Collected Works of Gaston Leroux

by Gaston Leroux

  “I never wanted to acquit anyone!”

  In the face of this outburst M. Florent more and more regretted M. Hilaire’s idea to imprison him with this tiger thirsting for blood.

  M. Barkimel undressed without closing the window. In his excitement he omitted to notice the somewhat cool breeze that swept in from the street, while the draught produced a disastrous effect on M. Florent, sweating for fear. He felt a tingling sensation in his eyes and nose.

  After a few moments’ reflection M. Barkimel closed the window and was preparing to go to bed when a loud sneeze behind him made him start and turn around in a panic.

  The thin partition seemed still to be vibrating from this unexpected disturbance in the atmosphere, and M. Barkimel, wild-eyed, gazed at the things in the room as if he expected them to fall to pieces and bury him beneath their wreckage. At last, mastering as far as he could the terror which made the tassel of his nightcap shake, he gasped:

  “Whoever is hiding there, show yourself if you are a friend of the people.”

  But no one moved, and a fresh sneeze emanating from the wardrobe, M. Barkimel in despair made a grab at his revolver, which he had placed in the drawer of his bedside table, and handled it so clumsily that a shot rang out with a deafening noise.

  At once something rolled out of the wardrobe on to the floor. It was the quivering body of M. Florent, which M. Barkimel in horror recognized. At first he thought that he had killed him, and he drew back to the middle of the room and then to the door, when he observed that the body was assuming by degrees the posture of a man at prayer — knees on Boor, hands clasped.

  M. Florent was not dead; and he was imploring M. Barkimel’s help.

  M. Barkimel opened the door leading to the passage and, leaning over the staircase, listened for some time in the darkness of the night.

  The more noise he made in his room the more the house seemed wrapped in slumber. It scarcely dared to breathe.... And a revolver shot in the night in such times was not likely to entice the curious out of doors. Far from it.

  M. Barkimel returned to his room, drew his short figure erect, and struck himself on the chest.

  “Monsieur, I don’t know you,” he said. “By what miracle you got here I prefer not to ask. And you may congratulate yourself on my lack of curiosity at such a time, for if I were inquisitive I might perhaps learn that your name is Florent and that you are threatened by the just laws of the country. Out you go — that’s all I can say to you now.”

  With a proud and dignified gesture of command M. Barkimel pointed to the door.

  “Very well,” said M. Florent, beaten, crushed, making no effort to persist, fully convinced that he would never succeed in softening this stony revolutionist. “It was M. Hilaire, more generous than you, who gave me the key.... Very well... I will go, as you refuse to remember we were once friends.”

  “Where are you going?” asked M. Barkimel bluntly in a low voice, stopping M. Florent and closing the door.

  “Who knows.... To the guillotine.”

  “Yes — guillotine them all,” bellowed M. Barkimel. Nevertheless he made M. Florent sit down on his reclining arm-chair, and with tears in his eyes asked under his breath:

  “Are you hungry, Florent — thirsty? Heavens above, how miserable you look. I feel sorry for you. You see where your opinions have led you. And what do you wish me to do for you now?”

  “Keep me here,” groaned M. Florent, embracing his old friend. Then they began to sob in each other’s arms.

  “Of course, I’ll keep you here,” said Barkimel, “but it will be no joke, you know. If ever you are discovered in this flat it will be all up with both of us.”

  “What terrible times we live in!”

  “We live in glorious times,” cried M. Barkimel in another outburst, “and up to now we have only seen the bright side of things. It is now that the Reign of Terror is really beginning — the Terror without which virtue is ineffectual.”

  “Hush!” whispered M. Florent. “People will know that you are talking to someone.”

  “Not a bit of it. They are used to my soliloquies. I strike terror into them with my soliloquies. Every now and then I get up in the night to frighten them. Ah, my dear fellow, what a job! But one must live, you know. They have made me a judge of the Revolutionary Tribunal. If I don’t terrify the people hereabouts the people hereabouts will terrify me. And then I am afraid of spies. They plant them everywhere. They may be watching me in the dark; therefore I am never so bloodthirsty as when I am alone. In this way they know all about my real character.”

  “I will do whatever you like, my good Barkimel.... Ah, you haven’t changed a bit. It is the times that have changed.”

  “Be quiet.... Listen.... I seem to hear something.” Then in a resounding voice he went on: “As for me I shall reply to the weaklings of the Assembly:— ‘Gentlemen, a little bloodshed can only be remedied by a bigger one!’”

  “Oh, hush! It’s too awful. When you talk like that you make me feel ill.”

  “Well, and what about me? I frighten myself.”

  “Why, it’s horrible.”

  “Hold your tongue.... I hear a noise in the street.... Rifles.... Armed men of the division.... My God, I bet they are coming to look for you.”

  M. Barkimel blew out the candle and both listened carefully. The sound of voices, shouts, military commands mingled with the sonorous rattle of arms on the pavement and fists beating on the doors reached their ears....

  “Open in the name of the law!”

  “No, not that door but this one,” insisted a drunken voice. “I tell you he is here.”

  “Mercy on me, it’s Talon’s voice,” groaned M. Florent.

  “The floor above.... In the judge’s flat. With his friend Barkimel. Take it from me, he is with his friend Barkimel.”

  Barkimel pushed Florent into the wardrobe, which had a sort of double bottom, and darted over to his bed and rumpled the bedclothes. Then he opened his door and shouted:

  “What happened? What’s the matter?”

  “Come on, come on.... The little man was not asleep just now. A light was in his room. It’s a certainty he is hiding him.”

  “Gentlemen, I am a judge of the Revolutionary Tribunal. I assume from your shouts that you are hunting for a man named Florent, whom I used to know.”

  “He was a friend of yours,” yelped Talon. “Very likely, but he is not a friend now.”

  “He was seen to enter your flat.”

  “One thing I can assure you — he is not here.”

  “We are going to have a look.”

  The municipal officers proceeded to make a search in due form. They could discover nothing; but a shrewish woman accompanying the search party exclaimed:

  “I believe I’ve got him. This wardrobe has a double bottom.”

  But by a miracle she failed to discover Florent in the wardrobe, for he was no longer there. Which way had he gone? How had he slipped out? M. Barkimel has since explained:

  “Suddenly I grew even more pale and lay down on my bed with a sigh of weariness. I declared that I was exhausted, and this search would be the death of me. Now I had just felt someone stir near me, and it could only be Florent. Florent had crept between my two mattresses.

  “How was it possible for him to breathe? “Assuredly if the visit were long drawn out I should find him suffocated. And I was at once worried by the horrible thought that I should not know how to dispose of the body!

  “At last the search party declared that nothing remained to be inspected but my bed. I thought I should have died on the spot. Fortunately, they were satisfied to examine the head and foot and to look under the bed.

  “Afterwards they turned over the cushions of the sofas in my bedroom, dining room, and sitting-room. I thought they would never go. At last they had the hardihood to advise me to have a little sleep and wished me good night. They still remained for some time in the building and I lay on my bed without stirring a limb.

&nbs
p; “The terrible part of it was that Florent did not stir a limb either. Was he still alive? Was I lying on my friend’s dead body? Was there time even yet to save him? I was in a state of horrible perplexity. At last I heard the street door close and the hateful patrol march off into the darkness.

  “I jumped out of bed and locked the door. Then I darted back to the bed and dragged Florent from it, but not without some difficulty, for while he lay there he had endeavored to hold his breath as far as possible and was almost stifling, unable to speak, and in a bath of perspiration.

  “I laid him in front of the window, which I opened, and made him drink a glass of brandy. In the end he came to himself and expressed his gratitude. He told me how terrified he had been and how surprised at my courage in the presence of these men, especially when they looked into the bed. ‘Of course,’ I returned, ‘very few men would have done what I did for you.’ He admitted it, and I gave him to understand that a second experience of the same sort would be beyond my powers of endurance and that he could repay me in no better way than by leaving the flat as soon as possible....

  “His face, as he listened to me, betrayed considerable dejection. All the same, he understood me, forbore to argue, shook my hand, and went off.

  “I quietly closed the door after him and I felt a pang at my heart as I heard him cautiously descend the stairs. It couldn’t be helped! I was certain, whatever happened, even if he were caught in the house, to be able to maintain henceforward that he had not been in hiding in my flat; and, in truth, I had done enough for a man who had spent his life in disagreeing with my opinions and in arguing with me on every conceivable question...

  CHAPTER XXIV

  OF THE GREATEST DANGER INCURRED BY ALL REVOLUTIONS

  IT WAS NO easy task for poor M. Hilaire, acting on Chéri-Bibi’s orders, to persuade the de Touchais household to place themselves under his protection. When Cecily learned of the disaster to her son, and Lydia knew that he was a prisoner, they both declared that they desired but one thing — to share the same cell and the same fate.

  Fortunately, Marie Thérèse displayed sufficient common sense for the three of them. Supported by Jacqueline, she overcame Cecily and Lydia’s last hesitations, and the four fugitives, after leaving the mansion, remained until the end of the day concealed in a covered stall kept by a man begrimed with dirt who sold coal and wood.

  At nightfall M. Hilaire took his party without let or hindrance to a narrow lane, not far away, running at the back of his shop, where he possessed a store-room in a basement leading to his cellars....

  The store-room was reached from the lane direct by a low door, used in the ordinary way for the delivery of casks. M. Hilaire quickly picked the lock and brought his four hapless guests down into the store-room. Assisted by the coal dealer, in whom he appeared to repose complete confidence, he settled them with some provisions among his casks and made them as comfortable as circumstances permitted. The coal dealer lent them some mattresses and sheets which they were surprised to find were quite clean, despite the complexion of their owner. At last M. Hilaire, after dismissing the coal dealer and permanently blocking the door leading from the store-room to his cellars, and enjoining the ladies to barricade themselves in and on no account to open the street door to anyone, closed this door and hastened to his club to learn the latest news.

  The news was unfavorable for the Major, but favorable for M. Hilaire, who was presented with his official sash as Commissioner for the division.

  Now and again M. Barkimel, who, as we know, had taken some considerable part in M. Hilaire’s appointment, said:

  “Aren’t you going home? Mme Hilaire must be dying of anxiety. Just think, you have not been home for the last two nights.”

  But M. Hilaire was in no hurry to go home. Indeed, it scarcely troubled him that Mme Hilaire was dying of anxiety. On the contrary, it was the thought that she was not dead of anxiety that disturbed him most. “I shall get it hot when I do go home,” he thought.

  Suddenly he struck his forehead. They all thought that he had found the solution of one of those numerous social problems the discussion of which caused such tumultuous excitement at the meetings of the Arsenal Club, and they gathered round him. And indeed it concerned something of the sort.

  “Can you tell me, my friends,” began M. Hilaire in a tone of the utmost secrecy, “what is the greatest danger to which the Revolution is at the present moment exposed?”

  M. Hilaire’s friends looked at each other with puckered brows as if this poor Revolution was already at its last gasp, and as a measure of precaution they had been called together at that late hour of the night to save it. But as in general they were lacking in ideas they shook their heads in gloomy hopelessness. Thereupon M. Hilaire resolved to strike his great blow:

  “The greatest danger to which the Revolution is exposed comes from women.”

  He paused to weigh the effect of his words. His audience exchanged glances open-mouthed. The bachelors among them said: “Perhaps you’re right”; the married men kept silent so as not to compromise themselves. They were waiting for the sequel.

  “It is certain,” observed M. Barkimel, who had some difficulty in holding his tongue, “that those knitting women of the great French Revolution, for instance...”

  “Citizen Barkimel,” interrupted M. Hilaire, “don’t speak ill of those knitting women. They were ugly, but their very ugliness, by terrifying the enemies of the nation, added to their punishment, and the Revolution had nothing to complain of on that score. I am referring to ordinary women, the immense army of wives of us married men. I am speaking of the women in our homes, the mothers of our children, those kind-hearted and loving housewives who make us return home after the labors of the day so sweet to us. These are the women who are a danger, a perpetual danger to the Revolution.”

  He broke off once more, and saw that his listeners were dumbfounded and, as the phrase goes, hanging on his words.

  “In truth,” he went on with renewed vigor, “how often do we see citizens express surprise at some of the most harmless changes in the law? How often also do we see citizens advocating one day prompt and vigorous action and returning next day to propose amendments designed to destroy its efficacy and power? Why these changes of opinion? Why these waverings? Why this lack of courage which, I say again, may ruin the Republic! Citizens — a woman is at the bottom of it!... She is a creature of goodness, but also of weakness, and this weakness — oh, the pity of it! — by a strange phenomenon which it is absolutely necessary for us to guard against, is more potent than our strength. She reduces it to naught with her tears. She shatters it with a smile. She sometimes destroys it, I am bound to say, with a threat.

  “My dear friends, you follow my argument. You now know why the greatest danger to which the Revolution is exposed comes from the wife at our side — yours, citizens, and — I don’t pretend to be different — mine. When Mme Hilaire says to me: T don’t like it. You can’t have the heart to vote for it. You will not do that,’ I am almost defenseless. Well, we must at one stroke liberate ourselves from this fatal domestic influence, greater than that which we have to fight against in our popular meetings. To-morrow I shall ask the Arsenal Club to carry the following resolution to be placed before the Parliamentary Committee: ‘The wife of a revolutionary citizen refusing to obey her husband renders herself liable to the death penalty.”

  M. Hilaire ceased speaking and received a veritable ovation. The room almost shook with the applause of the married men; the bachelors, too, cheered, but with a smile.

  “I intend to set you an example to-night,” said M. Hilaire, seizing a piece of cardboard from an old calendar and asking for a sheet of white paper, paste, pen and ink. Five minutes later he displayed a placard on which he had written in splendid capital letters the dazzling sentence:— “The wife of a revolutionary citizen refusing to obey her husband renders herself liable to the death penalty.”

  He put the placard under his arm and sent to the g
uard-house hard by for two civic guards, who arrived with fixed bayonets. He ordered them to follow him. Then, shaking hands with his friends with an excitement which they shared, for they all knew Virginie, he set out, supported by his guards, for his home, where Mme Hilaire, he believed, was impatiently waiting for him.

  That night, however, she refused to open the door to him. He drummed vigorously on the iron shop front in vain. Mme Hilaire, entrenched within, declared from the open window of her room upstairs that “she refused to come down at that hour and be frozen to death, and M. Hilaire could go back again.” She closed the window with a bang and M. Hilaire went away to spend the night in cabarets.

  But he was raging within himself, and from the manner in which next morning at eight o’clock he approached the open door of the “Up-to-date Grocery Stores,” carried his placard under his arm, and led forward his two civic guards it was easy to see that there was going to be trouble.

  When he entered, after placing a warrior at each side of the door, Mme Hilaire was in the cash desk. As was her custom when she was in a state of suppressed fury, she did not even look up. She did not see, nor would she condescend to see M. Hilaire, who displayed across his waistcoat his wide sash with gold tassels arousing the terrified admiration of his assistants.

  M. Hilaire at once went up to the cash desk with as much courage as he could muster, which, it must be admitted, was none too great. But he managed to fix his placard to the woodwork of the cash desk, despite his trembling hands.

  Mme Hilaire could not as yet see it, but the shop assistants were able to spell out the phrases, and with a shudder immersed themselves again in the handling of their bags of prunes. What was about to happen? In Heaven’s name, what was about to happen?

  M. Hilaire coughed, and in a voice that he strove to render firm threw out this sentence to the echoes of the “Up-to-date Grocery Stores”:

  “Have the California apricots come?”

  But the echoes gave forth no response. Every eye was fixed on Mme Hilaire, continuing to add up her figures.