The Wandering Jew — Complete

by Eugène Sue

  For some seconds, this affecting scene had been overlooked by an invisible witness. The smith and Mother Bunch had not perceived Mdlle. de Cardoville standing on the threshold of the door. As Mother Bunch had said, this day, which dawned with all under such fatal auspices, had become for all a day of ineffable felicity. Adrienne, too, was full of joy, for Djalma had been faithful to her, Djalma loved her with passion. The odious appearances, of which she had been the dupe and victim, evidently formed part of a new plot of Rodin, and it only remained for Mdlle. de Cardoville to discover the end of these machinations.

  Another joy was reserved for her. The happy are quick in detecting happiness in others, and Adrienne guessed, by the hunchback's last words, that there was no longer any secret between the smith and the sempstress. She could not therefore help exclaiming, as she entered: "Oh! this will be the brightest day of my life, for I shall not be happy alone!"

  Agricola and Mother Bunch turned round hastily. "Lady," said the smith, "in spite of the promise I made you, I could not conceal from Magdalen that I knew she loved me!"

  "Now that I no longer blush for this love before Agricola, why should I blush for it before you, lady, that told me to be proud of it, because it is noble and pure?" said Mother Bunch, to whom her happiness gave strength enough to rise, and to lean upon Agricola's arm.

  "It is well, my friend," said Adrienne, as she threw her arms round her to support her; "only one word, to excuse the indiscretion with which you will perhaps reproach me. If I told your secret to M. Agricola—"

  "Do you know why it was, Magdalen?" cried the smith, interrupting Adrienne. "It was only another proof of the lady's delicate generosity. 'I long hesitate to confide to you this secret,' said she to me this morning, 'but I have at length made up my mind to it. We shall probably find your adopted sister; you have been to her the best of brothers: but many times, without knowing it, you have wounded her feelings cruelly—and now that you know her secret, I trust in your kind heart to keep it faithfully, and so spare the poor child a thousand pangs—pangs the more bitter, because they come from you, and are suffered in silence. Hence, when you speak to her of your wife, your domestic happiness, take care not to gall that noble and tender heart.'—Yes, Magdalen, these were the reasons that led the lady to commit what she called an indiscretion."

  "I want words to thank you now and ever," said Mother Bunch.

  "See, my friend," replied Adrienne, "how often the designs of the wicked turn against themselves. They feared your devotion to me, and therefore employed that unhappy Florine to steal your journal—"

  "So as to drive me from your house with shame, lady, When I supposed my most secret thoughts an object of ridicule to all. There can be no doubt such was their plan," said Mother Bunch.

  "None, my child. Well! this horrible wickedness, which nearly caused your death, now turns to the confusion of the criminals. Their plot is discovered—and, luckily, many other of their designs," said Adrienne, as she thought of Rose-Pompon.

  Then she resumed, with heartfelt joy: "At last, we are again united, happier than ever, and in our very happiness we shall find new resources to combat our enemies. I say our enemies—for all that love me are odious to these wretches. But courage, the hour is come, and the good people will have their turn."

  "Thank heaven, lady," said the smith; "or my part, I shall not be wanting in zeal. What delight to strip them of their mask!"

  "Let me remind you, M. Baudoin, that you have an appointment for to morrow with M. Hardy."

  "I have not forgotten it, lady, any more than the generous offers I am to convey to him."

  "That is nothing. He belongs to my family. Tell him (what indeed I shall write to him this evening), that the funds necessary to reopen his factory are at his disposal; I do not say so for his sake only, but for that of a hundred families reduced to want. Beg him to quit immediately the fatal abode to which they have taken him: for a thousand reasons he should be on his guard against all that surround him."

  "Be satisfied, lady. The letter he wrote to me in reply to the one I got secretly delivered to him, was short, affectionate, sad—but he grants me the interview I had asked for, and I am sure I shall be able to persuade him to leave that melancholy dwelling, and perhaps to depart with me, he has always had so much confidence in my attachment."

  "Well, M. Baudoin, courage!" said Adrienne, as she threw her cloak over the workgirl's shoulders, and wrapped her round with care. "Let us be gone, for it is late. As soon as we get home, I will give you a letter for M. Hardy, and to-morrow you will come and tell me the result of your visit. No, not to-morrow," she added, blushing slightly. "Write to me to-morrow, and the day after, about twelve, come to me."

  Some minutes later, the young sempstress, supported by Agricola and Adrienne, had descended the stairs of that gloomy house, and, being placed in the carriage by the side of Mdlle. de Cardoville, she earnestly entreated to be allowed to see Cephyse; it was in vain that Agricola assured her it was impossible, and that she should see her the next day. Thanks to the information derived from Rose-Pompon, Mdlle. de Cardoville was reasonably suspicious of all those who surrounded Djalma, and she therefore took measures, that, very evening, to have a letter delivered to the prince by what she considered a sure hand.

  CHAPTER XXXVIII. THE TWO CARRIAGES.

  It is the evening of the day on which Mdlle. de Cardoville prevented the sewing-girl's suicide. It strikes eleven; the night is dark; the wind blows with violence, and drives along great black clouds, which completely hide the pale lustre of the moon. A hackney-coach, drawn by two broken-winded horses, ascends slowly and with difficulty the slope of the Rue Blanche, which is pretty steep near the barrier, in the part where is situated the house occupied by Djalma.

  The coach stops. The coachman, cursing the length of an interminable drive "within the circuit," leading at last to this difficult ascent, turns round on his box, leans over towards the front window of the vehicle, and says in a gruff tone to the person he is driving: "Come! are we almost there? From the Rue de Vaugirard to the Barriere Blanche, is a pretty good stretch, I think, without reckoning that the night is so dark, that one can hardly see two steps before one—and the street-lamps not lighted because of the moon, which doesn't shine, after all!"

  "Look out for a little door with a portico-drive on about twenty yards beyond—and then stop close to the wall," answered a squeaking voice, impatiently, and with an Italian accent.

  "Here is a beggarly Dutchman, that will make me as savage as a bear?" muttered the angry Jehu to himself. Then he added: "Thousand thunders! I tell you that I can't see. How the devil can I find out your little door?"

  "Have you no sense? Follow the wall to the right, brush against it, and you will easily find the little door. It is next to No. 50. If you do not find it, you must be drunk," answered the Italian, with increased bitterness.

  The coachman only replied by swearing like a trooper, and whipping up his jaded horses. Then, keeping close to the wall, he strained his eyes in trying to read the numbers of the houses, by the aid of his carriage lamps.

  After some moments, the coach again stopped. "I have passed No. 50, and here is a little door with a portico," said the coachman. "Is that the one?"

  "Yes," said the voice. "Now go forward some twenty yards, and then stop."

  "Well! I never—"

  "Then get down from your box, and give twice three knocks at the little door we have just passed—you understand me?—twice three knocks."

  "Is that all you give me to drink?" cried the exasperated coachman.

  "When you have taken me back to the Faubourg Saint-Germain, where I live, you shall have something handsome, if you do but manage matters well."

  "Ha! now the Faubourg Saint-Germain! Only that little bit of distance!" said the driver, with repressed rage. "And I who have winded my horses, wanted to be on the boulevard by the time the play was out. Well, I'm blowed!" Then, putting a good face on his bad luck, and consoling himself with the th
ought of the promised drink-money, he resumed: "I am to give twice three knocks at the little door?"

  "Yes; three knocks first—then pause—then three other knocks. Do you understand?"

  "What next?"

  "Tell the person who comes, that he is waited for, and bring him here to the coach."

  "The devil burn you!" said the coachman to himself, as he turned round on the box, and whipped up his horses, adding: "this crusty old Dutchman has something to do with Free-masons, or, perhaps, smugglers, seeing we are so near the gates. He deserves my giving him in charge, for bringing me all the way from the Rue de Vaugirard."

  At twenty steps beyond the little door, the coach again stopped, and the coachman descended from the box to execute the orders he had received. Going to the little door, he knocked three times; then paused, as he had been desired, and then knocked three times more. The clouds, which had hitherto been so thick as entirely to conceal the disk of the moon, just then withdrew sufficiently to afford a glimmering light, so that when the door opened at the signal, the coachman saw a middle-sized person issue from it, wrapped in a cloak, and wearing a colored cap.

  This man carefully locked the door, and then advanced two steps into the street. "They are waiting for you," said the coachman; "I am to take you along with me to the coach."

  Preceding the man with the cloak, who only answered him by a nod, he led him to the coach-door, which he was about to open, and to let down the step, when the voice exclaimed from the inside: "It is not necessary. The gentleman may talk to me through the window. I will call you when it is time to start."

  "Which means that I shall be kept here long enough to send you to all the devils!" murmured the driver. "However, I may as well walk about, just to stretch my legs."

  So saying, he began to walk up and down, by the side of the wall in which was the little door. Presently he heard the distant sound of wheels, which soon came nearer and nearer, and a carriage, rapidly ascending the slope, stopped on the other side of the little garden-door.

  "Come, I say! a private carriage!" said the coachman. "Good horses those, to come up the Rue Blanche at a trot."

  The coachman was just making this observation, when, by favor of a momentary gleam of light, he saw a man step from the carriage, advance rapidly to the little door, open it, and go in, closing it after him.

  "It gets thicker and thicker!" said the coachman. "One comes out, and the other goes in."

  So saying, he walked up to the carriage. It was splendidly harnessed, and drawn by two handsome and vigorous horses. The driver sat motionless, in his great box-coat, with the handle of his whip resting on his right knee.

  "Here's weather to drive about in, with such tidy dukes as yours, comrade!" said the humble hackney-coachman to this automaton, who remained mute and impassible, without even appearing to know that he was spoken to.

  "He doesn't understand French—he's an Englishman. One could tell that by his horses," said the coachman, putting this interpretation on the silence of his brother whip. Then, perceiving a tall footman at a little distance, dressed in a long gray livery coat, with blue collar and silver buttons, the coachman addressed himself to him, by way of compensation, but without much varying his phrase: "Here's nice weather to stand about in, comrade!" On the part of the footman, he was met with the same imperturbable silence.

  "They're both Englishmen," resumed the coachman, philosophically; and, though somewhat astonished at the incident of the little door, he recommenced his walk in the direction of his own vehicle.

  While these facts were passing, the man in the cloak, and the man with the Italian accent continued their conversation, the one still in the coach, and the other leaning with his hand on the door. It had already lasted for some time, and was carried on in Italian. They were evidently talking of some absent person, as will appear from the following.

  "So," said the voice from the coach, "that is agreed to?"

  "Yes, my lord," answered the man in the cloak; "but only in case the eagle should become a serpent."

  "And, in the contrary event, you will receive the other half of the ivory crucifix I gave you."

  "I shall know what it means, my lord."

  "Continue to merit and preserve his confidence."

  "I will merit and preserve it, my lord, because I admire and respect this man, who is stronger than the strongest, by craft, and courage, and will. I have knelt before him with humility, as I would kneel before one of the three black idols that stand between Bowanee and her worshippers; for his religion, like mine, teaches to change life into nothingness."

  "Humph!" said the voice, in a tone of some embarrassment; "these comparisons are useless and inaccurate. Only think of obeying him, without explaining your obedience."

  "Let him speak, and I perform his will! I am in his hands like a corpse, as he himself expresses it. He has seen, he sees every day, my devotion to his interests with regard to Prince Djalma. He has only to say: 'Kill him!'and this son of a king—"

  "For heaven's salve, do not have such ideas!" cried the voice, interrupting the man in the cloak. "Thank heaven, you will never be asked for such proofs of your submission."

  "What I am ordered I do. Bowanee sees me."

  "I do not doubt your zeal. I know that you are a loving and intelligent barrier, placed between the prince and many guilty interests; and it is because I have heard of that zeal, of your skill in circumventing this young Indian, and, above all, of the motives of your blind devotion, that I have wished to inform you of everything. You are the fanatical worshipper of him you serve. That is well; man should be the obedient slave of the god he chooses for himself."

  "Yes, my lord; so long as the god remains a god."

  "We understand each other perfectly. As for your recompense, you know what I have promised."

  "My lord, I have my reward already."

  "How so?"

  "I know what I know."

  "Very well. Then as for secrecy—"

  "You have securities, my lord."

  "Yes—and sufficient ones."

  "The interest of the cause I serve, my lord, would alone be enough to secure my zeal and discretion."

  "True; you are a man of firm and ardent convictions."

  "I strive to be so, my lord."

  "And, after all, a very religious man in your way. It is very praiseworthy, in these irreligious times, to have any views at all on such matters—particularly when those views will just enable me to count upon your aid."

  "You may count upon it, my lord, for the same reason that the intrepid hunter prefers a jackal to ten foxes, a tiger to ten jackals, a lion to ten tigers, and the welmiss to ten lions."

  "What is the welmiss?"

  "It is what spirit is to matter, the blade to the scabbard, the perfume to the flower, the head to the body."

  "I understand. There never was a more just comparison. You are a man of sound judgment. Always recollect what you have just told me, and make yourself more and more worthy of the confidence of—your idol."

  "Will he soon be in a state to hear me, my lord?"

  "In two or three days, at most. Yesterday a providential crisis saved his life; and he is endowed with so energetic a will, that his cure will be very rapid."

  "Shall you see him again to-morrow, my lord?"

  "Yes, before my departure, to bid him farewell."

  "Then tell him a strange circumstance, of which I have not been able to inform him, but which happened yesterday."

  "What was it?"

  "I had gone to the garden of the dead. I saw funerals everywhere, and lighted torches, in the midst of the black night, shining upon tombs. Bowanee smiled in her ebon sky. As I thought of that divinity of destruction, I beheld with joy the dead-cart emptied of its coffins. The immense pit yawned like the mouth of hell; corpses were heaped upon corpses, and still it yawned the same. Suddenly, by the light of a torch, I saw an old man beside me. He wept. I had seen him before. He is a Jew—the keeper of the house in the Rue S
aint-Francois—you know what I mean." Here the man in the cloak started.

  "Yes, I know; but what is the matter? why do you stop short?"

  "Because in that house there has been for a hundred and fifty years the portrait of a man whom I once met in the centre of India, on the banks of the Ganges." And the man in the cloak again paused and shuddered.

  "A singular resemblance, no doubt."

  "Yes, my lord, a singular resemblance—nothing more."

  "But the Jew—the old Jew?"

  "I am coming to that, my lord. Still weeping, he said to a gravedigger, 'Well! and the coffin?' 'You were right,' answered the man; 'I found it in the second row of the other grave. It had the figure of a cross on it, formed by seven black nails. But how could you know the place and the mark?' 'Alas! it is no matter,' replied the old Jew, with bitter melancholy. 'You see that I was but too well informed on the subject. But where is the coffin?' 'Behind the great tomb of black marble; I have hidden it there. So make haste; for, in the confusion, nothing will be noticed. You have paid me well, and I wish you to succeed in what you require.'"

  "And what did the old Jew do with the coffin marked with the seven black nails?"

  "Two men accompanied him, my lord, bearing a covered litter, with curtains drawn round it. He lighted a lantern, and, followed by these two men, went towards the place pointed out by the gravedigger. A stoppage, occasioned by the dead-carts, made me lose sight of the old Jew, whom I was following amongst the tombs. Afterwards I was unable to find him."

  "It is indeed a strange affair. What could this old Jew want with the coffin?"

  "It is said, my lord, that they use dead bodies in preparing their magic charms."