The Master of Light

by Maurice Renard

  “You’re fantastic, Certeuil, fantastic! Come on! What’s all this about? I want to be clear! I need to know everything, and I pray you to authorize me to ask a few questions. Let’s take things in order. What happened, this morning? Why are you no longer engaged?”

  “Bah! Do you recall, my dear chap, that long conversation that we had, you and I, at Saint-Trojan last autumn? Didn’t you notice, when you had confided to me—imprudently, as it happens—your admiration for Mademoiselle, how I hesitated before confiding to you, myself, that I was almost her fiancé?”

  “Indeed, I remember it clearly.”

  “I was because I was extremely embarrassed. I was asking myself whether, rather than run the chance of an uncertain marriage, I might not do better to sell you immediately—at a high price, naturally—the means of marrying the woman you loved. Your revelations had just opened new perspectives to me—less advantageous, it’s true, than the marriage for which I had been scheming for months, but also far more certain. I feared that might nuptial hopes might, alas, run into a certain buffer at the last moment—which is what happened this morning. After having reflected avidly and weighed the fors and againsts—cruel alternatives!—I decided to attempt the marriage, and to fall back on the other solution if the marriage fell through. It has fallen through, so I’m following my plan, falling back on the sale of my papers. Obviously, if I’d known, I would have spared you these months of waiting. You’ll excuse me for that; business is business, and, after all, present mores being what they are, it could perfectly well have been the case that the Ortofieri family would accept that which, the morning, inflamed them to noble indignation…”

  “But, after all, what was that?”

  “It’s my name, more than anything else, as you know, that permitted me to conquer the sympathy of Monsieur and Madame Ortofieri—my name and my noble titles, of which I had never made any ostentatious display. Unfortunately, that name isn’t mine and I have no titles at all, which was revealed before the notary no later than today. These days, when one encounters so many people who wear false names and are received everywhere, I hoped that it might pass…but it didn’t. So be it! And that’s why Luc de Certeuil, whose real name is Lucien Cartoux…”

  Charles started. “Cartoux!” he cried. “Your name is Cartoux?”

  “I understand your surprise,” said Luc. “‘Cartoux,’ you will recall—don’t you?—was the brave police officer who made a statement against Fabius Ortofieri in 1835. He was, in fact, my ancestor. I don’t hide that, and I admitted it quite frankly a little while ago, in the presence of the banker Ortofieri, who was unable to make me regret it. My grandfather was only doing his duty, wasn’t he?”

  “Well, well!” sniggered Charles Christiani. “Your name is Cartoux, your ancestor was the Jean Cartoux of the Ortofieri case, and you’ve come to sell me papers that are, in all probability, related to the case. Papers originating I presume, from the policeman in question?”

  “You’ve said it—and I had no intention of making a mystery of something so easy to guess.”

  “Oh, what a sorry lord you are! What! It’s in order to arrive at this abject negotiation that for ten months, you’ve let us suffer—her and me—martyrdom! What! While she was within an inch of death, you could have saved her with a word, and you said nothing!”

  “I make no claim to virtue,” Luc said, slyly steadfast.

  “Let’s set that aside,” said Charles. “It’s not for me to judge you. Let’s talk business, as you say. These documents are, of course, conclusive and indisputable?”

  “I give you my word of honor!”

  “Permit me to laugh.”

  “All right. Well, I assure you, more modestly, that these papers contain undeniable proof that Fabius Ortofieri was not the murderer of César Christiani.”

  “I suppose, therefore, that—doubtless many years after Fabius’s death, which over took him during his preventive detention—your grandfather, the policeman Cartoux, was informed of certain new facts related to the murder?”

  “Not exactly, but it comes to the same thing. You’ll be settled when I’ve put you in possession of the document.”

  “So there’s only one of them?”

  “Only one, indeed.”

  “How much?” Charles asked.

  “A million.”

  “Damn! A million! That’s rather overdoing things, my dear chap! A million for the confession of Jean Cartoux, seaman aboard the Finette, commanded by César Christiani! Jean Cartoux, inspector of the Sûreté, on duty in the Boulevard du Temple on July 28, 1835! Jean Cartoux, the murderer of his former captain!”

  “How do you know that?” Luc screeched, almost howling.

  “Your calculations were false, my poor Certeuil. You’ve waited too long. This morning, I too learned something. It’s the day of revelations, it seems! Before dying, César Christiani formally recognized and denounced his murderer, and there are several of us who now know that!”

  “Hard luck!” sighed Luc, who had collected himself with remarkable rapidity. “Say, rather, that it’s the day of failures. I’ve lost everything. I’ve I’d had any inkling of what would happen, it’s me who wouldn’t have hesitated, at Saint-Trojan. At the end of the day, though, there’s no point wishing things had gone differently. Au revoir, Christiani. Since you know everything, and the document is of no value to anyone but you…”

  “I beg your pardon,” said Charles, negligently, “but as a historian, I’m curious about everything related to History, and I’ll wager that Jean Cartoux’s confession includes some interesting details. I’ll consent, for that reason alone to buy it from you.”

  “How much?” said Luc, in his turn.

  “At my discretion.”

  “That’s not worth much,” said the former Certeuil, disdainfully. “Go on, I trust you. Take it. I’ll accept whatever you give me.”

  “Thank you, said Charles, accepting a notebook tied up with humble string. He threw them into a drawer, which he locked and whose key he put in his pocket. “Now, let’s settle up.”

  “No less than 500 francs, though?”

  “Wait.” Charles took out his pen and a check-book. “Tell me—you’re ‘on the rocks’ aren’t you?”

  “Well…”

  “No vanity. Answer me frankly.”

  “Yes,” said Luc. “Even worse: sunk.”

  “If I help you to get afloat again, will you swear to me to change your ways?”

  “Of course!” cried Luc. “I ask no more than that!”

  “Swear.”

  “I swear it, with all my heart.”

  “Good. To start with, then, I’ll give you a check made out to Lucien Cartoux, right?”

  “But ‘Cartoux’ is the name of a murderer.”

  “Of a murderer that you aren’t! While ‘Certeuil’ is the name of a crook that…that you have been.”

  “Thanks for the past perfect tense of the verb ‘to be.’ Come on! It’s settled. Certeuil—Luc de Certeuil—is dead. Put: Lucien Cartoux.”

  “We’re beginning to understand one another. Here’s the check.”

  Luc, dazzled, passed his hand over his forehead. “You’re a generous fellow!”

  “Not as much as all that,” replied Charles, taking him by the shoulder. “To begin with, a promise like the one you’ve just made is beyond price. And then…”

  “It’s too much! All the same, it’s too much!”

  “And then,” Charles continued, “it’s right and necessary that your victim should take his small revenge. The document that you’ve just given me has more value to me that I let you believe. I didn’t have incontestable proof. Thanks to you, I no longer lack anything now.”

  “Oh well! I’m delighted by it, on my honor as a Certeuil—hold on!—on my honor as a Cartoux!”

  “Well done!”

  “Nothing remains but for me to take my leave…”

  The valet advanced discreetly. “Madame asked me to tell Monsieur that lunch…�
��

  “I’m saved!” said Luc, confusedly.35

  “Save yourself, then,” Charles said, “and in both senses of the term!”

  “Au revoir, my savior!”

  Charles took the hand that was offered to him, a trifle lightly, without affectation, but said very clearly: “Adieu.”

  XX. All the Light

  The apartment in the Avenue Hoche was a sort of palace. The banker Ortofieri got up from an admirable armchair and extended his hand across the immense Louis XV table in his gigantic study toward the old manuscript that Charles Christiani was holding out to him, saying: “To conclude, Monsieur, here is the wretch’s confession. Gripped by remorse, he wrote it in his old age—without, however, having the courage to surrender himself to the law. The notebook, in isolation, could not be considered absolute proof of the truth. Any written document might be a forgery—but if we combine this evidence with those that I have just described, we are in the presence of a set of proofs rigorously distinct from one another, whose ensemble is one hundred per cent decisive. There is no longer any doubt. Read this.”

  “I think,” said the banker, with charming courtesy, “that we ought not to waste any more time. For nearly a century, a grievous error has separated our two families. Now that the error is dissipated, every minute that prolongs that separation constitutes a denial of justice, for which we are responsible. Can you not, Monsieur, summarize the contents of this memoir in a few words? Everything that you have told me about the reconstitutions obtained by the luminite and the delightful episode of the parrot has prepared me to comprehend what you are about to tell me, even briefly, and in which I hope—need I confess it—to find the clarification of a supreme enigma.”

  Charles, marvelously happy with the welcome he had received, and astonished to have “tamed” the “bear” that had been described to him, suspected that a third influence had prepared the way for his visit. Madame Le Tourneur having been informed, by telephone, of the morning’s events, it was not very difficult to divine what kind of enchantment had turned the “bear” into a businessman of the most affable sort. It was, therefore, heatedly, and coloring his tale with all the force of enthusiasm, that he sketched out the biography of Jean Cartoux in a matter of minutes.

  “This morning,” he said, “my sister, my brother-in-law and myself made deductions on the subject of this policeman, which, I am proud to say, are verified by the manuscript that you have in your hand. Jean Cartoux was, as we presumed, a sailor aboard the Finette—an able seaman, to be exact. César’s severity, undoubtedly justified, galled him, filled him with rancor and caused him to abandon the sea. How the mariner became a policeman, after having manned the barricades during the Three Glorious Days is what I am about to tell you.

  “At the end of 1830, the Prefect of Police, who was named Baude, resolved to purge Paris of a host of vagabonds who had inundated the capital since the July Revolution. In order to carry out the necessary sweeps, he recruited men capable of lending a strong hand to the regular police. Fieschi was one of them, as was Cartoux.”

  “Ah!” said the banker. “There we are!”

  “Illusion!” said Charles. “We’re not there yet. Listen to this. While Fieschi ceased to figure in Monsieur Baude’s lists and was named, on the latter’s recommendation, to work as a supervisor on the project to rectify the course of the Bièvre, Jean Cartoux, by contrast, having given proof of the requisite qualities, passed from temporary to permanent status and took his place among the 32 agents of the Sûreté.36 He was, therefore, an inspector in the Sûreté in the era when Fieschi prepared his assassination attempt.

  “You will recall, Monsieur, that a certain accomplice of Fieschi, named Boireau, had talked imprudently on the eve of the event. The police were informed that an assassination attempt would take place in the course of the review, in the vicinity of the Ambigu. Now, if the prefect, who was then Monsieur Gisquet, had done his job better, and if one of his inspectors had not kept to himself a clue that the man came across by chance, Monsieur Gisquet would have known, firstly, that the Ambigu in question was not the new Ambigu but the old one, and secondly, that the potential author of the assassination attempt was a Corsican.

  “The inspector concerned was Jean Cartoux. Why, in keeping quiet, did he commit such a serious failure of duty? Out of ambition and vengeance. He had known for some time that César Christiani lived at number 53, Boulevard du Temple. He kept watch hatefully on his former captain, the corsair who had so often punished him by clapping him in irons, and of whom he conserved an infallible souvenir, in the form of stripes on his back. He suspected him of all sorts of crimes and conspiracies, and was on the lookout for any opportunity to harm him—if possible, to ruin him.

  “César Christiani was a Corsican. Number 53, Boulevard du Temple was in the vicinity of the old Ambigu. Thus, for Jean Cartoux, the man designated by the denunciation was César Christiani.

  “Everyone feared a legitimist plot—everyone else, that is! Jean Cartoux, personally, was convinced that it was a matter of an imperialist plot, for he was sure that the conspirator was named César Christiani, and he knew full well that César Christiani could be nothing other than a Bonapartist. However unlikely it might seem, the old servant of Napoléon had to be in secret communication with the great emperor’s nephew, the young Louis-Napoléon, about whom very feeble rumors of ambition were circulating. Finally, it had to be César who had been denounced without being named, since there were no other Corsicans in the indicated vicinity but him and Fieschi, whom Jean Cartoux could not suspect, because he too had been a policeman, performing his duty meekly and humanely, and had subsequently been provided with official employment on Prefect Baude’s personal recommendation. It’s true that Fieschi was living under a false name—Gérard—but such was the fury of Jean Cartoux’s rancor, and such was the force of his preconceived idea, the certainty that he was not mistaken, and the blinding effect of the possibility of obtaining his vengeance and making his fortune at a single stroke, that he did not attach any importance to Fieschi’s false name.

  “I said: making his fortune. In fact, Jean Cartoux had resolved to be the hero who would save the king single-handed. He did not breathe a word of what he had learned to anyone, in order to reserve all the glory of the act for himself. He had himself assigned by his superiors to surveillance duty in César’s neighborhood. At the moment when the king was to pass by, he would get into his enemy’s house with a false key, and he would exact justice at the very moment when the regicide was preparing to commit his crime. Nothing would be easier than never to mention the denunciation, and to attribute his prowess to a providential intuition. Then there would be renown, promotion, the august recognition of Their Majesties.

  “Unfortunately, just as the police had got the wrong Ambigu, Jean Cartoux had got the wrong Corsican. Instead of running toward Fieschi, he went into Christiani’s home, killed him, and immediately realized his mistake on seeing what had happened on the boulevard: the terrifying effect of the infernal machine and the cloud of smoke that, almost directly opposite, was escaping from his ex-colleague’s window. The telescope aimed through César’s window was not fake, as he had thought at first; the long copper tube did not enclose anything like a rifle-barrel. Bitter disappointment—and sudden terror. Jean Cartoux had just murdered a man. His crime had no excuse. To cap it all, he had abandoned his post at the moment of an unprecedented assassination attempt. What would become of him if he were found there, next to his victim, a murderer and traitor to his duty? If arrested, he would be lost; perhaps it would also come out that he had known but concealed the truth about the Ambigu, about the Corsican…

  “He fled. The disorder on the boulevard was his accomplice. No one noticed him. Throughout the rest of the day he displayed, without pause, a particular zeal, which certainly contributed to his being given the leave that he requested that evening. That leave, as we suspected, had but one aim: to spare his the possible ordeal of having to go back up the
stairs of number 53—which filled him with dread. The idea of seeing his victim’s corpse again was intolerable.

  “Meanwhile, your ancestor, Monsieur Fabius Ortofieri, was incarcerated. It was then that Jean Cartoux committed his second crime, by swearing that he recognized him.”

  “And it was to the grandson of that scoundrel that I was about to give my daughter!” said Monsieur Ortofieri, sketching a rictus of commiseration. He picked up the manuscript and threw it back across the table with disdainful pity. “I’d like to introduce you to my wife now,” he continued. “And…hmm…hmm…to my daughter as well. I assume that they’re in the house…”

  Charles, very embarrassed, hastened to reply: “My mother will be happy, Monsieur, to pay her respects to Madame Ortofieri. She would like, moreover, in the name of the Christianis, to offer you the homage of our apologies. We owe them to the heir of Fabius Ortofieri.”

  “May the dead rest in peace,” said the banker. “Let’s forget these old matters. The essential thing is that there has never been bloodshed between us, nor anything that justified bloodshed. Apologies! You have no need of them!”

  “In any case,” Charles went on, “my mother is most desirous…”

  “Come, Monsieur Christiani!”

  Why is he laughing? Charles wondered, as he obeyed the very cordial push that directed him toward a door at the rear of the vast and sumptuous study. He was not long delayed in finding out.

  “My dear,” said the banker, opening that door, “let me introduce Monsieur Charles Christiani, the distinguished historian.”

  In the middle of the drawing-room, several familiar individuals grouped around a tea-table turned toward the door were momentarily immobilized by Charles’s appearance, which held them, as it were, suspended in their attitudes and their smiles. That momentary immobility was simultaneously reminiscent of a dream and a wax museum. Charles automatically thought of the Monsieur Curtius who had once set up an establishment of that sort in the reign of Louis-Philippe at 54, Boulevard du Temple, opposite César’s house. He had to ask himself whether these individuals whom he had discovered unexpectedly might be insensible effigies rather than, in actuality, Madame Ortofieri, Madame Christiani, née Bernardi, Cousin Drouet, flanked by the shade of Mélanie, Bertrand, with his nose, the brunette Colomba, Geneviève Le Tourneur, so blonde and plaintive, and, finally, the incomparable Rita. By that reckoning, he might have been astonished not to see among them simulacra of the master of light, his famous great-great-great-grandfather, Fabius, the invisible accused, pretty Henriette Delille, Monsieur Tripe, the man with the cane, and the sinister Jean Cartoux…