Rita and Madame Le Tourneur slipped away hurriedly. Luc de Certeuil took Charles to the office and requested a nice room with a sea view for him.
“Do me the kindness of accompanying me,” Charles said. “I’m eager to ask you a question.”
“Willingly,” said the other, intrigued.
They went upstairs together.
The room was spacious. Through the open window, equipped with two shutters, the Couraux channel—the beginning of the straits of Maumusson—was visible, and further away, at the limit of vision, the continental coast, with the keep of Fort Chapus in front of it. Against the immense, already darkening sky, seagulls were flying back and forth with powerful wing-beats. Children could be heard shouting on the beach.
When the door had closed after the departure of the chambermaid, Charles said: “My dear Certeuil, the manner of my arrival must seem a trifle bizarre to you. Forgive me…you see before you a rather emotional man. Here it is: that young woman, Mademoiselle Rita…she’s made a profound impression on me…”
Without saying anything, Luc was looking at him with an expression so indecipherable that Charles paused momentarily, and stared in his turn at the eyes that were staring at him. “What is it?” Charles asked, slightly disconcerted.
“Nothing. I’m listening to you with great interest.”
“Nothing, really? I would have thought…”
“That is to say…you’ll understand, of course, my dear friend, that I won’t be the only one to experience some surprise…”
“What!” said Charles, cheerfully. “Because I don’t dance, because I don’t go out into society, because I’m an explorer of archives and libraries, do people assume I’ve taken holy vows and take me for a monk? Tell me?”
Luc de Certeuil affected to blink his eyes precipitately, to manifest his incomprehension. “You’ll have to excuse me,” he said. I don’t get it. I’m missing something—not to say several things…”
“What are they, if you please?”
“Firstly…well, my dear chap, let’s see, are you really talking to me? Come on, you’re having me on!”
“I beg your pardon,” said Charles, anxious now and speaking in a changed voice. “I’m not dreaming, though. Isn’t she charming? Full of intelligence? Irreproachable?”
“Certainly!” Luc confirmed, without losing his ironic rictus.
“I assume that there’s nothing to be said against her parents? Honest, eh?”
“Agreed!”
“On her side, therefore, not a shadow in the picture. Then…is it on my side that…? But I don’t see anything, myself, on that side…”
“One second, my dear chap. I thought I knew you, and even now, in fact, I’m convinced that I know you quite well—but we’re certainly talking at cross-purposes. It’s not possible that you—you—would speak as you have just done. In those conditions….oh, I’d be choked if anyone were playing with you, if anyone were deceiving you…and yet, unbelievable as that is, I can’t think of any other explanation…”
“What!” said Charles, indignantly.
“No other! Someone, my dear chap, must have given you a false name.”
“No one has given me any name! And that’s exactly what I wanted to ask you. Who is she?”
A silence.
“Who is she?”
Charles gripped Luc’s shoulders. The latter’s closed lips were smiling, with a malevolent expression. “Marguerite Ortofieri,” he said, finally. “Rita to her friends.”
Frightfully pale, Charles stepped away from him.
Silence had fallen again. Standing in front of the window, stunned by the revelation, the unfortunate individual watched the flight of the seagulls without seeing them. Accentuating the syllables, he repeated: “Marguerite Ortofieri!” And he sat down slowly, with his face in his hands.
Long moments passed during his prostration.
Luc de Certeuil was profoundly thoughtful. With his eyebrows furrowed and his eyes restless, he looked back and forth from the man sunk in his own mediation to the birds, the sky, the sea, the distant coast: a vast luminous landscape that attracted the gaze. His attitude testified to an extremely intense internal turmoil, of hesitations, uncertainties and ignorance. Then, his features easing, he went to Charles and gently and fraternally placed a hand on his shoulder. “Come on!” he said, benevolently.
Charles, seeming to emerge from a profound slumber, unmasked his face. “I beg your pardon,” he said. “I’m nothing but an idiot—a fool with no excuses, at the very least.”
“One always has excuses. It’s certain that if Mademoiselle Ortofieri had given you her name, as she should have done…in sum, she tricked you. Perhaps not maliciously, but tricked all the same. In this context, hiding her real name from you was tantamount to giving you a false name. It’s regrettable.”
“You’re mistaken,” Charles said. “I’m putting myself in her shoes, and I think that I would have acted exactly as she did. Suddenly finding herself in the presence of a polite man, who has no other fault in her eyes than being named Christiani, while she is named Ortofieri, she preferred, out of courtesy and delicacy, not to rebuff him brutally by hurling the name of Ortofieri at him, as one might slam a door in the face of a lout.”
“Perhaps so,” Luc accepted. “But just now, on seeing you so heated, I had the very clear impression that this…courtesy did not stop there.”
“What do you mean?”
“I’m trying to demonstrate to you that you’re not the only one responsible for your discomfort. Be just with yourself. An admiration does not develop so quickly and so extravagantly when it is not encouraged. Knowing who you are, knowing that this masked ball intrigue was fated to have no tomorrow, Mademoiselle Ortofieri is reproachable for having pushed politeness as far as amiability. That was extrapolating playfulness to the point of temerity.”
“Mademoiselle Ortofieri has done nothing to encourage my sympathy,” Charles declared, dryly. “She simply showed herself as she is: pretty and natural, intelligent and good.”
“That’s fine! Don’t get annoyed! I had no intention of attacking her.”
“I should think so!” said Charles. And he buried in the most inaccessible depths of his memory the resplendent and dolorous truth: the unforgettable secret of which Rita, Geneviève and he were the only custodians. For he knew now, alas, why that name—a Corsican name, like his own—had not been revealed to him, and why, above all, the young woman had seized the opportunity to remain with him for an entire day: a day magnificently stolen from destiny, bravely snatched from the ancient hatred of their families; a day that would be the first and last of their love! And he desperately reviewed every minute of those 24 hours of dream, cradled on the waves and caressed by the gentle breezes of a blissful isle, from the moment when he had perceived the little book in Rita’s hands—which she could only read without the knowledge of her parents, and which she did not have the right to own—until the supreme moment of the exceedingly chaste embrace when their fingers had joined together behind the Boyardville’s bulwark. The idyll with no possible future had ended there. A Christiani and an Ortofieri could not love one another.
“Let’s forget it!” Charles said, resolutely.
“From you, the contrary would have surprised me—but I confess that I asked myself, momentarily, whether love was not about to transform many things…”
“I’ve let you see my sentiments; I shall not deny them. Only be assured that tomorrow, I will have forgotten them, as I beg you now to forget them yourself.”
Luc de Certeuil bowed. An indefinable incredulity floated in his gaze. “You can rely on me,” he said. “It’s done—and I admire you, my friend. That haughty fidelity to the rancor of your race isn’t lacking in grandeur, or nobility…”
“I’m a Corsican, and I submit to the laws of my family.”
“Personally, you’ve never had any complaint against an Ortofieri?”
“Never. I’ve heard mention of the present
head of the family, the banker, but I’ve never met him. Oh, if I were alone in the world, perhaps I’d think next to nothing of an ancestral hatred of which I have merely accepted the succession—but there’s my family; one cannot conduct oneself in the same fashion for oneself and for others. Then again, at the head of my family there’s my mother. She’s more Corsican than all my compatriots put together—remember that she baptized my sister Colomba. That says it all! I’ve had numerous ancestors originating from various provinces: one was Champenoise, another Norman, yet another Savoyard, but my mother, born Bernardi, first saw the light of day in Bastia. She’s unshakable on the chapter of aversions. In marrying my father and becoming a Christiani, she espoused all the family’s hereditary quarrels. I know too that, even if we were disposed to make peace, the banker Ortofieri, for his part, would refuse.”
“So it’s a matter of a very grave offence? The hostility of the Christianis and the Ortofieris is known to many people, but how many could specify the reasons? I’ve heard mention of a murder dating from the last century…”
“Yes, there’s certainly that,” said Charles, loosening his cravat and unbuttoning the collar of his short with a nervous hand. “The murder of my great-great-great-grandfather4 César Christiani, the mariner, by Fabius Ortofieri, an ancestor of Mademoiselle Rita’s…”
“I fear that I’m overstaying my welcome—you seem rather tired. Would you like me to leave you in peace?”
“No—on the contrary. I prefer to talk. It keeps me occupied, and soothes me—and I’m grateful to you for giving me the opportunity, Certeuil.
“Out there in Corsica, since the sixteenth century, the two families have been prey to all sorts of disputes, over forests, livestock, boundaries. Until the murder of César Christiani, though, no vendetta had led to a man’s death. Note, however, that Fabius Ortofieri always denied his culpability and there was never anything against him but presumptions—no irrefutable proofs.”
“Did he go into hiding?”
“Not at all. It was in Paris that the murder was committed, on July 28, 1835, nearly 100 years ago. Fabius Ortofieri was arrested the following day, still in Paris, and died a natural death in prison before coming to trial. His conviction was anticipated; everything weighed against him and the opinion of the Christianis has never wavered: he was guilty.”
“If I may—I can easily understand that the Christianis have retained a resentment against the Ortofieris, but it’s more difficult to understand why the Ortofieris hold a grudge against the Christianis. That the relatives of a murderer should conceive a detestation for the relatives of his victim seems to me to be implausible, at first glance.
“You’ll grasp it. To begin with, there was a long history of disputes between the two clans, as I’ve told you: legal wrangles, brawls, bad turns—two centuries of enmity, not counting previous eras that have left us no documents on the subject. Because of that, undoubtedly, the opinion of the Ortofieris regarding the crime of 1835, although it has varied between individuals, has always remained unfavorable—hatefully unfavorable—to the Christianis.”
“Because?”
“Because certain Ortofieris, convinced of Fabius’ innocence, never forgave my forefathers for having accused him of a crime that, according to them, he did not commit. And because certain other Ortofieris—persuaded, on the contrary, of Fabius’ guilt—maintained that so just and calm a man could only have killed one of his peers to avenge an even greater crime. What crime? A mystery. Fabius, they said, did not wish to reveal it, either by virtue of magnanimity and moral elegance, or because, in revealing it, he would have articulated a crushing charge against himself that would have convicted him of César’s murder.”
“That’s rather curious, psychologically.”
“Bah! For the latter, it was a means of reconciling two rather contradictory sentiments: the desire to continue to detest us and a more honorable need to admit that the king’s prosecutor was right, and that Fabius really was César’s murderer. I know that Ortofieri the banker is convinced to this day that his ancestor took revenge on mine for some vile outrage—which is indefensible when one knows the character of César Christiani well, having studied it objectively. He was rectitude itself—and a remarkable intelligence. I thought about him as recently as yesterday, on the Ile d’Aix. Napoléon loved him dearly…”
That evocation of the Ile d’Aix brought the clouds back to Charles Christiani’s brow. He made a valiant effort to master himself. Forget it! Forget it! he said to himself, in a frenzied manner. And he went on talking, in order to stun himself, in order that Luc de Certeuil might be fully convinced of his detachment and that nothing would betray the wound in his soul that he was suppressing with all his spiritual strength.
Behind that façade of bravery, however, in the wings of his inner being, mute thoughts were unfolding, including one that was down to earth and increasing in magnitude: to leave as soon as possible; to go very rapidly to Chapus, which was visible in the distance, with its railway station; to be in Paris the following morning. But he knew that he had to execute that plan promptly; his flight was subordinate to the timetable of the boat, which he remembered having consulted in advance when he was anticipating such a happy return!
Another thought too, somewhat vaguer, persisted while he chatted—an interrogative thought. Luc de Certeuil, while listening with an undeniable interest, seemed nevertheless to be preoccupied with his own secret cogitations. Why?
Luc doubtless divined, from some hesitation by Charles, the fear that he had of being unwelcome, for every time that the historian appeared to be about to stop, he started him off again by means of a question—and the result of that was that Luc de Certeuil became, for Charles Christiani, a little more than an everyday acquaintance: a chance confidant.
“In the final account,” Charles continued, “César is the great man of my family. He was born on August 15, 1769, at the same time as Madame Bonaparte was giving birth to her second son, not far away. Thus, little César with the imperial name became the childhood friend of little Napoléon, whose name meant nothing. Now, the amity of the future emperor was never belied. He made my ancestor a corsair captain, whose reputation almost matched the glory of Surcouf.5 He enriched him and received him at the Tuileries every time the old sea-dog returned to France, Napoléon delighted in reminding him of their time in Ajaccio and mocking his thick accent, as gladly as he chided himself for having lost his own—which was not entirely true.
“Unfortunately, there was Waterloo. The Restoration was not propitious for César Christiani, Faithful to his god Napoléon, he was in disgrace. Louis XVIII and Charles X affected to ignore him, along with all the other impenitent Bonapartists.
“He retired in 1816. Corsica did not tempt him. I firmly believe that, after a life of combat and naval engagements, he wanted to rest, far away from quarrels, vendettas and Ortofieris. That’s why we find him living thereafter in a petty Savoyard domain that his wife had brought him as a dowry, and which was the cradle of her family, He had married Hélène de Silaz in 1791. She was dead when he installed himself in that property, at the age of 47, having provided him with a son, Horace, my ancestor, and a daughter, Lucile, who has one very old descendant still alive.
“Why, 13 years later, did he come to live in Paris at 53 Boulevard du Temple? Why, without hope of return, did he forsake his retreat at Silaz? His papers—his Memoirs, which I have consulted—lack precision on this point. It may be assumed, quite simply, that he had had enough of the country and solitude, as happens to many men when they turn 60. Perhaps, too—although this is an even more gratuitous hypothesis—he had always missed France and made haste to return there, having been secretly alerted to the imminent fall of the Bourbons.
“It was there, in the Boulevard du Temple, that he was assassinated, by a pistol bullet fired by Ortofieri, who invaded his home while he was at his window watching King Louis-Philippe review the National Guard on July 28, 1835. He was 66 years old.”
“Fieschi’s assassination attempt against the King,” said Charles. “The infernal machine that had so many victims in the crowd. Fieschi fired on the Louis-Philippe and his followers by means of a machine of his own invention. He had taken aim from the window of his small apartment at 50 Boulevard du Temple, almost directly opposite César’s house. It was even thought that the explosion of the machine, analogous to a firing squad, had masked the pistol-shot that killed César, no one having remembered hearing any detonation inside the house bearing the number 53.”
“That’s an extraordinary coincidence!”
“I know of others,” Charles observed, with sad irony. “Life, Certeuil—even the most banal life—is littered with extraordinary coincidences…except that we don’t always perceive them…”
“According to what you’ve told me about the pistol shot, then, César Christiani was alone in his apartment when he was murdered?”
“Alone, with his animals.”
“What animals? All this is very exciting.”
“He had brought various curious animals back from his voyages, especially birds and monkeys. His portraits always represent him with a parrot on his shoulder, and sometimes with a marmoset on the other, or a chimpanzee hanging from his waistcoat.”
“And…it’s certain that it really was a man who killed him?” Luc Certeuil risked, laughing.
“Perfectly certain.”
“To the extent that things can be certain, in this world!”
Charles thought for a second, then retorted: “The depositions made against Ortofieri really left no doubt about his guilt. The policeman on duty in that part of the Boulevard saw him prowling around the vicinity and going into César’s house a few minutes before the presumed time of the murder.”
“Which was?”
“The moment when Fieschi’s machine exploded on the other sides of the road, since there was a presumption of simultaneity—synchrony, as one says nowadays. Besides, César’s corpse, when it was discovered a few hours later, confirmed that presumption in the opinion of experts. The death had to have occurred at midday.”
The Master of Light Page 4
