813 (44 page)

A flame at once arose and other flames leapt forth, quick, glowing, crackling.

“Let’s clear out,” said Lupin. “The chalet is built of wood, it will all flare up like a match. And, by the time they come from the village, break down the gates and run to this end of the park, it will be too late. They will find ashes, the remains of two charred corpses and, close at hand, my farewell letter in a bottle … Good-bye, Lupin! Bury me simply, good people, without superfluous state … a poor man’s funeral … No flowers, no wreaths. … Just a humble cross and a plain epitaph; ‘Here lies Arsène Lupin, adventurer.’”

He made for the park wall, climbed over it, and turning round, saw the flames soaring up to the sky …

He wandered back toward Paris on foot, bowed down by destiny, with despair in his heart. And the peasants were amazed at the sight of this traveller who paid with bank-notes for his fifteen-penny meals.

Three foot-pads attacked him one evening in the forest. He defended himself with his stick and left them lying for dead …

He spent a week at an inn. He did not know where to go … What was he to do? What was there for him to cling to? He was tired of life. He did not want to live …

“Is that you?”

Mme. Ernemont stood in her little sitting-room in the villa at Garches, trembling, scared and livid, staring at the apparition that faced her.

Lupin! … It was Lupin.

“You!” she said. “You! … But the papers said …”

He smiled sadly:

“Yes, I am dead.”

“Well, then … well, then …” she said, naïvely.

“You mean that, if I am dead, I have no business here. Believe me, I have serious reasons, Victoire.”

“How you have changed!” she said, in a voice full of pity.

“A few little disappointments … However, that’s over … Tell me, is Geneviève in?”

She flew at him, in a sudden rage:

“You leave her alone, do you hear? Geneviève? You want to see Geneviève, to take her back? Ah, this time I shall not let her out of my sight! She came back tired, white as a sheet, nervous; and the color has hardly yet returned to her cheeks. You shall leave her alone, I swear you shall.”

He pressed his hand hard on the old woman’s shoulder:

“I 
will
—do you understand?—I 
will
 speak to her.”

“No.”

“I mean to speak to her.”

“No.”

He pushed her about. She drew herself up and, crossing her arms:

“You shall pass over my dead body first, do you hear? The child’s happiness lies in this house and nowhere else … With all your ideas of money and rank, you would only make her miserable. Who is this Pierre Leduc of yours? And that Veldenz of yours? Geneviève a grand-duchess! You are mad. That’s no life for her! … You see, after all, you have thought only of yourself in this matter. It was your power, your fortune you wanted. The child you don’t care a rap about. Have you so much as asked yourself if she loved your rascally grand-duke? Have you asked yourself if she loved anybody? No, you just pursued your object, that is all, at the risk of hurting Geneviève and making her unhappy for the rest of her life … Well, I won’t have it! What
she wants is a simple, honest existence, led in the broad light of day; and that is what you can’t give her. Then what are you here for?”

He seemed to waver, but, nevertheless, he murmured in a low voice and very sadly:

“It is impossible that I should never see her again, it is impossible that I should not speak to her …”

“She believes you dead.”

“That is exactly what I do not want! I want her to know the truth. It is a torture to me to think that she looks upon me as one who is no more. Bring her to me, Victoire.”

He spoke in a voice so gentle and so distressed that she was utterly moved, and said:

“Listen … First of all, I want to know … It depends upon what you intend to say to her … Be frank, my boy … What do you want with Geneviève?”

He said, gravely:

“I want to say this: ‘Geneviève, I promised your mother to give you wealth, power, a fairy-like existence. And, on the day when I had attained my aim, I would have asked you for a little place, not very far from you. Rich and happy, you would have forgotten—yes, I am sure of it—you would have forgotten who I am, or rather who I was. Unfortunately, fate has been too strong for me. I bring you neither wealth nor power. And it is I, on the contrary, who have need of you. Geneviève, will you help me?’”

“To do what?” asked the old woman, anxiously.

“To live …”

“Oh!” she said. “Has it come to that, my poor boy? …”

“Yes,” he answered, simply, without any affectation of sorrow, “yes, it has come to that. Three human beings are just dead, killed by me, killed by my hands. The burden of the memory is more than I can bear. I am alone. For the first time in my life, I need help. I have the right to ask that help of Geneviève. And her duty is to give it to me … If not …”

“If not …?”

“Then all is over.”

The old woman was silent, pale and quivering with emotion. She once more felt all her affection for him whom she had fed at her breast and who still and in spite of all remained “her boy.” She asked:

“What do you intend to do with her?”

“We shall go abroad. We will take you with us, if you like to come …”

“But you forget … you forget …”

“What?”

“Your past …”

“She will forget it too. She will understand that I am no longer the man I was, that I do not wish to be.”

“Then, really, what you wish is that she should share your life, the life of Lupin?”

“The life of the man that I shall be, of the man who will work so that she may be happy, so that she may marry according to her inclination. We will settle down in some nook or other. We will struggle together, side by side. And you know what I am capable of …”

She repeated, slowly, with her eyes fixed on his:

“Then, really, you wish her to share Lupin’s life?”

He hesitated a second, hardly a second, and declared, plainly:

“Yes, yes, I wish it, I have the right.”

“You wish her to abandon all the children to whom she has devoted herself, all this life of work which she loves and which is essential to her happiness?”

“Yes, I wish it, it is her duty.”

The old woman opened the window and said:

“In that case, call her.”

Geneviève was in the garden, sitting on a bench. Four little girls were crowding round her. Others were playing and running about.

He saw her full-face. He saw her grave, smiling eyes. She held a flower in her hand and plucked the petals one by one and gave explanations to the attentive and eager children. Then she asked them questions. And each answer was rewarded with a kiss to the pupil.

Lupin looked at her long, with infinite emotion and anguish. A whole leaven of unknown feelings fermented within him. He had a longing to press that pretty girl to his breast, to kiss her and tell her how he respected and loved her. He remembered the mother, who died in the little village of Aspremont, who died of grief.

“Call her,” said Victoire. “Why don’t you call her?”

He sank into a chair and stammered:

“I can’t … I can’t do it … I have not the right … It is impossible … Let her believe me dead … That is better …”

He wept, his shoulders shaking with sobs, his whole being overwhelmed with despair, swollen with an affection that arose in him, like those backward flowers which die on the very day of their blossoming.

The old woman knelt down beside him and, in a trembling voice, asked:

“She is your daughter, is she not?”

“Yes, she is my daughter.”

“Oh, my poor boy!” she said, bursting into tears. “My poor boy! …”

EPILOGUE

THE SUICIDE

“TO HORSE!” SAID THE EMPEROR.

He corrected himself, on seeing the magnificent ass which they brought him:

“To donkey, rather! Waldemar, are you sure this animal is quiet to ride and drive?”

“I will answer for him as I would for myself, Sire,” declared the count.

“In that case, I feel safe,” said the Emperor, laughing. And, turning to the officers with him, “Gentlemen, to horse!”

The market-place of the village of Capri was crowded with sight-seers, kept back by a line of Italian carabiniers, and, in the middle, all the donkeys of the place, which had been requisitioned to enable the Emperor to go over that island of wonders.

“Waldemar,” said the Emperor, taking the head of the cavalcade, “what do we begin with?”

“With Tiberius’s Villa, Sire.”

They rode under a gateway and then followed a roughly-paved path, rising gradually to the eastern promontory of the island.

The Emperor laughed and enjoyed himself and good-humoredly chaffed the colossal Count von Waldemar, whose feet touched the ground on either side of the unfortunate donkey borne down under his weight.

In three-quarters of an hour, they arrived first at Tiberius’s Leap, an enormous rock, a thousand feet high, from which the tyrant caused his victims to be hurled into the sea …

The Emperor dismounted, walked up to the hand-rail and took a glance at the abyss. Then he went on foot to the ruins of Tiberius’s Villa, where he strolled about among the crumbling halls and passages.

He stopped for a moment.

There was a glorious view of the point of Sorrento and over the whole island of Capri. The glowing blue of the sea outlined the beautiful curve of the bay; and cool perfumes mingled with the scent of the citron-trees.

“The view is finer still, Sire,” said Waldemar, “from the hermit’s little chapel, at the summit.”

“Let us go to it.”

But the hermit himself descended by a steep path. He was an old man, with a hesitating gait and a bent back. He carried the book in which travellers usually write down their impressions.

He placed the book on a stone seat.

“What am I write?” asked the Emperor.

“Your name, Sire, and the date of your visit … and anything you please.”

The Emperor took the pen which the hermit handed him and bent down to write.

“Take care, Sire, take care!”

Shouts of alarm … a great crash from the direction of the chapel … The Emperor turned round. He saw a huge rock come rolling down upon him like a whirlwind.

At the same moment, he was seized round the body by the hermit and flung to a distance of ten yards away.

The rock struck against the stone seat where the Emperor had been standing a quarter of a second before and smashed the seat into fragments. But for the hermit, the Emperor would have been killed.

He gave him his hand and said, simply:

“Thank you.”

The officers flocked round him.

“It’s nothing, gentlemen … We have escaped with a fright … though it was a fine fright, I confess … All the same, but for the intervention of this worthy man …”

And, going up to the hermit:

“What is your name, my friend?”

The hermit had kept his head concealed in his hood. He pushed it back an inch or so and, in a very low voice, so as to be heard by none but the Emperor, he said:

“The name of a man, Sire, who is very pleased that you have shaken him by the hand.”

The Emperor gave a start and stepped back. Then, at once controlling himself:

“Gentlemen,” he said to the officers, “I will ask you to go up to the chapel. More rocks can break loose; and it would perhaps be wise to warn the authorities of the island. You will join me later. I want to thank this good man.”

He walked away, accompanied by the hermit. When they were alone, he said:

“You! Why?”

“I had to speak to you, Sire. If I had asked for an audience … would you have granted my request? I preferred to act directly and I intended to make myself known while Your Imperial Majesty was signing the book, when that stupid accident …”

“Well?” said the Emperor.

“The letters which I gave Waldemar to hand to you, Sire, are forgeries.”

The Emperor made a gesture of keen annoyance:

“Forgeries? Are you sure?”

“Absolutely sure, Sire.”

“Yet that Malreich …”

“Malreich was not the culprit.”

“Then who was?”

“I must beg Your Imperial Majesty to treat my answer as secret and confidential. The real culprit was Mrs. Kesselbach.”

“Kesselbach’s own wife?”

“Yes, Sire. She is dead now. It was she who made or caused to be made the copies which are in your possession. She kept the real letters.”

“But where are they?” exclaimed the Emperor. “That is the important thing! They must be recovered at all costs! I attach the greatest value to those letters …”

“Here they are, Sire.”

The Emperor had a moment of stupefaction. He looked at Lupin, looked at the letters, then at Lupin again and pocketed the bundle without examining it.

Clearly, this man was puzzling him once more. Where did this scoundrel spring from who, possessing so terrible a weapon, handed it over like that, generously, unconditionally? It would have been so easy for him to keep the letters and to make such use of them as he pleased! No, he had given his promise and he was keeping his word.

And the Emperor thought of all the astounding things which that man had done.

“The papers said that you were dead,” he said.

“Yes, Sire. In reality, I am dead. And the police of my country, glad to be rid of me, have buried the charred and unrecognizable remains of my body.”

“Then you are free?”

“As I always have been.”

“And nothing attaches you to anything?”

“Nothing, Sire.”

“In that case …”

The Emperor hesitated and then, explicitly:

“In that case, enter my service. I offer you the command of my private police. You shall be the absolute master. You shall have full power, even over the other police.”

“No, Sire.”

“Why not?”

“I am a Frenchman.”

There was a pause. The Emperor was evidently pleased with the answer. He said:

“Still, as you say that no link attaches you …”

“That is, one, Sire, which nothing can sever.” And he added, laughing, “I am dead as a man, but alive as a Frenchman. I am sure that Your Imperial Majesty will understand.”