accompanied by a young boy.’
As they neared the old man, the latter, alerted by his guide, redoubled his moans and supplications. To excite their pity, and gain their largesse, he shook a wooden bowl, with a jerky movement, in which clinked a few deniers, liards (worth three deniers), pieces of silver, and other small change. A rag surrounded his head, and over his back, curved like the arch of a bridge, was thrown a large, very rough and very heavy brown wool blanket, full of holes, made more for a beast of burden than a Christian, and which he had doubtless inherited from some mule that had died from glanders or scabies. His upturned eyes showed white, and on that brown and wrinkled face produced a hideous effect; the lower part of his face was buried in a long grey beard, worthy of a Capuchin friar or a hermit, which fell to his navel, like a hairy form of the antipodes. Of his whole body, only his hands were visible, emerging trembling from the opening of his cloak to shake his begging bowl. As a sign of piety and submission to the decrees of providence, the blind man had been kneeling on a meagre pile of straw, more beaten-down and rotten than Job’s ancient dunghill. The compassionate, before this human rag, could only shudder; almsgivers threw their offerings at him, and turned their heads away in pity.
The child, standing beside the blind man, had a fierce and haggard expression. His face was half-veiled by long locks of black hair that hung down his cheeks. An old, battered hat, much too large for him, found beside some boundary stone or other, plunged the top of his face in shadow, leaving only the chin visible, and the mouth, whose teeth shone with a sinister whiteness in the light. A kind of loose coat of coarse patched canvas formed his entire garment, and outlined a thin and sinewy body, not without elegance despite its wretchedness. His delicate feet, lacking shoes or stockings, had been reddened by contact with the cold ground.
Isabella was touched by the sight of this sorry pair, combining the misfortune of old age and childhood, and she halted before the blind man, who was reciting his prayers with ever-increasing volubility, seconded by the shrill voice of his guide, and searched for her purse so as to give the beggar a silver coin. But she could not find her purse, and, turning to Sigognac, asked him to lend her a tester or two, to which the Baron readily agreed, though the blind man, and his lament, displeased him somewhat. Being a gallant man, so as to prevent Isabella from approaching the fellow, he approached himself, and placed a coin in the begging bowl.
Instead of thanking Sigognac for his alms, the beggar straightened from his bent posture, and to Isabella’s great horror, opening his arms like a vulture flapping its wings to take flight, he unfurled the large brown cloak which had seemed to burden him, dragged it from his shoulder, and threw it, with a movement like that of a fisherman casting his net into a pond or a river, such that the heavy material spread like a cloud over Sigognac’s head, covering it, and falling heavily over his body, the edges being weighted like those of a net, depriving him at the same time of his sight, his breathing, and the use of his hands and feet.
The young actress, petrified with terror, sought to scream, flee, call for help, but before she could utter a sound, felt herself lifted from the ground with extreme agility. The old blind man, who had become, in a minute, youthful and sighted, by a miracle more infernal than celestial, had seized her beneath the arms, while the young boy supported her legs. Silently, they carried her off the path, and halted behind a shack, where a masked man on a sturdy horse was waiting.
Two other fellows, also on horseback, masked and armed to the teeth, stood behind a wall that prevented them from being seen from the road, ready to come to the aid of the first, if necessary.
Isabella, more than half-dead with fright, was seated on the saddle-bow, covered with a cloak folded several times so as to form a sort of cushion. The rider wrapped a leather strap round her waist, loosely enough to encircle her at the height of her loins and, having arranged matters thus, with a rapidity and dexterity proving long practice in such hazardous abductions, he gave his horse the spur, which sprang forward, and set off at a pace that proved the dual load hardly weighed on it: it is true the young actress was quite light.
All this happened in a shorter time than it takes to write. Sigognac struggled under the heavy cloak of the false blind man, like a retiarius (a Roman gladiator who fought with net, trident, and dagger) entangled in his adversary’s net. He raged, deeming it an ambush planned by Vallombreuse so as to abduct Isabella, and nigh-on exhausted himself with the effort. Happily, the idea came to him to draw his dagger, and slit the thick fabric that weighed him down like those leaden copes worn by the damned in Dante’s Inferno (see Canto XXIII).
With two or three strokes, he escaped his prison; like an unhooded falcon, scanned the countryside with a swift, piercing gaze; and saw Isabella’s kidnappers cutting across the fields, seemingly trying to reach a small clump of trees not far from there. As for the blind man and the child, they had vanished, having hidden themselves in some ditch or under a bush. But it was not that vile pair that Sigognac sought. Throwing off his cloak, which would have hindered him, he launched himself in pursuit of the scoundrels with desperate fury. The Baron was alert, well-built, made for running, and, in his youth, had often competed against the most agile children of the village. The kidnappers, turning around in their saddles, saw the distance between them and the Baron diminishing, and one of them even fired a pistol shot at him, to deter his pursuit. But he missed his aim, for Sigognac, still in flight, dodged to right and left, so as not to be hit. The rider who was carrying Isabella tried to take the lead, leaving it to his rearguard to deal with Sigognac, but the young woman placed on the saddle did not allow him to guide his mount as he would have liked, struggling and turning herself about, while trying to slide to the ground.
Sigognac was drawing closer and closer, the terrain no longer being favourable to horses. He had unsheathed his sword, without slowing down, which he held high; but he was on foot, alone, against three well-mounted men, and his breath was beginning to fail him; he made a prodigious effort, and in two or three bounds reached the horsemen who were aiding the kidnapper’s escape. To avoid wasting time fighting them, he jabbed, two or three times with the point of his rapier, the rumps of their mounts, hoping that goaded in that way, the horses would bolt. Indeed, maddened by pain, they reared, kicked and, taking the bit in their teeth, however hard their riders tried to restrain them, they gained the upper hand, and began to gallop as if the Devil were carrying them off, disregarding ditches or obstacles, such that in a moment they were out of sight.
Panting, his face bathed in sweat, his mouth dry, believing every minute that his heart would burst in his chest, Sigognac finally reached the masked man who was holding Isabella across the withers of his mount. The young woman was shouting: ‘Save me, Sigognac, save me!’
— ‘I am here,’ the Baron rasped in a fitful, panting voice, and with his left hand he clung to the strap that bound Isabella to the brigand. He tried to pull the man down, running alongside the horse and clambering higher, like those leapers from steed to steed whom the Romans called desultores. But the rider was clenching his knees, and it would have been as easy to unscrew the torso of a centaur as to tear him from his saddle; at the same time, the fellow was searching with his heels for the belly of his beast to spur it onwards, and try to shake off Sigognac, whom he could not grapple with, since his hands were busy holding the bridle and clasping Isabella. The horse, thus reigned back and hindered, was losing speed, which allowed Sigognac to catch his breath a little; he even took advantage of the slight pause to try to stab his opponent; but his fear of injuring Isabella amidst these tumultuous efforts rendered the blow too feeble.
‘‘I’m here,’ the Baron rasped.’
The rider, letting go of the reins for a moment, took a knife from his jacket and cut the strap to which Sigognac was clinging desperately; then he plunged the star-shaped rowels of his spurs, making the blood spurt, into the flanks of the poor animal which galloped forward with irresistible speed. The leather strap remained in Sigognac’s hand, who, no longer supported, and surprised by the feint, fell painfully on his back. Though he rose with agility and gathered his sword which had rolled four paces away, this short interval was long enough for the rider to gain an advantage that the Baron could not hope to counter, tired as he was by the unequal struggle and furious pace. However, hearing Isabella’s cries diminishing with distance, he set off again in pursuit of the kidnapper; a useless but great-hearted effort to thwart the abduction of his love! But he was losing ground considerably, and the rider had already reached the wood whose mass, though devoid of leaves, was sufficient, as regarded the tangle of its trunks and branches, to mask the direction the bandit had taken.
Though furious, and pained at the outrage, Sigognac was forced to halt, leaving his beloved Isabella in the clutches of this demon; unable to rescue her even with the help of Herod and Scapin who, at the sound of pistol fire, had leapt from the cart, suspecting some altercation, mishap or ambush, though the rogue of a lackey tried to hold them back.
In a few short, jerky words, Sigognac informed them of Isabella’s abduction, and all that had occurred.
— ‘Vallombreuse’s hand is apparent in this.’ said Herod. ‘Did he learn of our trip to the Château de Pommereuil, and therefore set this ambush for us? Or was that a mere charade, for which I received an advance only as a stratagem intended to lure us from the city where such actions are difficult and dangerous to perpetrate? In that case, the scoundrel who played the venerable butler is the finest actor I have ever seen. I would have sworn that the fellow was the innocent steward of a good house, full of virtues and qualities. But now there are three of us, let us search this grove in all directions, to find at least some indication of our Isabella’s whereabouts, she whom I love, Tyrant as I am, more than my own poor life and limbs. Alas! I fear that innocent butterfly will be caught in the toils of a monstrous spider who will slay her before we can disentangle her from its all too well-crafted web.’
— ‘I’ll squash it,’ cried Sigognac, striking the ground with his heel as if he were crushing the spider beneath his boot, ‘I’ll crush the poisonous beast!’
The terrible expression on his usually calm and gentle countenance showed that this was not an empty boast and that he would do just as he said.
— ‘Well,’ said Herod, ‘without wasting more words, let’s enter the wood, and beat it. Our prey cannot be far, as yet.’
Indeed, on the opposite side of the grove Sigognac and the actors were traversing, a carriage, its curtains drawn, was racing along with all the speed that a musketry-volley of whiplashes could draw from four post horses, despite the undergrowth that hampered their legs, and the saplings that whipped their faces. The two riders whose mounts Sigognac had jabbed were galloping beside the carriage doors, having succeeded in calming the steeds, one of them leading the masked man’s horse by the bridle; since their companion had entered the carriage no doubt to prevent Isabella from lifting the blinds to call for help, or even attempting to leap to the ground at the risk of her life.
Unless one possessed the seven-league boots that Tom Thumb so cunningly stole from the Ogre (see Perrault’s fairytale ‘Le Petit Poucet’, 1697), it would have been foolish to run after a carriage driven at such a pace, and so well defended. All that Sigognac and his comrades could do was observe the direction which the group were taking, a slight clue indeed as regards locating Isabella. The Baron attempted to follow the wheel-tracks, but the weather was dry, and the treads had left only light marks on the hard ground; even then, the marks soon became confused with the furrows made by other carriages and carts that had passed on the road during the previous few days. Arriving at a crossroads, where the track divided into several branches, the Baron completely lost the trail, and remained more embarrassed than Hercules between Voluptuousness and Virtue (see the parable attributed to Prodicus of Ceos and known from Xenophon, also Dürer’s engraving, Hercules at the Crossroads, of 1498). He was forced to retrace his steps, as a false judgment might have led him further from his goal. The little troupe therefore returned, sadly, to the cart where the other actors were waiting with some concern, anxious for clarification of the whole mystery.
As soon as the affair had commenced, the lackey driving the cart had increased its speed, so as to deprive Sigognac of the actors’ assistance, though they had shouted at him to stop; and, when the Tyrant and Scapin had dismounted despite him on hearing the pistol volley, he had leapt down and, crossing the ditch, headed out to join his accomplices, seemingly caring little whether the comedy troupe reached the castle of Pommereuil thereafter, or no, if indeed that castle existed: a matter doubtful at least, after what had just happened.
Herod asked an old woman who was walking in their direction with a bundle of sticks on her back, if they were very far from Pommereuil: to which the old woman replied that she knew of no estate, town or château of that name, for several leagues around, although she had, since her childhood, being now seventy years of age, scoured the whole surrounding country, her occupation being to beg, and seek a wretched living by the wayside.
It was more than obvious that the whole tale was a feint, planned by wicked and devious rogues, for the benefit of some great man in love with Isabella, who must surely be Vallombreuse, because it had taken a number of people and a substantial amount of money to carry out the complex plot.
The wagon returned to Paris; but Sigognac, Herod and Scapin remained, intending to rent horses in some nearby village, which would allow them to search for and pursue the kidnappers more effectively.
Isabella, after the Baron’s defeat, had been borne to a clearing in the woods and transferred to a second carriage, in less than three or four minutes though she struggled as best she could; then the carriage had driven away, wheels thundering, as, those of Salmoneus’ chariot are said to have thundered, intentionally, when he drove over the bridge of brass he had built. Opposite her sat, respectfully, the masked man who had borne her away on his saddle.
At a movement she made to put her head out the window, the man reached out his arm and held her back. Her struggles were in vain, against that iron hand. Isabella fell back, and began to cry out, hoping to be heard by some passerby.
— ‘Mademoiselle, please, calm yourself,’ said her mysterious captor, with the most exquisite politeness. ‘Do not force me to use physical constraint against such a charming and adorable person. No one means you any harm, perhaps even a great deal of good. Do not persist in useless rebellion: if you show yourself to be wise, I will maintain the greatest respect for you; a captive queen could not be treated better; but if you act like a demoness, if you struggle and cry out for aid, which will not appear, I have the means to subdue you. This will render you mute, and this other ensure that you remain calm.’
And the man took from his pocket a most artistically-formed gag, and a long silk cord rolled into a ball.
— ‘It would be barbaric,’ he continued, ‘to adapt this kind of muzzle or bridle to such a fresh, pink, mellifluous mouth; bracelets of cord would also be most unsuited, you must admit, to those charming and delicate wrists made to wear gold bracelets studded with diamonds.’
The young actress, angry and desolate though she was, yielded to these reasons, which were indeed good. Physical resistance would serve no purpose. Isabella therefore took refuge in the corner of the carriage, and remained silent. But sighs swelled her breast, and tears from her beautiful eyes wet her pale cheeks, as raindrops might the petals of a white rose. She thought of the threat to her virtue, and of Sigognac’s despair.
— ‘Her nervous crisis,’ thought the masked man, ‘is followed by a crisis of weeping; things follow their customary course. So much the better, it would have bothered me to act brutally as regards this amiable girl.’
Crouched in her corner, Isabella occasionally cast a fearful glance towards her guard, who noticed this and said to her in a voice that he tried to render gentle, though its tones were naturally hoarse: ‘You have nothing to fear from me, mademoiselle, I am a gallant man, and will undertake nothing that displeases you. If fortune had favoured me with more of her riches, I would certainly not have abducted you for the benefit of another, honest, beautiful and full of talent as you are; but the rigours of fate sometimes preclude delicacy, and require somewhat bizarre deeds.’
— ‘So, you confess,’ said Isabella, ‘that you were bribed to kidnap me, in this infamous, abusive and cruel manner!’
— ‘After the actions I have performed,’ replied the man in the mask, in the most tranquil tone, ‘it would be quite idle to deny it. There are, on the streets of Paris, a certain number of philosophers, like myself, lacking passions of our own, who take an interest in those of others, for pay, and render them in a position to satisfy them by lending them our spirit, courage, wits, and arms; but to change the subject, how charming you were in the recent comedy! You acted the confession scene with a grace unlike any other. I applauded you to the fullest. The pair of hands that clapped like washerwomen’s paddles, were mine!’
— ‘I say to you, in reply: forego these inappropriate remarks and compliments. Where are you leading me like this, against my will, and in spite of all law and propriety?’
— ‘I cannot tell you, and besides, it would be completely useless for me to do so; we are bound to secrecy like confessors or doctors; the most absolute discretion is indispensable in these hidden, perilous, and fanciful affairs, conducted by masked and anonymous shadows. Often, for greater security, we are not allowed to know who directs our actions, nor do they know us.’
— ‘So, you know not the hand behind this outrageous and guilty act; the kidnapping of a young girl from her companions, on a highway?’
— ‘Whether I do or no, it comes to the same thing, since awareness of my duty seals my mouth. Look among your lovers for the most ardent and the most maltreated. It will undoubtedly be him.’
Seeing that she would get nothing from him, Isabella said no more to her guard. Besides, she had no doubt that Vallombreuse was the author of the deed: the threatening way in which he had spoken, from the threshold of the door, those words: ‘Farewell, mademoiselle!’ during his visit to the Rue Dauphine, had remained engraved in her memory, and with a man of that stamp, so furious in his desires, so intense in his wishes, that simple sentence did not bode well. This conviction increased the poor actress’s apprehension, who turned pale, thinking of the assaults that her modesty would have to endure, from this haughty lord, more wounded by the blow to his pride than by love. She hoped that Sigognac, full of courage, would come to her aid. But would her faithful and valiant friend succeed in discovering her in time, in the obscure retreat to which her captors were bearing her? ‘At any rate,’ she said to herself, ‘if this evil duke wishes to confront me, I have Chiquita’s knife in my bodice, and can sacrifice my life for the sake of my honour.’ This resolution, once taken, restored her tranquility somewhat.
The carriage had been rolling along at the same pace for two hours or so, without stopping except for a few minutes to change horses at a relay station arranged in advance. As the drawn curtains hid the view, Isabella was unable to guess in what direction she was being taken. Though she did not know that countryside, if she had been able to look outside, she might have oriented herself somewhat by the sun; but she was being borne away in secrecy towards the unknown.
The carriage wheels, in clanking over the iron cross-beams of a drawbridge, warned Isabella that the journey had ended. Indeed, the carriage halted, the door opened, and the masked man offered his hand to the young actress so she might descend.
She glanced around, and found herself in a large square courtyard formed by four brick buildings, whose vermilion colour had been altered by time to a dark and gloomy hue. Long, narrow windows pierced the interior facades, and behind their greenish panes closed shutters could be seen, indicating that the rooms which they fronted had been uninhabited for a length of time. A border of moss surrounded each paving stone in the courtyard, and near the foot of each wall a few patches of grasses had grown. At the bottom of the steps, a pair of Egyptian-style sphinxes, on pedestals, stretched out blunt claws, and patches of the yellow and grey leprosy that clings to old stone mottled their rounded rumps. Though imbued with that melancholy air granted to dwellings by the absence of their master, the château, which was unknown to her, still possessed a pleasant appearance and suggested an active owner. It was deserted, but not abandoned, and no sign of dilapidation was visible. The body was intact; only the soul was missing.
The masked man handed Isabella over to a sort of footman in grey livery. The footman took the lead as they ascending a vast staircase, whose ornate banister was fashioned in scrolls and arabesques of ironwork, fashionable under the former reign, and led her to an apartment that must once have seemed the ne plus ultra of luxury, and whose faded richness still challenged modern elegance. Old oak panelling covered the walls of the first room, its architecture displaying pilasters, cornices, and frames decorated with sculpted foliage, and containing Flemish tapestries. In the second chamber, also panelled in oak, but with more elaborate ornamentation and enhanced with gilding, paintings, which replaced the tapestries, presented allegories whose significance was somewhat difficult to discover beneath the residues of candle-smoke, and layers of yellow varnish; their shadows had darkened, and only the lighter areas were still distinguishable. These figures of divinities, nymphs and heroes, half-emerging from the shadows, and only perceptible as regards their luminous portions, produced a singular effect and, at eve, in the wavering light of a lamp, roused a degree of fear. The bed occupied a deep alcove and was draped in a quilt embroidered in petit-point, and striped with bands of velvet; the whole was quite magnificent, though muted in tone. A few threads of gold and silver gleamed amidst the faded silk and wool, and the crushed fabric once red in hue shone with a bluish tone. A finely-carved dressing table’s tilted Venetian mirror revealed to Isabella the pallor of her features, and the degree to which they seemed altered. A large fire, indicating that the young actress was expected, burned in the fireplace, a vast monument supported by sheathed herms, and adorned with volutes, consoles, garlands, and ornaments of a somewhat heavy richness, in the middle of which was enshrined a portrait of a man whose expression struck Isabella greatly. The figure seemed not unknown to her; in the way one remembers on waking one of those forms seen in a dream which, failing to vanish with the dream, dogs one’s thoughts for a long time afterwards. The face was pallid, with dark eyes, ruddy lips, and brown hair, and bore the proud expression of an individual of about forty years of age, full of nobility. A cuirass of burnished steel, decorated with lines of nielloed gold, which a white scarf traversed, covered the chest. Despite her anxiety, and the legitimate fear that her situation inspired in her, Isabella could not help gazing at this portrait, her eyes returning to it as if fascinated. There was in the face a resemblance to that of Vallombreuse; but the expression was so unlike his that the connection seemed tenuous and was lost.
She was deep in her reverie when the footman in grey livery, who had disappeared for a few moments, returned with two servants carrying a small table with a single place setting, and said to the captive: ‘Mademoiselle is served.’ One of the servants silently moved forward an armchair, the other uncovered a soup tureen, a piece of ancient and massive silverware, and from it rose a whirl of fragrant smoke announcing a succulent broth.
Isabella, in spite of the grief her adventure had evoked, felt a hunger for which she reproached herself, as if Nature had lost its right to command her; the idea that these dishes perhaps contained some narcotic which would leave her defenceless to assault restrained her, and she pushed away the plate into which she had already plunged her spoon.
The footman in grey livery, seeming to sense her apprehension, tasted the wine, the water, and all the dishes placed on the table before offering them to Isabella. The prisoner, somewhat reassured, drank a mouthful of broth, ate a mouthful of bread, sucked on the wing of a chicken, and, this light repast finished, as the emotions of the day had given her a fever, she brought her armchair closer to the fire and remained thus for some time, her elbow on the arm of her chair, her chin in her hand, and her mind lost in vague and painful reverie.
She then rose, and went to the window to see what the view revealed. There was no grille, no iron-bars, nor anything reminiscent of a prison. But leaning out, she saw, at the foot of the wall, the green and stagnant water of a deep moat which surrounded the château. The drawbridge over which the carriage had passed was raised, and unless one could swim the moat, any means of communication with the outside world was impossible. Even then, it would have been difficult to climb the moat’s steep stone revetment. As for any sight of the horizon, an avenue, formed of ancient trees planted about the building, provided a complete screen. From the windows, one could see only intertwined branches, which, even bare of leaves, hid the château’s surroundings. It was necessary to renounce all hope of escape or deliverance, and to await events in a state of nervous anxiety worse to endure perhaps than the most dreadful of catastrophes.
Poor Isabella shuddered at the slightest noise. The murmur of water from the moat, the sighing of the wind, the creaking emitted by the woodwork, and the crackling of the fire, made cold sweat break out on her back. Every moment she expected the opening of a door, the movement of a panel, which would reveal a secret corridor, from the dark depths of which something would emerge, man or ghost. The actual appearance of a spectral form would even perhaps have frightened her less. As the twilight deepened, her terror increased; and when a tall footman entered, carrying a torch laden with candles, she almost fainted.
While Isabella trembled with fear in her solitary apartment, her captors, were carousing happily in a lower room, for they were to remain at the château as a sort of garrison, in case of an attack upon it by Sigognac and his friends. They all drank like sponges, but one of them in particular displayed a remarkable power of ingestion. It was the fellow who had borne Isabella with him on his horse and, since he had removed his mask, all were free to contemplate his face, pale as cheese, from which a red fiery nose projected. From this cherry-hued appendage, the reader may recognise the presence, there, of Lampourde’s friend, Malartic.
The End of Part III of Gautier’s ‘Le Capitaine Fracasse’