Then, opening the treasure chest with the key we had quietly taken out of Villeneuil’s pocket, and contemplating that enormous treasure of gold and precious stones, “Oh, my dear friend,” said I, “would we not be mad to hesitate a moment between the life of this fool and the possession of such riches?”
We were gloating over the spectacle when all of a sudden there came a knocking at the door. I shot a glance at Emma, shot another out of the window: great heavens! there in the street stood Villeneuil’s carriage. And here was his valet. The lout had discovered where we were, at The English Arms they had told him that since we were not among their guests, there must have been some error, and that we would surely be found elsewhere, probably at the Hotel de Danemark. As for hiding his master from him, ’twas too late for that: as he walked in he saw Villeneuil lying asleep in his bed.
“My good man,” I said, going straight up to the valet, and putting a finger to my lips, “take care lest you wake him; he has been having a bout of fever, it is of utmost importance that he rest; go back to the inn where you were, and be certain that if he sent you there in the first place it was for the very best of reasons: owing to the secret business he has in this city he cannot afford to have the same public lodgings as his servants. He very positively charged us to tell you, in the event you were to appear, to return to the address specified in the note which my wife wrote out at his dictation when we stopped at Vimmerby; you are to remain at The English Arms and await his further orders, without anticipating them, without coming here to find out what they are.”
“Humph,” said the valet, “that suits me. I’ll send the carriage back.”
“Do so. Here is some money if you run short of it; don’t worry about your master, he is in good hands, and inside three days you will surely be hearing news.”
Valet and carriage disappear; my companion and I discuss how now to proceed.
“Let us start,” I say, “by following our initial scheme: we first get rid of this Villeneuil; once he is out of the way we shall have no trouble killing the valet, and this will get us the carriage, the horses, the rest of the baggage, which were not even in the bargain at the outset.”
The unfortunate young man is cut up bit by bit, each is reduced to ashes in a charcoal brazier until of Villeneuil not a trace remains; and we, heated by the grisly deed we have just performed, pass the rest of the night in the filthiest debauch. In the morning I betook myself, alone, to The English Arms.
“My friend,” said I to the valet, “I have instructions from your master to conduct you to where he is awaiting you in a house in the country, it lies two leagues from here; your effects may remain at the inn and as we leave, make it clear that they are not to be touched, unless I come to fetch them, and in that case that they be turned over to me; let us make haste.”
We set out from the city and when I have my man in the bleak and desolate parts that stand on the edge of Stockholm, “Off you go,” I say to the wretch as I fire a ball into his brain, “go look for your master in hell; ’tis there we send everyone who has money but lacks the intelligence to give it up before we take it from him.”
With a kick I roll the dead body over the brink of a precipice and, my operation terminated, turn about to drive back to town when, on the farther side of the road, I spy a child of thirteen or fourteen tending a flock of sheep.
“Eh, she must have seen me,” say I to myself, “she could not help but see me … did she see everything? … Ah, by God, let’s not waste time weighing the two sides of the question.”
I seize the little shepherd, wrap a scarf around her head; I rape her; her two pucelages are blasted at a single stroke, I put a bullet into her head at the same instant I discharge in her ass.
There, say I to myself, very pleased with what I have done, that is the sure way of avoiding all trouble from a witness, and I drive swiftly back to The English Arms where I have Villeneuil’s horses hitched, his trunks loaded into his carriage, and everything brought round to our hotel.
It was a silent Emma who greeted me there; I was disturbed by her air of worry.
I demanded what the matter could be. “Is your nerve failing you?”
“I am uneasy about the consequences this affair may have,” she replied. “Villeneuil does not come to Stockholm without giving his correspondents foreknowledge of his arrival; they will wonder what has befallen him; he will be sought for at all the inns; questions will be asked; the whole thing is bound to come out. And when it does, let us, my friend, be already gone from this dreadful country where everything frightens me nearly to death.”
“Emma, I thought you were of sterner stuff; if you are obliged to fly every time you commit a felony, you will never be able to settle down anywhere. Come, my dear, put away idle fears; Nature, who desires crimes, watches over those who commit them, and one is very rarely chastened for having abided by her laws. I have credentials recommending me to everyone of outstanding note in Sweden; I am going to present them, be sure that among all these new acquaintances there shall not be one who is unable to furnish us material and opportunity for fresh evil-doing; let us indeed be careful, but above all not to escape from the happy fate that awaits us.”
At the time I was in Sweden, the capital, and the whole kingdom as well, was being shaken by the rivalry of two powerful parties: one, discontented with the Court, was straining for the day when it would seize power; the other, that of Gustavus III, seemed determined to stop at nothing in order to keep despotism enthroned; the Court and everything connected therewith made up this second faction. The first was composed of the Senate and of certain portions of the military. A new monarch had just begun his reign, and the malcontents felt this the propitious moment to swing into action: a dawning authority is more easily confronted than an entrenched one; the senators were aware of it and were planning to go to any lengths to secure the rights they had been striving for years to usurp; they exercised their constitutional prerogatives to the limit and even beyond, daring to open letters to the King in their public assemblies, and to answer or interpret them as they chose; little by little, the power of these magistrates had grown to the point where Gustavus could scarcely appoint men to office in his own realm.
Such was the state of affairs in the country when I paid a call upon Senator Steno, the guiding spirit of the senatorial party. The young magistrate and his wife received me with demonstrations of the most agreeable politeness and, I dare add, of the liveliest interest. I was scolded for not having brought my wife the very first day; and ’twas only by accepting an invitation to dinner for the following day, at which both of us would be expected, that I succeeded in quieting young Steno’s reproaches.
Emma, who passed for my spouse and who combined all the features in which good society delights, was received with extreme cordiality; and the warmest friendship sprang up at once between that charming creature and the Senator’s engaging wife.3
If the young Swede, twenty-seven years of age, could be rightly taken for one of the most winning, wealthiest, wittiest persons of his generation, one might without exaggeration declare that Ernestine, his lady, was very surely the prettiest creature to be found in all Scandinavia. Nineteen years, the loveliest blonde hair, the most majestic figure … the prettiest brown eyes, the sweetest and most delicately formed features, such were the endearing qualities wherewith Nature had embellished this angelic woman who, in addition to all these physical favors, possessed a fully adorned mind, the firmest character, and the soundest philosophy.
At our fourth meeting Steno asked me to whom were addressed the other letters of recommendation I had been given. I brought them all forth, and when upon the superscriptions he read the names of several courtiers, a frown darkened his face.
“Amiable Frenchman and distinguished guest,” said he, handing me back my sheaf of papers, “we must forego the pleasure of seeing anyone who comes bearing such credentials. Powerful interests divide my house from these where you are to go. The sworn enemies of th
e Court’s despotism, my colleagues, my friends, my relatives are not on speaking terms with those who serve or benefit from this despotism.”
“Ah, Monsieur,” said I, “your attitude conforms too closely to mine for me not, this very minute, to make the slight sacrifice of everything that would appear likely to bind me to the party of your opponents; I abhor kings and their tyranny. Is it even presumable that into such hands as this royal personage’s Nature can have entrusted the task of governing men? The ease with which a single individual may be seduced, deceived, does this not suffice to spoil any intelligent man’s taste for monarchy? Make haste, brave senators, restore to the Swedish people the liberty Gustavus seeks to wrest away from them, as his ancestors did before; may the efforts your young prince is now undertaking to increase his authority come to the same failure as those lately attempted by Adolphus. But, good my Lord,” I continued heatedly, “lest in future any doubt remain in your mind as to the sincerity of the promise I make you to embrace your party and uphold it for the rest of my sojourn upon Swedish soil, here are the letters I was to carry to Gustavus’ supporters and clients, here they are, I say, let us, you and I, throw them into the grate, yes, all of them, and allow me to leave up to you the choice of friends with whom I am to consort while in your city.”
Steno clasps my hand, and his young wife, witness to this conversation, is unable to prevent herself from showing how greatly flattered she is to have attracted to her party so essential a man as I.
“Borchamps,” Steno said, “after this declaration, which so plainly comes from the heart, I can have no doubt of your way of thinking. Are you indeed capable of adopting our interests as your own, of binding yourself to us by all the ties which identify friends and sinew a conspiracy?”
“Senator,” I replied with vehemence, “before you now and upon my life I do hereby swear to stand fast in the fight until the last of the tyrants shall be wiped off the face of the earth, if the weapon for their destruction is put into my hand by you.”
And I thereupon recounted my experience with the Princess of Holland, fit proof to demonstrate my abhorrence of tyranny and of those who wield it.
“My friend,” the Senator said to me, “is your wife’s attitude in this the same as yours?”
“To that question the answer is unambiguous: they were for reasons similar to mine that she left a Sophia who lavished favors upon her.”
“Very well then,” said Steno, “my comrades sup tomorrow night at my house, join us, both of you, and you will discover certain startling things.”
I related this interview to Emma.
“Before entangling us in this, my friend, consider well where it may lead; and I would ask you not to forget that when you refused to serve Sophia’s cause, you were acting a great deal less, as it appears to me, from partisan spirit than through aversion for political affairs.”
“No,” I rejoined, “you err; I have since given the matter very close thought, and realized that it was uniquely my lifelong horror of the despotism of a single person which drove me to turn my back upon the Stadtholder’s wife; had her aims been different, I might perhaps have agreed to everything….”
“But see here, Borchamps,” Emma protested, “your principles seem to me without rhyme or reason: you are a tyrant yourself, and you detest tyranny; despotism breathes in your tastes, in your heart, permeates your soul, and you assail its tenets; explain me these contradictions or cease to count upon me to follow you.”
“Emma,” said I to my companion, “penetration will here suffice; listen to what I am going to tell you, and remember it well. If the Senate is ready to rise in arms against Sweden’s sovereign, it is not from horror of tyranny but from envy at seeing despotism exercised by another than itself; once it has got the power into its hands you will see a sudden transformation wrought in its attitude, and they who hate despotism today will use it to perfect their happiness tomorrow. In accepting Steno’s proposal, I play the same role as he and, like him, I am eager not to shatter the scepter, but to wield it to my advantage. And I tell you this which you may also remember: I shall part company with this society the instant I notice it animated by any other principles or tending in any other direction; and so, Emma, of contradictions you need accuse me no more, nor those whom you see combating tyranny by despotism only: the throne is to everybody’s taste, and ’tis not the throne they detest, but him who is seated on it. I sense in myself certain dispositions to take a hand in worldly affairs; to succeed therein one needs neither prejudices nor virtues; a brazen front, a corrupted soul, an unflinching character, all these I have; fortune beckons to me, I heed the call. Put on fine array tomorrow, Emma, be proud, clever, and sluttish, those, I gage, are the qualities that will be necessary in Steno’s house, they are the ones which will please my confederates, show them, you have them; and there is this last: tremble at nothing.”
We are there at the appointed hour and having been admitted at the gate overhear a lackey say to the porter: “These are the last who’ll be coming; let nobody else in.”
Beside this vast palace was a garden, and the society was gathered in a pavilion located at its farther end; tall trees shrouded this spot which one might have taken for a temple raised to the god of silence. A servant points the way without escorting us thither; we follow the path, enter the pavilion.
The assembly, apart from ourselves, numbered eight persons. Steno and his wife, with whom I have already acquainted you, rose to greet us and present us to the others I shall now describe. They were three senators and their three wives. The eldest of the men must have been fifty, his name was Ericsson: he had an air of stateliness and majesty, but there was something hard in his glance and cutting in his speech. His wife was named Fredegunda, she was thirty-five, had more beauty than graciousness, features bordering on the masculine, but proud; what, in a word, they call a handsome woman. The second senator was forty years of age and called Volf: here were prodigious vivacity, very considerable wit, but a wickedness apparent in every line and detail. Amelia, his wife, was scarce twenty-three; ’twas there the most piquant face, the most agreeable figure, the sweetest mouth, the most roguish eye, the fairest skin in all the world; one cannot be all this and at the same time have a mind more lively and an imagination more ardent; nor be more libertine, nor more delicious. I was struck by Amelia, I do not pretend otherwise. The third senator was named Brahe, he was surely less than thirty years old, slender, spare, crafty of eye, alert, quick, unsettled of gesture, and looked to be all his confreres’ better in rigor, cynicism, and ferocity. Ulrika, his wife, was one of the most beautiful women in Stockholm, but simultaneously the most mischievous and the most vicious, the most attached to the Senatorial Party, and the most capable of leading it to victory; she was two years younger than her husband.
“Friends,” said Steno once the doors were bolted and the shutters drawn, “had I not thought this French gentleman and his lady worthy of us they would not be present in our midst; I therefore urgently request you to admit them into our Society.”
“Sir,” said Brahe, addressing himself to me in a tone at once forceful and dignified, “what Steno tells us about you is encouraging and inspires confidence; this confidence however will be better established by the answers you give in public to the various questions that are now going to be put to you.”
He then asked: “What are your motives for hating the despotism of kings?”
To this I replied: “Envy, jealousy, ambition, pride, rage at being dominated, my own desire to tyrannize others.”4
He: “Does the welfare and happiness of nations enter as a consideration into your views?”
I: “I am concerned solely for mine own.”
He: “And what role do the passions play in your manner of regarding all things political?”
I: “The leading and most vital one; according to my belief, every one of those individuals known as statesmen pursues now, and has always pursued, no other veritable objective, is now and has always b
een moved by no other veritable intention than to satisfy his voluptuous inclinations to the full; his plans, the alliances he forms, his schemes, his taxes, everything, his laws included, everything is bent toward his personal felicity, for the public’s well-being there can be no room in his meditations, and what the dizzard people see him do is never done save to render him mightier or richer.”
He: “So that if you were mighty or rich you would turn these two advantages nowhere but to those of your pleasures or your follies?”
I: “They are the only gods I recognize, the only delights of my soul.”
He: “And religion, how do you visualize it in regard to all this?”
I: “As the mainstay of tyranny, that mechanism which the despot must always set in motion when he wishes to strengthen his throne. The flame of superstition was ever the aurora of despotism, and it is always by means of consecrated irons that the tyrant breaks the people to his will.”
He: “And so you exhort us to the use of religion?”
I: “Certainly, if you are of a mind to reign, let a God speak in your behalf and men will obey you. When, God’s wrath in your hire or your hands, you have brought them to their knees, their money and their lives are as good as yours. Persuade them that all the woes they have suffered under the regime you wish them to repudiate have come from nought but their irreligion. Cause them to tumble at the feet of the hobgoblin you brandish before them; prostrate, they will serve as steppingstones to your ambition, your pride, your lust.”
He: “You yourself do not believe in God?”
I: “Is there a single rational being on earth who can credit such lies? Nature, forever in movement, has she any need of a mover? Would that the living body of the first charlatan to mouth talk of this execrable chimera could be abandoned to the shades of all those poor wretches who have perished on its account.”
Juliette Page 101
