Melmoth Reconciled

by Honore de Balzac

　　To Monsieur le Gnral Baron de Pommereul, a token of the

　　friendship between our fathers, which survives in their sons.DE BALZAC.There is a special variety of human nature obtained in the SocialKingdom by a process analogous to that of the gardener's craft in theVegetable Kingdom, to wit, by the forcing-house--a species of hybridwhich can be raised neither from seed nor from slips. This product isknown as the Cashier, an anthropomorphous growth, watered by religiousdoctrine, trained up in fear of the guillotine, pruned by vice, toflourish on a third floor with an estimable wife by his side and anuninteresting family. The number of cashiers in Paris must always be aproblem for the physiologist. Has anyone as yet been able to statecorrectly the terms of the proportion sum wherein the cashier figuresas the unknown _x_? Where will you find the man who shall live withwealth, like a cat with a caged mouse? This man, for furtherqualification, shall be capable of sitting boxed in behind an irongrating for seven or eight hours a day during seven-eighths of theyear, perched upon a cane-seated chair in a space as narrow as alieutenant's cabin on board a man-of-war. Such a man must be able todefy anchylosis of the knee and thigh joints; he must have a soul abovemeanness, in order to live meanly; must lose all relish for money bydint of handling it. Demand this peculiar specimen of any creed,educational system, school, or institution you please, and selectParis, that city of fiery ordeals and branch establishment of hell, asthe soil in which to plant the said cashier. So be it. Creeds, schools,institutions, and moral systems, all human rules and regulations, greatand small, will, one after another, present much the same face that anintimate friend turns upon you when you ask him to lend you a thousandfrancs. With a dolorous dropping of the jaw, they indicate theguillotine, much as your friend aforesaid will furnish you with theaddress of the money lender, pointing you to one of the hundred gatesby which a man comes to the last refuge of the destitute.[1] For the narrative "Melmoth the Wanderer," and a description ofBalzac's debt to its author, see Volume III, page 161.--EDITOR.Yet Nature has her freaks in the making of a man's mind; she indulgesherself and makes a few honest folk now and again, and now and then acashier.Wherefore, that race of corsairs whom we dignify with the title ofbankers, the gentry who take out a license for which they pay athousand crowns, as the privateer takes out his letters of marque, holdthese rare products of the incubations of virtue in such esteem thatthey confine them in cages in their counting-houses, much asgovernments procure and maintain specimens of strange beasts at theirown charges.If the cashier is possessed of an imagination or of a fervidtemperament; if, as will sometimes happen to the most complete cashier,he loves his wife, and that wife grows tired of her lot, has ambitions,or merely some vanity in her composition, the cashier is undone. Searchthe chronicles of the counting-house. You will not find a singleinstance of a cashier attaining _a position_, as it is called. They aresent to the hulks; they go to foreign parts; they vegetate on a secondfloor in the Rue Saint-Louis among the market gardens of the Marais.Some day, when the cashiers of Paris come to a sense of their realvalue, a cashier will be hardly obtainable for money. Still, certain itis that there are people who are fit for nothing but to be cashiers,just as the bent of a certain order of mind inevitably makes forrascality. But, oh marvel of our civilization! Society rewards virtuewith an income of a hundred louis in old age, a dwelling on a secondfloor, bread sufficient, occasional new bandana handkerchiefs, anelderly wife and her offspring.So much for virtue. But for the opposite course, a little boldness, afaculty for keeping on the windward side of the law, as Turenneoutflanked Montecuculli, and Society will sanction the theft ofmillions, shower ribbons upon the thief, cram him with honors, andsmother him with consideration.Government, moreover, works harmoniously with this profoundly illogicalreasoner--Society. Government levies a conscription on the youngintelligence of the kingdom at the age of seventeen or eighteen, aconscription of precocious power. Great ability is prematurelyexhausted by excessive brain work before it is sent up to be submittedto a process of selection. Nurserymen sort and select seeds in much thesame way. To this process the Government brings professional appraisersof talent, men who can assay brains as experts assay gold at the Mint.Five hundred such heads, set afire with hope, are sent up annually bythe most progressive portion of the population; and of these theGovernment takes one third, puts them in sacks called the coles, andshakes them up together for three years. Though every one of theseyoung plants represents vast productive power, they are made, as onemay say, into cashiers. They receive appointments; the rank and file ofengineers is made up of them; they are employed as captains ofartillery; there is no (subaltern) grade to which they may not aspire.Finally, when these men, the pick of the youth of the nation, fattenedon mathematics and stuffed with knowledge, have attained the age offifty years, they have their reward, and receive as the price of theirservices the third-floor lodging, the wife and family, and all thecomforts that sweeten life for mediocrity. If from among this race ofdupes there should escape some five or six men of genius who climb thehighest heights, is it not miraculous?This is an exact statement of the relations between Talent and Probityon the one hand, and Government and Society on the other, in an agethat considers itself to be progressive. Without this prefatoryexplanation a recent occurrence in Paris would seem improbable; butpreceded by this summing up of the situation, it will perhaps receivesome thoughtful attention from minds capable o recognizing the realplague spots of our civilization, a civilization which since 1815 hasbeen moved by the spirit of gain rather than by principles of honor.* * * * *About five o'clock, on a dull autumn afternoon, the cashier of one ofthe largest banks in Paris was still at his desk, working by the lightof a lamp that had been lit for some time. In accordance with the useand wont of commerce, the counting-house was in the darkest corner ofthe low-ceiled and far from spacious mezzanine floor, and at the veryend of a passage lighted only by borrowed lights. The office doorsalong this corridor, each with its label, gave the place the look of abath-house. At four o'clock the stolid porter had proclaimed, accordingto his orders, "The bank is closed." And by this time the departmentswere deserted, the letters dispatched, the clerks had taken theirleave. The wives of the partners in the firm were expecting theirlovers; the two bankers dining with their mistresses. Everything was inorder.The place where the strong boxes had been bedded in sheet iron was justbehind the little sanctum, where the cashier was busy. Doubtless he wasbalancing his books. The open front gave a glimpse of a safe ofhammered iron, so enormously heavy (thanks to the science of the moderninventor) that burglars could not carry it away. The door only openedat the pleasure of those who knew its password. The letter-lock was awarden who kept its own secret and could not be bribed; the mysteriousword was an ingenious realization of the "Open sesame!" in the _ArabianNights_. But even this was as nothing. A man might discover thepassword; but unless he knew the lock's final secret, the _ultimaratio_ of this gold-guarding dragon of mechanical science, itdischarged a blunderbuss at his head.The door of the room, the walls of the room, the shutters of thewindows in the room, the whole place, in fact, was lined with sheetiron a third of an inch in thickness, concealed behind the thin woodenpaneling. The shutters had been closed, the door had been shut. If everman could feel confident that he was absolutely alone, and that therewas no remote possibility of being watched by prying eyes, that man wasthe cashier of the house of Nucingen and Company in the RueSaint-Lazare.Accordingly the deepest silence prevailed in that iron cave. The firehad died out in the stove, but the room was full of that tepid warmthwhich produces the dull heavy-headedness and nauseous queasiness of amorning after an orgy. The stove is a mesmerist that plays no smallpart in the reduction of bank clerks and porters to a state of idiocy.A room with a stove in it is a retort in which the power of strong menis evaporated, where their vitality is exhausted, and their willsenfeebled. Government offices are part of a great scheme for themanufacture of the mediocrity necessary for the maintenance of a FeudalSystem on a pecuniary basis--and money is the foundation of the SocialContract. (See _Les Employs_.) The mephitic vapors in the atmosphereof a crowded room contribute in no small degree to bring about agradual deterioration of intelligences, the brain that gives off thelargest quantity of nitrogen asphyxiates the others, in the long run.The cashier was a man of five and forty or thereabouts. As he sat atthe table, the light from a moderator lamp shining full on his baldhead and glistening fringe of iron-gray hair that surrounded it--thisbaldness and the round outlines of his face made his head look verylike a ball. His complexion was brick-red, a few wrinkles had gatheredabout his eyes, but he had the smooth, plump hands of a stout man. Hisblue cloth coat, a little rubbed and worn, and the creases andshininess of his trousers, traces of hard wear that the clothes-brushfails to remove, would impress a superficial observer with the ideathat here was a thrifty and upright human being, sufficient of thephilosopher or of the aristocrat to wear shabby clothes. But,unluckily, it is easy to find penny-wise people who will prove weak,wasteful, or incompetent in the capital things of life.The cashier wore the ribbon of the Legion of Honor at his buttonhole,for he had been a major of dragoons in the time of the Emperor. M. deNucingen, who had been a contractor before he became a banker, had hadreason in those days to know the honorable disposition of his cashier,who then occupied a high position. Reverses of fortune had befallen themajor, and the banker out of regard for him paid him five hundredfrancs a month. The soldier had become a cashier in the year 1813,after his recovery from a wound received at Studzianka during theRetreat from Moscow, followed by six months of enforced idleness atStrasbourg, whither several officers had been transported by order ofthe Emperor, that they might receive skilled attention. This particularofficer, Castanier by name, retired with the honorary grade of colonel,and a pension of two thousand four hundred francs.In ten years' time the cashier had completely effaced the soldier, andCastanier inspired the banker with such trust in him, that he wasassociated in the transactions that went on in the private officebehind his little counting-house. The baron himself had access to it bymeans of a secret staircase. There, matters of business were decided.It was the bolting room where proposals were sifted; the privy councilchamber where the reports of the money market were analyzed; circularnotes issued thence; and finally, the private ledger and the journalwhich summarized the work of all the departments were kept there.Castanier had gone himself to shut the door which opened on to astaircase that led to the parlor occupied by the two bankers on thefirst floor of their hotel. This done, he had sat down at his deskagain, and for a moment he gazed at a little collection of letters ofcredit drawn on the firm of Watschildine of London. Then he had takenup the pen and imitated the banker's signature upon each. _Nucingen_ hewrote, and eyed the forged signatures critically to see which seemedthe most perfect copy.Suddenly he looked up as if a needle had pricked him. "You are notalone!" a boding voice seemed to cry in his heart; and indeed theforger saw a man standing at the little grated window of thecounting-house, a man whose breathing was so noiseless that he did notseem to breathe at all. Castanier looked, and saw that the door at theend of the passage was wide open; the stranger must have entered bythat way.For the first time in his life the old soldier felt a sensation ofdread that made him stare open-mouthed and wide-eyed at the man beforehim; and for that matter, the appearance of the apparition wassufficiently alarming even if unaccompanied by the mysteriouscircumstances of so sudden an entry. The rounded forehead, the harshcoloring of the long oval face, indicated quite as plainly as the cutof his clothes that the man was an Englishman, reeking of his nativeisles. You had only to look at the collar of his overcoat, at thevoluminous cravat which smothered the crushed frills of a shirt frontso white that it brought out the changeless leaden hue of an impassiveface, and the thin red line of the lips that seemed made to suck theblood of corpses; and you could guess at once at the black gaitersbuttoned up to the knee, and the half-puritanical costume of a wealthyEnglishman dressed for a walking excursion. The intolerable glitter ofthe stranger's eyes produced a vivid and unpleasant impression, whichwas only deepened by the rigid outlines of his features. The dried-up,emaciated creature seemed to carry within him some gnawing thought thatconsumed him and could not be appeased.He must have digested his food so rapidly that he could doubtless eatcontinually without bringing any trace of color into his face orfeatures. A tun of Tokay _vin de succession_ would not have caused anyfaltering in that piercing glance that read men's inmost thoughts, nordethroned the merciless reasoning faculty that always seemed to go tothe bottom of things. There was something of the fell and tranquilmajesty of a tiger about him."I have come to cash this bill of exchange, sir," he said. Castanierfelt the tones of his voice thrill through every nerve with a violentshock similar to that given by a discharge of electricity."The safe is closed," said Castanier."It is open," said the Englishman, looking round the counting-house."To-morrow is Sunday, and I cannot wait. The amount is for five hundredthousand francs. You have the money there, and I must have it.""But how did you come in, sir?"The Englishman smiled. That smile frightened Castanier. No words couldhave replied more fully nor more peremptorily than that scornful andimperial curl of the stranger's lips. Castanier turned away, took upfifty packets, each containing ten thousand francs in bank notes, andheld them out to the stranger, receiving in exchange for them a billaccepted by the Baron de Nucingen. A sort of convulsive tremor ranthrough him as he saw a red gleam in the stranger's eyes when they fellon the forged signature on the letter of credit."It ... it wants your signature ..." stammered Castanier, handing backthe bill."Hand me your pen," answered the Englishman.Castanier handed him the pen with which he had just committed forgery.The stranger wrote _John Melmoth_, then he returned the slip of paperand the pen to the cashier. Castanier looked at the handwriting,noticing that it sloped from right to left in the Eastern fashion, andMelmoth disappeared so noiselessly that when Castanier looked up againan exclamation broke from him, partly because the man was no longerthere, partly because he felt a strange painful sensation such as ourimagination might take for an effect of poison.The pen that Melmoth had handled sent the same sickening heat throughhim that an emetic produces. But it seemed impossible to Castanier thatthe Englishman should have guessed his crime. His inward qualms heattributed to the palpitation of the heart that, according to receivedideas, was sure to follow at once on such a "turn" as the stranger hadgiven him."The devil take it; I am very stupid. Providence is watching over me;for if that brute had come round to see my gentlemen to-morrow, mygoose would have been cooked!" said Castanier, and he burned theunsuccessful attempts at forgery in the stove.He put the bill that he meant to take with him in an envelope, andhelped himself to five hundred thousand francs in French and Englishbank notes from the safe, which he locked. Then he put everything inorder, lit a candle, blew out the lamp, took up his hat and umbrella,and went out sedately, as usual, to leave one of the two keys of thestrong room with Madame de Nucingen, in the absence of her husband thebaron."You are in luck, M. Castanier," said the banker's wife as he enteredher room; "we have a holiday on Monday; you can go into the country, orto Soizy.""Madame, will you be so good as to tell your husband that the bill ofexchange on Watschildine, which was behind time, has just beenpresented? The five hundred thousand francs have been paid; so I shallnot come back till noon on Tuesday.""Good-by, monsieur; I hope you will have a pleasant time.""The same to you, madame," replied the old dragoon as he went out. Heglanced as he spoke at a young man well known in fashionable society atthat time, a M. de Rastignac, who was regarded as Madame de Nucingen'slover."Madame," remarked this latter, "the old boy looks to me as if he meantto play you some ill turn.""Pshaw! impossible; he is too stupid.""Piquoizeau," said the cashier, walking into the porter's room, "whatmade you let anybody come up after four o'clock?""I have been smoking a pipe here in the doorway ever since fouro'clock," said the man, "and nobody has gone into the bank. Nobody hascome out either except the gentlemen--""Are you quite sure?""Yes, upon my word and honor. Stay, though, at four o'clock M.Werbrust's friend came, a young fellow from Messrs. du Tillet & Co., inthe Rue Joubert.""All right," said Castanier, and he hurried away.The sickening sensation of heat that he had felt when he took back thepen returned in greater intensity. "_Mille diables!_" thought he, as hethreaded his way along the Boulevard de Gand, "haven't I taken properprecautions? Let me think! Two clear days, Sunday and Monday, then aday of uncertainty before they begin to look for me; altogether, threedays and four nights' respite. I have a couple of passports and twodifferent disguises; is not that enough to throw the cleverestdetective off the scent? On Tuesday morning I shall draw a millionfrancs in London before the slightest suspicion has been aroused. Mydebts I am leaving behind for the benefit of my creditors, who will puta 'P'[1] on the bills, and I shall live comfortably in Italy for therest of my days as the Conte Ferraro. I was alone with him when hedied, poor fellow, in the marsh of Zembin, and I shall slip into hisskin.... _Mille diables!_ the woman who is to follow after me mightgive them a clew! Think of an old campaigner like me infatuated enoughto tie myself to a petticoat tail!... Why take her? I must leave herbehind. Yes, I could make up my mind to it; but--I know myself--Ishould be ass enough to go back for her. Still, nobody knows Aquilina.Shall I take her or leave her?"[1] Protested."You will not take her!" cried a voice that filled Castanier withsickening dread. He turned sharply, and saw the Englishman."The devil is in it!" cried the cashier aloud.Melmoth had passed his victim by this time; and if Castanier's firstimpulse had been to fasten a quarrel on a man who read his ownthoughts, he was so much torn by opposing feelings that the immediateresult was a temporary paralysis. When he resumed his walk he fell oncemore into that fever of irresolution which besets those who are socarried away by passion that they are ready to commit a crime, but havenot sufficient strength of character to keep it to themselves withoutsuffering terribly in the process. So, although Castanier had made uphis mind to reap the fruits of a crime which was already half executed,he hesitated to carry out his designs. For him, as for many men ofmixed character in whom weakness and strength are equally blended, theleast trifling consideration determines whether they shall continue tolead blameless lives or become actively criminal. In the vast masses ofmen enrolled in Napoleon's armies there were many who, like Castanier,possessed the purely physical courage demanded on the battlefield, yetlacked the moral courage which makes a man as great in crime as hecould have been in virtue.The letter of credit was drafted in such terms that immediately on hisarrival he might draw twenty-five thousand pounds on the firm ofWatschildine, the London correspondents of the house of Nucingen. TheLondon house had been already advised of the draft about to be madeupon them; he had written to them himself. He had instructed an agent(chosen at random) to take his passage in a vessel which was to leavePortsmouth with a wealthy English family on board, who were going toItaly, and the passage money had been paid in the name of the ConteFerraro. The smallest details of the scheme had been thought out. Hehad arranged matters so as to divert the search that would be made forhim into Belgium and Switzerland, while he himself was at sea in theEnglish vessel. Then, by the time that Nucingen might flatter himselfthat he was on the track of his late cashier, the said cashier, as theConte Ferraro, hoped to be safe in Naples. He had determined todisfigure his face in order to disguise himself the more completely,and by means of an acid to imitate the scars of smallpox. Yet, in spiteof all these precautions, which surely seemed as if they must securehim complete immunity, his conscience tormented him; he was afraid. Theeven and peaceful life that he had led for so long had modified themorality of the camp. His life was stainless as yet; he could not sullyit without a pang. So for the last time he abandoned himself to all theinfluences of the better self that strenuously resisted."Pshaw!" he said at last, at the corner of the Boulevard and the RueMontmartre, "I will take a cab after the play this evening and go outto Versailles. A post-chaise will be ready for me at my oldquartermaster's place. He would keep my secret even if a dozen men werestanding ready to shoot him down. The chances are all in my favor, sofar as I see; so I shall take my little Naqui with me, and I will go.""You will not go!" exclaimed the Englishman, and the strange tones ofhis voice drove all the cashier's blood back to his heart.Melmoth stepped into a tilbury which was waiting for him, and waswhirled away so quickly, that when Castanier looked up he saw his foesome hundred paces away from him, and before it even crossed his mindto cut off the man's retreat the tilbury was far on its way up theBoulevard Montmartre."Well, upon my word, there is something supernatural about this!" saidhe to himself. "If I were fool enough to believe in God, I should thinkthat He had set Saint Michael on my tracks. Suppose that the devil andthe police should let me go on as I please, so as to nab me in the nickof time? Did anyone ever see the like! But there, this is folly...."Castanier went along the Rue du Faubourg-Montmartre, slackening hispace as he neared the Rue Richer. There, on the second floor of a blockof buildings which looked out upon some gardens, lived the unconsciouscause of Castanier's crime--a young woman known in the quarter as Mme.de la Garde. A concise history of certain events in the cashier's pastlife must be given in order to explain these facts, and to give acomplete presentment of the crisis when he yielded to temptation.Mme. de la Garde said that she was a Piedmontese. No one, not evenCastanier, knew her real name. She was one of those young girls who aredriven by dire misery, by inability to earn a living, or by fear ofstarvation, to have recourse to a trade which most of them loathe, manyregard with indifference, and some few follow in obedience to the lawsof their constitution. But on the brink of the gulf of prostitution inParis, the young girl of sixteen, beautiful and pure as the Madonna,had met with Castanier. The old dragoon was too rough and homely tomake his way in society, and he was tired of tramping the boulevard atnight and of the kind of conquests made there by gold. For some timepast he had desired to bring a certain regularity into an irregularlife. He was struck by the beauty of the poor child who had drifted bychance into his arms, and his determination to rescue her from the lifeof the streets was half benevolent, half selfish, as some of thethoughts of the best of men are apt to be. Social conditions mingleelements of evil with the promptings of natural goodness of heart, andthe mixture of motives underlying a man's intentions should beleniently judged. Castanier had just cleverness enough to be veryshrewd where his own interests were concerned. So he concluded to be aphilanthropist on either count, and at first made her his mistress."Hey! hey!" he said to himself, in his soldierly fashion, "I am an oldwolf, and a sheep shall not make a fool of me. Castanier, old man,before you set up housekeeping, reconnoiter the girl's character for abit, and see if she is a steady sort."This irregular union gave the Piedmontese a status the most nearlyapproaching respectability among those which the world declines torecognize. During the first year she took the _nom de guerre_ ofAquilina, one of the characters in _Venice Preserved_ which she hadchanced to read. She fancied that she resembled the courtesan in faceand general appearance, and in a certain precocity of heart and brainof which she was conscious. When Castanier found that her life was aswell regulated and virtuous as was possible for a social outlaw, hemanifested a desire that they should live as husband and wife. So shetook the name of Mme. de la Garde, in order to approach, as closely asParisian usages permit, the conditions of a real marriage. As a matterof fact, many of these unfortunate girls have one fixed idea, to belooked upon as respectable middle-class women, who lead humdrum livesof faithfulness to their husbands; women who would make excellentmothers, keepers of household accounts, and menders of household linen.This longing springs from a sentiment so laudable that society shouldtake it into consideration. But society, incorrigible as ever, willassuredly persist in regarding the married woman as a corvette dulyauthorized by her flag and papers to go on her own course, while thewoman who is a wife in all but name is a pirate and an outlaw for lackof a document. A day came when Mme. de la Garde would fain have signedherself "Mme. Castanier." The cashier was put out by this."So you do not love me well enough to marry me?" she said.Castanier did not answer; he was absorbed by his thoughts. The poorgirl resigned herself to her fate. The ex-dragoon was in despair.Naqui's heart softened toward him at the sight of his trouble; shetried to soothe him, but what could she do when she did not know whatailed him? When Naqui made up her mind to know the secret, although shenever asked him a question, the cashier dolefully confessed to theexistence of a Mme. Castanier. This lawful wife, a thousand timesaccursed, was living in a humble way in Strasbourg on a small propertythere; he wrote to her twice a year, and kept the secret of herexistence so well, that no one suspected that he was married. Thereason of this reticence? If it is familiar to many military men whomay chance to be in a like predicament, it is perhaps worth while togive the story.Your genuine trooper (if it is allowable here to employ the word whichin the army signifies a man who is destined to die as a captain) is asort of serf, a part and parcel of his regiment, an essentially simplecreature, and Castanier was marked out by nature as a victim to thewiles of mothers with grown-up daughters left too long on their hands.It was at Nancy, during one of those brief intervals of repose when theImperial armies were not on active service abroad, that Castanier wasso unlucky as to pay some attention to a young lady with whom he dancedat a _ridotto_, the provincial name for the entertainments often givenby the military to the townsfolk, or _vice vers_, in garrison towns. Ascheme for inveigling the gallant captain into matrimony wasimmediately set on foot, one of those schemes by which mothers secureaccomplices in a human heart by touching all its motive springs, whilethey convert all their friends into fellow-conspirators. Like allpeople possessed by one idea, these ladies press everything into theservice of their great project, slowly elaborating their toils, much asthe ant-lion excavates its funnel in the sand and lies in wait at thebottom for its victim. Suppose that no one strays, after all, into thatcarefully constructed labyrinth? Suppose that the ant-lion dies ofhunger and thirst in her pit? Such things may be, but if any heedlesscreature once enters in, it never comes out. All the wires which couldbe pulled to induce action on the captain's part were tried; appealswere made to the secret interested motives that always come into playin such cases; they worked on Castanier's hopes and on the weaknessesand vanity of human nature. Unluckily, he had praised the daughter toher mother when he brought her back after a waltz, a little chatfollowed, and then an invitation in the most natural way in the world.Once introduced into the house, the dragoon was dazzled by thehospitality of a family who appeared to conceal their real wealthbeneath a show of careful economy. He was skillfully flattered on allsides, and everyone extolled for his benefit the various treasuresthere displayed. A neatly timed dinner, served on plate lent by anuncle, the attention shown to him by the only daughter of the house,the gossip of the town, a well-to-do sub-lieutenant who seemed likelyto cut the ground from under his feet--all the innumerable snares, inshort, of the provincial ant-lion were set for him, and to such goodpurpose, that Castanier said five years later, "To this day I do notknow how it came about!"The dragoon received fifteen thousand francs with the lady, who, aftertwo years of marriage, became the ugliest and consequently the mostpeevish woman on earth. Luckily they had no children. The faircomplexion (maintained by a Spartan regimen), the fresh, bright colorin her face, which spoke of an engaging modesty, became overspread withblotches and pimples; her figure, which had seemed so straight, grewcrooked, the angel became a suspicious and shrewish creature who droveCastanier frantic. Then the fortune took to itself wings. At length thedragoon, no longer recognizing the woman whom he had wedded, left herto live on a little property at Strasbourg, until the time when itshould please God to remove her to adorn Paradise. She was one of thosevirtuous women who, for want of other occupation, would weary the lifeout of an angel with complainings, who pray till (if their prayers areheard in heaven) they must exhaust the patience of the Almighty, andsay everything that is bad of their husbands in dove-like murmurs overa game of boston with their neighbors. When Aquilina learned all thesetroubles she clung still more affectionately to Castanier, and made himso happy, varying with woman's ingenuity the pleasures with which shefilled his life, that all unwittingly she was the cause of thecashier's downfall.Like many women who seem by nature destined to sound all the depths oflove, Mme. de la Garde was disinterested. She asked neither for goldnor for jewelry, gave no thought to the future, lived entirely for thepresent and for the pleasures of the present. She accepted expensiveornaments and dresses, the carriage so eagerly coveted by women of herclass, as one harmony the more in the picture of life. There wasabsolutely no vanity in her desire not to appear at a better advantagebut to look the fairer, and, moreover, no woman could live withoutluxuries more cheerfully. When a man of generous nature (and militarymen are mostly of this stamp) meets with such a woman, he feels a sortof exasperation at finding himself her debtor in generosity. He feelsthat he could stop a mail coach to obtain money for her if he has notsufficient for her whims. He will commit a crime if so he may be greatand noble in the eyes of some woman or of his special public; such isthe nature of the man. Such a lover is like a gambler who would bedishonored in his own eyes if he did not repay the sum he borrowed froma waiter in a gaming house; but will shrink from no crime, will leavehis wife and children without a penny, and rob and murder, if so he maycome to the gaming table with a full purse, and his honor remainuntarnished among the frequenters of that fatal abode. So it was withCastanier.He had begun by installing Aquilina in a modest fourth-floor dwelling,the furniture being of the simplest kind. But when he saw the girl'sbeauty and great qualities, when he had known inexpressible andunlooked-for happiness with her, he began to dote upon her, and longedto adorn his idol. Then Aquilina's toilet was so comically out ofkeeping with her poor abode, that for both their sakes it was clearlyincumbent on him to move. The change swallowed up almost allCastanier's savings, for he furnished his domestic paradise with allthe prodigality that is lavished on a kept mistress. A pretty womanmust have everything pretty about her; the unity of charm in the womanand her surroundings singles her out from among her sex. This sentimentof homogeneity indeed, though it has frequently escaped the attentionof observers, is instinctive in human nature; and the same promptingleads elderly spinsters to surround themselves with dreary relies ofthe past. But the lovely Piedmontese must have the newest and latestfashions, and all that was daintiest and prettiest in stuffs forhangings, in silks or jewelry, in fine china and other brittle andfragile wares. She asked for nothing; but when she was called upon tomake a choice, when Castanier asked her, "Which do you like?" she wouldanswer, "Why, this is the nicest!" Love never counts the cost, andCastanier therefore always took the "nicest."When once the standard had been set up, there was nothing for it buteverything in the household must be in conformity, from the linen,plate, and crystal through a thousand and one items of expenditure downto the pots and pans in the kitchen. Castanier had meant to "do thingssimply," as the saying goes, but he gradually found himself more andmore in debt. One expense entailed another. The clock called for candlesconces. Fires must be lighted in the ornamental grates, but thecurtains and hangings were too fresh and delicate to be soiled bysmuts, so they must be replaced by patent and elaborate fireplaces,warranted to give out no smoke, recent inventions of the people who areclever at drawing up a prospectus. Then Aquilina found it so nice torun about barefooted on the carpet in her room that Castanier must havesoft carpets laid everywhere for the pleasure of playing with Naqui. Abathroom, too, was built for her, everything to the end that she mightbe more comfortable.Shopkeepers, workmen, and manufacturers in Paris have a mysteriousknack of enlarging a hole in a man's purse. They cannot give the priceof anything upon inquiry; and as the paroxysm of longing cannot abidedelay, orders are given by the feeble light of an approximate estimateof cost. The same people never send in the bills at once, but ply thepurchaser with furniture till his head spins. Everything is so pretty,so charming; and everyone is satisfied.A few months later the obliging furniture dealers are metamorphosed,and reappear in the shape of alarming totals on invoices that fill thesoul with their horrid clamor; they are in urgent want of the money;they are, as you may say, on the brink of bankruptcy, their tears flow,it is heartrending to hear them! And then--the gulf yawns and gives upserried columns of figures marching four deep; when as a matter of factthey should have issued innocently three by three.Before Castanier had any idea of how much he had spent, he had arrangedfor Aquilina to have a carriage from a livery stable when she went out,instead of a cab. Castanier was a gourmand; he engaged an excellentcook; and Aquilina, to please him, had herself made the purchases ofearly fruit and vegetables, rare delicacies, and exquisite wines. But,as Aquilina had nothing of her own, these gifts of hers, so precious byreason of the thought and tact and graciousness that prompted them,were no less a drain upon Castanier's purse; he did not like his Naquito be without money, and Naqui could not keep money in her pocket. Sothe table was a heavy item of expenditure for a man with Castanier'sincome. The ex-dragoon was compelled to resort to various shifts forobtaining money, for he could not bring himself to renounce thisdelightful life. He loved the woman too well to cross the freaks of themistress. He was one of those men who, through self-love or throughweakness of character, can refuse nothing to a woman; false shameoverpowers them, and they rather face ruin than make the admissions: "Icannot--" "My means will not permit--" "I cannot afford--"When, therefore, Castanier saw that if he meant to emerge from theabyss of debt into which he had plunged, he must part with Aquilina andlive upon bread and water, he was so unable to do without her or tochange his habits of life, that daily he put off his plans of reformuntil the morrow. The debts were pressing, and he began by borrowingmoney. His position and previous character inspired confidence, and ofthis he took advantage to devise a system of borrowing money as herequired it. Then, as the total amount of debt rapidly increased, hehad recourse to those commercial inventions known as _accommodationbills_. This form of bill does not represent goods or other valuereceived, and the first indorser pays the amount named for the obligingperson who accepts it. This species of fraud is tolerated because it isimpossible to detect it, and, moreover, it is an imaginary fraud whichonly becomes real if payment is ultimately refused.When at length it was evidently impossible to borrow any longer,whether because the amount of the debt was now so greatly increased, orbecause Castanier was unable to pay the large amount of interest on theaforesaid sums of money, the cashier saw bankruptcy before him. Onmaking this discovery, he decided for a fraudulent bankruptcy ratherthan an ordinary failure, and preferred a crime to a misdemeanor. Hedetermined, after the fashion of the celebrated cashier of the RoyalTreasury, to abuse the trust deservedly won, and to increase the numberof his creditors by making a final loan of the sum sufficient to keephim in comfort in a foreign country for the rest of his days. All this,as has been seen, he had prepared to do.Aquilina knew nothing of the irksome cares of this life; she enjoyedher existence, as many a woman does, making no inquiry as to where themoney came from, even as sundry other folk will eat their butteredrolls untroubled by any restless spirit of curiosity as to the cultureand growth of wheat; but as the labor and miscalculations ofagriculture lie on the other side of the baker's oven, so, beneath theunappreciated luxury of many a Parisian household lie intolerableanxieties and exorbitant toil.While Castanier was enduring the torture of the strain, and histhoughts were full of the deed that should change his whole life,Aquilina was lying luxuriously back in a great armchair by thefireside, beguiling the time by chatting with her waiting-maid. Asfrequently happens in such cases, the maid had become the mistress'sconfidante, Jenny having first assured herself that her mistress'sascendancy over Castanier was complete.What are we to do this evening? Lon seems determined to come," Mme. dela Garde was saying, as she read a passionate epistle indicted upon afaint gray note paper."Here is the master!" said Jenny.Castanier came in. Aquilina, nowise disconcerted, crumpled up theletter, took it with the tongs, and held it in the flames."So that is what you do with your love letters, is it?" askedCastanier."Oh, goodness, yes," said Aquilina; "is it not the best way of keepingthem safe? Besides, fire should go to the fire, as water makes for theriver.""You are talking as if it were a real love letter, Naqui--""Well, am I not handsome enough to receive them?" she said, holding upher forehead for a kiss. There was a carelessness in her manner thatwould have told any man less blind than Castanier that it was only apiece of conjugal duty, as it were, to give this joy to the cashier;but use and wont had brought Castanier to the point whereclear-sightedness is no longer possible for love."I have taken a box at the Gymnase this evening," he said; "let us havedinner early, and then we need not dine in a hurry.""Go and take Jenny. I am tired of plays. I do not know what is thematter with me this evening; I would rather stay here by the fire.""Come, all the same though, Naqui; I shall not be here to bore you muchlonger. Yes, Quiqui, I am going to start to-night, and it will be sometime before I come back again. I am leaving everything in your charge.Will you keep your heart for me too?""Neither my heart nor anything else," she said; "but when you come backagain, Naqui will still be Naqui for you.""Well, this is frankness. So you would not follow me?""No.""Why not?""Eh! why, how can I leave the lover who writes me such sweet littlenotes?" she asked, pointing to the blackened scrap of paper with amocking smile."Is there any truth in it?" asked Castanier. "Have you really a lover?""Really!" cried Aquilina; "and have you never given it a seriousthought, dear? To begin with, you are fifty years old. Then you havejust the sort of face to put on a fruit stall; if the woman tried tosell you for a pumpkin, no one would contradict her. You puff and blowlike a seal when you come upstairs; your paunch rises and falls likethe diamond on a woman's forehead! It is pretty plain that you servedin the dragoons; you are a very ugly-looking old man. Fiddle-de-dee. Ifyou have any mind to keep my respect, I recommend you not to addimbecility to these qualities by imagining that such a girl as I amwill be content with your asthmatic love, and not look for youth andgood looks and pleasure by way of variety--""Aquilina! you are laughing, of course?""Oh, very well; and are you not laughing too? Do you take me for afool, telling me that you are going away? 'I am going to startto-night!'" she said, mimicking his tones. "Stuff and nonsense! Wouldyou talk like that if you were really going away from your Naqui? Youwould cry, like the booby that you are!""After all, if I go, will you follow?" he asked."Tell me first whether this journey of yours is a bad joke or not.""Yes, seriously, I am going.""Well, then, seriously, I shall stay. A pleasant journey to you, myboy! I will wait till you come back. I would sooner take leave of lifethan take leave of my dear, cozy Paris--""Will you not come to Italy, to Naples, and lead a pleasant lifethere--a delicious, luxurious life, with this stout old fogey of yours,who puffs and blows like a seal?""No.""Ungrateful girl!""Ungrateful?" she cried, rising to her feet. "I might leave this housethis moment and take nothing out of it but myself. I shall have givenyou all the treasures a young girl can give, and something that notevery drop in your veins and mine can ever give me back. If, by anymeans whatever, by selling my hopes of eternity, for instance, I couldrecover my past self, body as soul (for I have, perhaps, redeemed mysoul), and be pure as a lily for my lover I would not hesitate amoment! What sort of devotion has rewarded mine? You have housed andfed me, just as you give a dog food and a kennel because he is aprotection to the house, and he may take kicks when we are out ofhumor, and lick our hands as soon as we are pleased to call to him. Andwhich of us two will have been the more generous?""Oh! dear child, do you not see that I am joking?" returned Castanier."I am going on a short journey; I shall not be away for very long. Butcome with me to the Gymnase; I shall start just before midnight, afterI have had time to say good-by to you.""Poor pet! so you are really going, are you?" she said. She put herarms round his neck, and drew down his head against her bodice."You are smothering me!" cried Castanier, with his face buried inAquilina's breast. That damsel turned to say in Jenny's ear, "Go toLon, and tell him not to come till one o'clock. If you do not findhim, and he comes here during the leave-taking, keep him in yourroom.--Well," she went on, setting free Castanier, and giving a tweakto the tip of his nose, "never mind, handsomest of seals that you are.I will go to the theater with you this evening. But all in good time;let us have dinner! There is a nice little dinner for you--just whatyou like.""It is very hard to part from such a woman as you!" exclaimedCastanier."Very well then, why do you go?" asked she."Ah! why? why? If I were to begin to explain the reasons why, I musttell you things that would prove to you that I love you almost tomadness. Ah! if you have sacrificed your honor for me, I have sold minefor you; we are quits. Is that love?""What is all this about?" said she. "Come, now, promise me that if Ihad a lover you would still love me as a father; that would be love!Come, now, promise it at once, and give us your fist upon it.""I should kill you," and Castanier smiled as he spoke.They sat down to the dinner table, and went thence to the Gymnase. Whenthe first part of the performance was over, it occurred to Castanier toshow himself to some of his acquaintances in the house, so as to turnaway any suspicion of his departure. He left Mme. de la Garde in thecorner box where she was seated, according to her modest wont, and wentto walk up and down in the lobby. He had not gone many paces before hesaw the Englishman, and with a sudden return of the sickening sensationof heat that once before had vibrated through him, and of the terrorthat he had felt already, he stood face to face with Melmoth."Forger!"At the word, Castanier glanced round at the people who were movingabout them. He fancied that he could see astonishment and curiosity intheir eyes, and wishing to be rid of this Englishman at once, he raisedhis hand to strike him--and felt his arm paralyzed by some invisiblepower that sapped his strength and nailed him to the spot. He allowedthe stranger to take him by the arm, and they walked together to thegreenroom like two friends."Who is strong enough to resist me?" said the Englishman, addressinghim. "Do you not know that everything here on earth must obey me, thatit is in my power to do everything? I read men's thoughts, I see thefuture, and I know the past. I am here, and I can be elsewhere also.Time and space and distance are nothing to me. The whole world is at mybeck and call. I have the power of continual enjoyment and of givingjoy. I can see through walls, discover hidden treasures, and fill myhands with them. Palaces arise at my nod, and my architect makes nomistakes. I can make all lands break forth into blossom, heap up theirgold and precious stones, and surround myself with fair women and evernew faces; everything is yielded up to my will. I could gamble on theStock Exchange, and my speculations would be infallible; but a man whocan find the hoards that misers have hidden in the earth need nottrouble himself about stocks. Feel the strength of the hand that graspsyou; poor wretch, doomed to shame! Try to bend the arm of iron! try tosoften the adamantine heart! Fly from me if you dare! You would hear myvoice in the depths of the caves that lie under the Seine; you mighthide in the Catacombs, but would you not see me there? My voice couldbe heard through the sound of the thunder, my eyes shine as brightly asthe sun, for I am the peer of Lucifer!"Castanier heard the terrible words, and felt no protest norcontradiction within himself. He walked side by side with theEnglishman, and had no power to leave him."You are mine; you have just committed a crime. I have found at lastthe mate whom I have sought. Have you a mind to learn your destiny?Aha! you came here to see a play, and you shall see a play--nay, two.Come. Present me to Mme. de la Garde as one of your best friends. Am Inot your last hope of escape?"Castanier, followed by the stranger, returned to his box; and inaccordance with the order he had just received, he hastened tointroduce Melmoth to Mme. de la Garde. Aquilina seemed to be not in theleast surprised. The Englishman declined to take a seat in front, andCastanier was once more beside his mistress; the man's slightest wishmust be obeyed. The last piece was about to begin, for, at that time,small theaters only gave three pieces. One of the actors had made theGymnase the fashion, and that evening Perlet (the actor in question)was to play in a vaudeville called _Le Comdien d'tampes_, in which hefilled four different parts.When the curtain rose, the stranger stretched out his hand over thecrowded house. Castanier's cry of terror died away, for the walls ofhis throat seemed glued together as Melmoth pointed to the stage, andthe cashier knew that the play had been changed at the Englishman'sdesire.He saw the strong room at the bank; he saw the Baron de Nucingen inconference with a police officer from the prefecture, who was informinghim of Castanier's conduct, explaining that the cashier had abscondedwith money taken from the safe, giving the history of the forgedsignature. The information was put in writing; the document signed andduly dispatched to the public prosecutor."Are we in time, do you think?" asked Nucingen."Yes," said the agent of police; "he is at the Gymnase, and has nosuspicion of anything."Castanier fidgeted on his chair, and made as if he would leave thetheater, but Melmoth's hand lay on his shoulder, and he was obliged tosit and watch; the hideous power of the man produced an effect likethat of nightmare, and he could not move a limb. Nay, the man himselfwas the nightmare; his presence weighed heavily on his victim like apoisoned atmosphere. When the wretched cashier turned to implore theEnglishman's mercy, he met those blazing eyes that discharged electriccurrents, which pierced through him and transfixed him like darts ofsteel."What have I done to you?" he said, in his prostrate helplessness, andhe breathed hard like a stag at the water's edge. "What do you want ofme?""Look!" cried Melmoth.Castanier looked at the stage. The scene had been changed. The playseemed to be over, and Castanier beheld himself stepping from thecarriage with Aquilina; but as he entered the courtyard of the house inthe Rue Richer, the scene again was suddenly changed, and he saw hisown house. Jenny was chatting by the fire in her mistress's room with asubaltern officer of a line regiment then stationed at Paris."He is going, is he?" said the sergeant, who seemed to belong to afamily in easy circumstances; "I can be happy at my ease! I loveAquilina too well to allow her to belong to that old toad! I, myself,am going to marry Mme. de la Garde!" cried the sergeant."Old toad!" Castanier murmured piteously."Here come the master and mistress; hide yourself! Stay, get in here,Monsieur Lon," said Jenny. "The master won't stay here for very long."Castanier watched the sergeant hide himself among Aquilina's gowns inher dressing room. Almost immediately he himself appeared upon thescene, and took leave of his mistress, who made fun of him in "asides"to Jenny, while she uttered the sweetest and tenderest words in hisears. She wept with one side of her face, and laughed with the other.The audience called for an encore."Accursed creature!" cried Castanier from his box.Aquilina was laughing till the tears came into her eyes."Goodness!" she cried, "how funny Perlet is as the Englishwoman!... Whydon't you laugh? Everyone else in the house is laughing. Laugh, dear!"she said to Castanier.Melmoth burst out laughing, and the unhappy cashier shuddered. TheEnglishman's laughter wrung his heart and tortured his brain; it was asif a surgeon had bored his skull with a red-hot iron."Laughing! are they laughing?" stammered Castanier.He did not see the prim English lady whom Perlet was acting with suchludicrous effect, nor hear the English-French that had filled the housewith roars of laughter; instead of all this, he beheld himself hurryingfrom the Rue Richer, hailing a cab on the Boulevard, bargaining withthe man to take him to Versailles. Then once more the scene changed. Herecognized the sorry inn at the corner of the Rue de l'Orangerie andthe Rue des Rcollets, which was kept by his old quartermaster. It wastwo o'clock in the morning, the most perfect stillness prevailed, noone was there to watch his movements. The post-horses were put into thecarriage (it came from a house in the Avenue de Paris in which anEnglishman lived, and had been ordered in the foreigner's name to avoidraising suspicion). Castanier saw that he had his bills and hispassports, stepped into the carriage, and set out. But at the barrierhe saw two gendarmes lying in wait for the carriage. A cry of horrorburst from him, but Melmoth gave him a glance, and again the sound diedin his throat."Keep your eyes on the stage, and be quiet!" said the Englishman.In another moment Castanier saw himself flung into prison at theConciergerie; and in the fifth act of the drama, entitled _TheCashier_, he saw himself, in three months' time, condemned to twentyyears of penal servitude. Again a cry broke from him. He was exposedupon the Place du Palais-de-Justice, and the executioner branded himwith a red-hot iron. Then came the last scene of all; among some sixtyconvicts in the prison yard of the Bictre, he was awaiting his turn tohave the irons riveted on his limbs."Dear me! I cannot laugh any more!..." said Aquilina. "You are verysolemn, dear boy; what can be the matter? The gentleman has gone.""A word with you, Castanier," said Melmoth when the piece was at anend, and the attendant was fastening Mme. de la Garde's cloak.The corridor was crowded, and escape impossible."Very well, what is it?""No human power can hinder you from taking Aquilina home, and goingnext to Versailles, there to be arrested.""How so?""Because you are in a hand that will never relax its grasp," returnedthe Englishman.Castanier longed for the power to utter some word that should blot himout from among living men and hide him in the lowest depths of hell."Suppose that the devil were to make a bid for your soul, would you notgive it to him now in exchange for the power of God? One single word,and those five hundred thousand francs shall be back in the Baron deNucingen's safe; then you can tear up your letter of credit, and alltraces of your crime will be obliterated. Moreover, you would have goldin torrents. You hardly believe in anything perhaps? Well, if all thiscomes to pass, you will believe at least in the devil.""If it were only possible!" said Castanier joyfully."The man who can do it all gives you his word that it is possible,"answered the Englishman.Melmoth, Castanier, and Mme. de la Garde were standing out in theBoulevard when Melmoth raised his arm. A drizzling rain was falling,the streets were muddy, the air was close, there was thick darknessoverhead; but in a moment, as the arm was outstretched, Paris wasfilled with sunlight; it was high noon on a bright July day. The treeswere covered with leaves; a double stream of joyous holiday makersstrolled beneath them. Sellers of licorice water shouted their cooldrinks. Splendid carriages rolled past along the streets. A cry ofterror broke from the cashier, and at that cry rain and darkness oncemore settled down upon the Boulevard.Mme. de la Garde had stepped into the carriage. "Do be quick, dear!"she cried; "either come in or stay out. Really, you are as dull asditch-water this evening--""What must I do?" Castanier asked of Melmoth."Would you like to take my place?" inquired the Englishman."Yes.""Very well, then; I will be at your house in a few moments.""By the bye, Castanier, you are rather off your balance," Aquilinaremarked. "There is some mischief brewing; you were quite melancholyand thoughtful all through the play. Do you want anything that I cangive you, dear? Tell me.""I am waiting till we are at home to know whether you love me.""You need not wait till then," she said, throwing her arms round hisneck. "There!" she said, as she embraced him, passionately to allappearance, and plied him with the coaxing caresses that are part ofthe business of such a life as hers, like stage action for an actress."Where is the music?" asked Castanier."What next? Only think of your hearing music now!""Heavenly music!" he went on. "The sounds seem to come from above.""What? You have always refused to give me a box at the Italiens becauseyou could not abide music, and are you turning music-mad at this timeof day? Mad--that you are! The music is inside your own noddle, oldaddle-pate!" she went on, as she took his head in her hands and rockedit to and fro on her shoulder. "Tell me now, old man; isn't it thecreaking of the wheels that sings in your ears?""Just listen, Naqui! If the angels make music for God Almighty, it mustbe such music as this that I am drinking in at every pore, rather thanhearing. I do not know how to tell you about it; it is as sweet ashoney water!""Why, of course, they have music in heaven, for the angels in all thepictures have harps in their hands. He is mad, upon my word!" she saidto herself, as she saw Castanier's attitude; he looked like an opiumeater in a blissful trance.They reached the house. Castanier, absorbed by the thought of all thathe had just heard and seen, knew not whether to believe it or no; hewas like a drunken man, and utterly unable to think connectedly. Hecame to himself in Aquilina's room, whither he had been supported bythe united efforts of his mistress, the porter, and Jenny; for he hadfainted as he stepped from the carriage."_He_ will be here directly! Oh, my friends, my friends!" he cried, andhe flung himself despairingly into the depths of a low chair beside thefire.Jenny heard the bell as he spoke, and admitted the Englishman. Sheannounced that "a gentleman had come who had made an appointment withthe master," when Melmoth suddenly appeared, and deep silence followed.He looked at the porter--the porter went; he looked at Jenny--and Jennywent likewise."Madame," said Melmoth, turning to Aquilina, "with your permission, wewill conclude a piece of urgent business."He took Castanier's hand, and Castanier rose, and the two men went intothe drawing-room. There was no light in the room, but Melmoth's eyeslit up the thickest darkness. The gaze of those strange eyes had leftAquilina like one spellbound; she was helpless, unable to take anythought for her lover; moreover, she believed him to be safe in Jenny'sroom, whereas their early return had taken the waiting woman bysurprise, and she had hidden the officer in the dressing room. It hadall happened exactly as in the drama that Melmoth had displayed for hisvictim. Presently the house door was slammed violently, and Castanierreappeared."What ails you?" cried the horror-struck Aquilina.There was a change in the cashier's appearance. A strange palloroverspread his once rubicund countenance; it wore the peculiarlysinister and stony look of the mysterious visitor. The sullen glare ofhis eyes was intolerable, the fierce light in them seemed to scorch.The man who had looked so good-humored and good-natured had suddenlygrown tyrannical and proud. The courtesan thought that Castanier hadgrown thinner; there was a terrible majesty in his brow; it was as if adragon breathed forth a malignant influence that weighed upon theothers like a close, heavy atmosphere. For a moment Aquilina knew notwhat to do."What passed between you and that diabolical-looking man in those fewminutes?" she asked at length."I have sold my soul to him. I feel it; I am no longer the same. He hastaken my _self_, and given me his soul in exchange.""What?""You would not understand it at all.... Ah! he was right," Castanierwent on, "the fiend was right! I see everything and know allthings.--You have been deceiving me!"Aquilina turned cold with terror. Castanier lighted a candle and wentinto the dressing room. The unhappy girl followed him in dazedbewilderment, and great was her astonishment when Castanier drew thedresses that hung there aside and disclosed the sergeant."Come out, my boy," said the cashier; and, taking Lon by a button ofhis overcoat, he drew the officer into his room.The Piedmontese, haggard and desperate, had flung herself into her easychair. Castanier seated himself on a sofa by the fire, and leftAquilina's lover in a standing position."You have been in the army," said Lon; "I am ready to give yousatisfaction.""You are a fool," said Castanier dryly. "I have no occasion to fight. Icould kill you by a look if I had any mind to do it. I will tell youwhat it is, youngster; why should I kill you? I can see a red lineround your neck--the guillotine is waiting for you. Yes, you will endin the Place de Grve. You are the headsman's property! there is noescape for you. You belong to a _vendita_ of the Carbonari. You areplotting against the Government.""You did not tell me that," cried the Piedmontese, turning to Lon."So you do not know that the Minister decided this morning to put downyour Society?" the cashier continued. "The Procureur-Gnral has a listof your names. You have been betrayed. They are busy drawing up theindictment at this moment.""Then was it you who betrayed him?" cried Aquilina, and with a hoarsesound in her throat like the growl of a tigress she rose to her feet;she seemed as if she would tear Castanier in pieces."You know me too well to believe it," Castanier retorted. Aquilina wasbenumbed by his coolness."Then how did you know it?" she murmured."I did not know it until I went into the drawing-room; now I knowit--now I see and know all things, and can do all things."The sergeant was overcome with amazement."Very well then, save him, save him, dear!" cried the girl, flingingherself at Castanier's feet. "If nothing is impossible to you, savehim! I will love you, I will adore you, I will be your slave and notyour mistress. I will obey your wildest whims; you shall do as you willwith me. Yes, yes, I will give you more than love; you shall have adaughter's devotion as well as ... Rodolphe! why will you notunderstand! After all, however violent my passions may be, I shall beyours forever! What should I say to persuade you? I will inventpleasures ... I ... Great heavens! one moment! whatever you shall askof me--to fling myself from the window, for instance--you will need tosay but one word, 'Lon!' and I will plunge down into hell. I wouldbear any torture, any pain of body or soul, anything you might inflictupon me!"Castanier heard her with indifference. For all answer, he indicatedLon to her with a fiendish laugh."The guillotine is waiting for him," he repeated."No, no, no! He shall not leave this house. I will save him!" shecried. "Yes; I will kill anyone who lays a finger upon him! Why willyou not save him?" she shrieked aloud; her eyes were blazing, her hairunbound. "Can you save him?""I can do everything.""Why do you not save him?""Why?" shouted Castanier, and his voice made the ceiling ring.--"Eh! itis my revenge! Doing evil is my trade!""Die?" said Aquilina; "must he die, my lover? Is it possible?"She sprang up and snatched a stiletto from a basket that stood on thechest of drawers and went to Castanier, who began to laugh."You know very well that steel cannot hurt me now--"Aquilina's arm suddenly dropped like a snapped harp string."Out with you, my good friend," said the cashier, turning to thesergeant, "and go about your business."He held out his hand; the other felt Castanier's superior power, andcould not choose but obey."This house is mine; I could send for the commissary of police if Ichose, and give you up as a man who has hidden himself on my premises,but I would rather let you go; I am a fiend, I am not a spy.""I shall follow him!" said Aquilina."Then follow him," returned Castanier.--"Here, Jenny--"Jenny appeared."Tell the porter to hail a cab for them.--Here, Naqui," said Castanier,drawing a bundle of banknotes from his pocket; "you shall not go awaylike a pauper from a man who loves you still."He held out three hundred thousand francs. Aquilina took the notes,flung them on the floor, spat on them, and trampled upon them in afrenzy of despair."We will leave this house on foot," she cried, "without a farthing ofyour money.--Jenny, stay where you are.""Good evening!" answered the cashier, as he gathered up the notesagain. "I have come back from my journey.--Jenny," he added, looking atthe bewildered waiting maid, "you seem to me to be a good sort of girl.You have no mistress now. Come here. This evening you shall have amaster."Aquilina, who felt safe nowhere, went at once with the sergeant to thehouse of one of her friends. But all Lon's movements were suspiciouslywatched by the police, and after a time he and three of his friendswere arrested. The whole story may be found in the newspapers of thatday.* * * * *Castanier felt that he had undergone a mental as well as a physicaltransformation. The Castanier of old no longer existed--the boy, theyoung Lothario, the soldier who had proved his courage, who had beentricked into a marriage and disillusioned, the cashier, the passionatelover who had committed a crime for Aquilina's sake. His inmost naturehad suddenly asserted itself. His brain had expanded, his senses haddeveloped. His thoughts comprehended the whole world; he saw all thethings of earth as if he had been raised to some high pinnacle abovethe world.Until that evening at the play he had loved Aquilina to distraction.Rather than give her up he would have shut his eyes to herinfidelities; and now all that blind passion had passed away as a cloudvanishes in the sunlight.Jenny was delighted to succeed to her mistress's position and fortune,and did the cashier's will in all things; but Castanier, who could readthe inmost thoughts of the soul, discovered the real motive underlyingthis purely physical devotion. He amused himself with her, however,like a mischievous child who greedily sucks the juice of the cherry andflings away the stone. The next morning at breakfast time, when she wasfully convinced that she was a lady and the mistress of the house,Castanier uttered one by one the thoughts that filled her mind as shedrank her coffee."Do you know what you are thinking, child?" he said, smiling. "I willtell you: 'So all that lovely rosewood furniture that I coveted somuch, and the pretty dresses that I used to try on, are mine now! Allon easy terms that madame refused, I do not know why. My word! if Imight drive about in a carriage, have jewels and pretty things, a boxat the theater, and put something by! with me he should lead a life ofpleasure fit to kill him if he were not as strong as a Turk! I neversaw such a man!'--Was not that just what you were thinking?" he wenton, and something in his voice made Jenny turn pale. "Well, yes, child;you could not stand it, and I am sending you away for your own good;you would perish in the attempt. Come, let us part good friends," andhe coolly dismissed her with a very small sum of money.The first use that Castanier had promised himself that he would make ofthe terrible power bought at the price of his eternal happiness, wasthe full and complete indulgence of all his tastes.He first put his affairs in order, readily settled his account with M.de Nucingen, who found a worthy German to succeed him, and thendetermined on a carouse worthy of the palmiest days of the RomanEmpire. He plunged into dissipation as recklessly as Belshazzar of oldwent to that last feast in Babylon. Like Belshazzar, he saw clearlythrough his revels a gleaming hand that traced his doom in letters offlame, not on the narrow walls of the banqueting chamber, but over thevast spaces of heaven that the rainbow spans. His feast was not,indeed, an orgy confined within the limits of a banquet, for hesquandered all the powers of soul and body in exhausting all thepleasures of earth. The table was in some sort earth itself, the earththat trembled beneath his feet. He was the last festival of thereckless spendthrift who has thrown all prudence to the winds. Thedevil had given him the key of the storehouse of human pleasures; hehad filled and refilled his hands, and he was fast nearing the bottom.In a moment he had felt all that that enormous power could accomplish;in a moment he had exercised it, proved it, wearied of it. What hadhitherto been the sum of human desires became as nothing. So often ithappens that with possession the vast poetry of desire must end, andthe thing possessed is seldom the thing that we dreamed of.Beneath Melmoth's omnipotence lurked this tragical anticlimax of somany a passion, and now the inanity of human nature was revealed to hissuccessor, to whom infinite power brought Nothingness as a dowry.To come to a clear understanding of Castanier's strange position, itmust be borne in mind how suddenly these revolutions of thought andfeeling had been wrought; how quickly they had succeeded each other;and of these things it is hard to give any idea to those who have neverbroken the prison bonds of time, and space, and distance. His relationto the world without had been entirely changed with the expansion ofhis faculties.Like Melmoth himself, Castanier could travel in a few moments over thefertile plains of India, could soar on the wings of demons aboveAfrican desert spaces, or skim the surface of the seas. The sameinsight that could read the inmost thoughts of others, could apprehendat a glance the nature of any material object, just as he caught as itwere all flavors at once upon his tongue. He took his pleasure like adespot; a blow of the ax felled the tree that he might eat its fruits.The transitions, the alternations that measure joy and pain, anddiversify human happiness, no longer existed for him. He had socompletely glutted his appetites that pleasure must overpass the limitsof pleasure to tickle a palate cloyed with satiety, and suddenly grownfastidious beyond all measure, so that ordinary pleasures becamedistasteful. Conscious that at will he was the master of all the womenthat he could desire, knowing that his power was irresistible, he didnot care to exercise it; they were pliant to his unexpressed wishes, tohis most extravagant caprices, until he felt a horrible thirst forlove, and would have love beyond their power to give.The world refused him nothing save faith and prayer, the soothing andconsoling love that is not of this world. He was obeyed--it was ahorrible position.The torrents of pain, and pleasure, and thought that shook his soul andhis bodily frame would have overwhelmed the strongest human being; butin him there was a power of vitality proportioned to the power of thesensations that assailed him. He felt within him a vague immensity oflonging that earth could not satisfy. He spent his days on outspreadwings, longing to traverse the luminous fields of space to otherspheres that he knew afar by intuitive perception, a clear and hopelessknowledge. His soul dried up within him, for he hungered and thirstedafter things that can neither be drunk nor eaten, but for which hecould not choose but crave. His lips, like Melmoth's, burned withdesire; he panted for the unknown, for he knew all things.The mechanism and the scheme of the world was apparent to him, and itsworking interested him no longer; he did not long disguise the profoundscorn that makes of a man of extraordinary powers a sphinx who knowseverything and says nothing, and sees all things with an unmovedcountenance. He felt not the slightest wish to communicate hisknowledge to other men. He was rich with all the wealth of the world,with one effort he could make the circle of the globe, and riches andpower were meaningless for him. He felt the awful melancholy ofomnipotence, a melancholy which Satan and God relieve by the exerciseof infinite power in mysterious ways known to them alone. Castanier hadnot, like his Master, the inextinguishable energy of hate and malice;he felt that he was a devil, but a devil whose time was not yet come,while Satan is a devil through all eternity, and being damned beyondredemption, delights to stir up the world, like a dungheap, with histriple fork and to thwart therein the designs of God. But Castanier,for his misfortune, had one hope left.If in a moment he could move from one pole to the other as a birdsprings restlessly from side to side in its cage, when, like the bird,he had crossed his prison, he saw the vast immensity of space beyondit. That vision of the Infinite left him forever unable to see humanityand its affairs as other men saw them. The insensate fools who long forthe power of the Devil gauge its desirability from a human standpoint;they do not see that with the Devil's power they will likewise assumehis thoughts, and that they will be doomed to remain as men amongcreatures who will no longer understand them. The Nero unknown tohistory who dreams of setting Paris on fire for his privateentertainment, like an exhibition of a burning house on the boards of atheater, does not suspect that if he had that power, Paris would becomefor him as little interesting as an ant heap by the roadside to ahurrying passer-by. The circle of the sciences was for Castaniersomething like a logogriph for a man who does not know the key to it.Kings and Governments were despicable in his eyes. His great debauchhad been in some sort a deplorable farewell to his life as a man. Theearth had grown too narrow for him, for the infernal gifts laid barefor him the secrets of creation--he saw the cause and foresaw its end.He was shut out from all that men call "heaven" in all languages underthe sun; he could no longer think of heaven.Then he came to understand the look on his predecessor's face and thedrying up of the life within; then he knew all that was meant by thebaffled hope that gleamed in Melmoth's eyes; he, too, knew the thirstthat burned those red lips, and the agony of a continual strugglebetween two natures grown to giant size. Even yet he might be an angel,and he knew himself to be a fiend. His was the fate of a sweet andgentle creature that a wizard's malice has imprisoned in a misshapenform, entrapping it by a pact, so that another's will must set it freefrom its detested envelope.As a deception only increases the ardor with which a man of reallygreat nature explores the infinite of sentiment in a woman's heart, soCastanier awoke to find that one idea lay like a weight upon his soul,an idea which was perhaps the key to loftier spheres. The very factthat he had bartered away his eternal happiness led him to dwell inthought upon the future of those who pray and believe. On the morrow ofhis debauch, when he entered into the sober possession of his power,this idea made him feel himself a prisoner; he knew the burden of thewoe that poets, and prophets, and great oracles of faith have set forthfor us in such mighty words; he felt the point of the Flaming Swordplunged into his side, and hurried in search of Melmoth. What hadbecome of his predecessor?The Englishman was living in a mansion in the Rue Frou, nearSaint-Sulpice--a gloomy, dark, damp, and cold abode. The Rue Frouitself is one of the most dismal streets in Paris; it has a northaspect like all the streets that lie at right angles to the left bankof the Seine, and the houses are in keeping with the site. As Castanierstood on the threshold he found that the door itself, like the vaultedroof, was hung with black; rows of lighted tapers shone brilliantly asthough some king were lying in state; and a priest stood on either sideof a catafalque that had been raised there."There is no need to ask why you have come, sir," the old hall portersaid to Castanier; "you are so like our poor dear master that is gone.But if you are his brother, you have come too late to bid him good-by.The good gentleman died the night before last.""How did he die?" Castanier asked of one of the priests."Set your mind at rest," said an old priest; he partly raised as hespoke the black pall that covered the catafalque.Castanier, looking at him, saw one of those faces that faith has madesublime; the soul seemed to shine forth from every line of it, bringinglight and warmth for other men, kindled by the unfailing charitywithin. This was Sir John Melmoth's confessor."Your brother made an end that men may envy, and that must rejoice theangels. Do you know what joy there is in heaven over a sinner thatrepents? His tears of penitence, excited by grace, flowed withoutceasing; death alone checked them. The Holy Spirit dwelt in him. Hisburning words, full of lively faith, were worthy of the Prophet-King.If, in the course of my life, I have never heard a more dreadfulconfession than from the lips of this Irish gentleman, I have likewisenever heard such fervent and passionate prayers. However great themeasures of his sins may have been, his repentance has filled the abyssto overflowing. The hand of God was visibly stretched out above him,for he was completely changed, there was such heavenly beauty in hisface. The hard eyes were softened by tears; the resonant voice thatstruck terror into those who heard it took the tender and compassionatetones of those who themselves have passed through deep humiliation. Heso edified those who heard his words that some who had felt drawn tosee the spectacle of a Christian's death fell on their knees as hespoke of heavenly things, and of the infinite glory of God, and gavethanks and praise to Him. If he is leaving no worldly wealth to hisfamily, no family can possess a greater blessing than this that hesurely gained for them, a soul among the blessed, who will watch overyou all and direct you in the path to heaven."These words made such a vivid impression upon Castanier that heinstantly hurried from the house to the Church of Saint-Sulpice,obeying what might be called a decree of fate. Melmoth's repentance hadstupefied him.At that time, on certain mornings in the week, a preacher, famed forhis eloquence, was wont to hold conferences, in the course of which hedemonstrated the truths of the Catholic faith for the youth of ageneration proclaimed to be indifferent in matters of belief by anothervoice no less eloquent than his own. The conference had been put off toa later hour on account of Melmoth's funeral, so Castanier arrived justas the great preacher was epitomizing the proofs of a future existenceof happiness with all the charm of eloquence and force of expressionwhich have made him famous. The seeds of divine doctrine fell into asoil prepared for them in the old dragoon, into whom the Devil hadglided. Indeed, if there is a phenomenon well attested by experience,is it not the spiritual phenomenon commonly called "the faith of thepeasant"? The strength of belief varies inversely with the amount ofuse that a man has made of his reasoning faculties. Simple people andsoldiers belong to the unreasoning class. Those who have marchedthrough life beneath the banner of instinct are far more ready toreceive the light than minds and hearts overwearied with the world'ssophistries.Castanier had the southern temperament; he had joined the army as a ladof sixteen, and had followed the French flag till he was nearly fortyyears old. As a common trooper, he had fought day and night, and dayafter day, and, as in duty bound, had thought of his horse first, andof himself afterwards. While he served his military apprenticeship,therefore, he had but little leisure in which to reflect on the destinyof man, and when he became an officer he had his men to think of. Hehad been swept from battlefield to battlefield, but he had neverthought of what comes after death. A soldier's life does not demandmuch thinking. Those who cannot understand the lofty political endsinvolved and the interests of nation and nation; who cannot grasppolitical schemes as well as plans of campaign and combine the scienceof the tactician with that of the administrator, are bound to live in astate of ignorance; the most boorish peasant in the most backwarddistrict in France is scarcely in a worse case. Such men as these bearthe brunt of war, yield passive obedience to the brain that directsthem, and strike down the men opposed to them as the woodcutter fellstimber in the forest. Violent physical exertion is succeeded by timesof inertia, when they repair the waste. They fight and drink, fight andeat, fight and sleep, that they may the better deal hard blows; thepowers of the mind are not greatly exercised in this turbulent round ofexistence, and the character is as simple as heretofore.When the men who have shown such energy on the battlefield return toordinary civilization, most of those who have not risen to high rankseem to have acquired no ideas, and to have no aptitude, no capacity,for grasping new ideas. To the utter amazement of a younger generation,those who made our armies so glorious and so terrible are as simple aschildren, and as slow-witted as a clerk at his worst, and the captainof a thundering squadron is scarcely fit to keep a merchant's day-book.Old soldiers of this stamp, therefore, being innocent of any attempt touse their reasoning faculties, act upon their strongest impulses.Castanier's crime was one of those matters that raise so manyquestions, that, in order to debate about it, a moralist might call forits "discussion by clauses," to make use of a parliamentary expression.Passion had counseled the crime; the cruelly irresistible power offeminine witchery had driven him to commit it; no man can say ofhimself, "I will never do that," when a siren joins in the combat andthrows her spells over him.So the word of life fell upon a conscience newly awakened to the truthsof religion which the French Revolution and a soldier's career hadforced Castanier to neglect. The solemn words, "You will be happy ormiserable for all eternity!" made but the more terrible impression uponhim, because he had exhausted earth and shaken it like a barren tree;because his desires could effect all things, so that it was enough thatany spot in earth or heaven should be forbidden him, and he forthwiththought of nothing else. If it were allowable to compare such greatthings with social follies, Castanier's position was not unlike that ofa banker who, finding that his all-powerful millions cannot obtain forhim an entrance into the society of the noblesse, must set his heartupon entering that circle, and all the social privileges that he hasalready acquired are as nothing in his eyes from the moment when hediscovers that a single one is lacking.Here was a man more powerful than all the kings on earth put together;a man who, like Satan, could wrestle with God Himself; leaning againstone of the pillars in the Church of Saint-Sulpice, weighed down by thefeelings and thoughts that oppressed him, and absorbed in the thoughtof a Future, the same thought that had engulfed Melmoth."He was very happy, was Melmoth!" cried Castanier. "He died in thecertain knowledge that he would go to heaven."In a moment the greatest possible change had been wrought in thecashier's ideas. For several days he had been a devil, now he wasnothing but a man; an image of the fallen Adam, of the sacred traditionembodied in all cosmogonies. But while he had thus shrunk to manhood,he retained a germ of greatness, he had been steeped in the Infinite.The power of hell had revealed the divine power. He thirsted for heavenas he had never thirsted after the pleasures of earth, that are so soonexhausted. The enjoyments which the fiend promises are but theenjoyments of earth on a larger scale, but to the joys of heaven thereis no limit. He believed in God, and the spell that gave him thetreasures of the world was as nothing to him now; the treasuresthemselves seemed to him as contemptible as pebbles to an admirer ofdiamonds; they were but gewgaws compared with the eternal glories ofthe other life. A curse lay, he thought, on all things that came to himfrom this source. He sounded dark depths of painful thought as helistened to the service performed for Melmoth. The _Dies ir_ filledhim with awe; he felt all the grandeur of that cry of a repentant soultrembling before the Throne of God. The Holy Spirit, like a devouringflame, passed through him as fire consumes straw.The tears were falling from his eyes when--"Are you a relation of thedead?" the beadle asked him."I am his heir," Castanier answered."Give something for the expenses of the services!" cried the man."No," said the cashier. (The Devil's money should not go to theChurch.)"For the poor!""No.""For repairing the Church!""No.""The Lady Chapel!""No.""For the schools!""No."Castanier went, not caring to expose himself to the sour looks that theirritated functionaries gave him.Outside, in the street, he looked up at the Church of Saint-Sulpice."What made people build the giant cathedrals I have seen in everycountry?" he asked himself. "The feeling shared so widely throughoutall time must surely be based upon something.""Something! Do you call God _something_?" cried his conscience. "God!God! God!..."The word was echoed and rechoed by an inner voice, till it overwhelmedhim; but his feeling of terror subsided as he heard sweet distantsounds of music that he had caught faintly before. They were singing inthe church, he thought, and his eyes scanned the great doorway. But ashe listened more closely, the sounds poured upon him from all sides; helooked round the square, but there was no sign of any musicians. Themelody brought visions of a distant heaven and far-off gleams of hope;but it also quickened the remorse that had set the lost soul in aferment. He went on his way through Paris, walking as men walk who arecrushed beneath the burden of their sorrow, seeing everything withunseeing eyes, loitering like an idler, stopping without cause,muttering to himself, careless of the traffic, making no effort toavoid a blow from a plank of timber.Imperceptibly repentance brought him under the influence of the divinegrace that soothes while it bruises the heart so terribly. His facecame to wear a look of Melmoth, something great, with a trace ofmadness in the greatness. A look of dull and hopeless distress, mingledwith the excited eagerness of hope, and, beneath it all, a gnawingsense of loathing for all that the world can give. The humblest ofprayers lurked in the eyes that saw with such dreadful clearness. Hispower was the measure of his anguish. His body was bowed down by thefearful storm that shook his soul, as the tall pines bend before theblast. Like his predecessor, he could not refuse to bear the burden oflife; he was afraid to die while he bore the yoke of hell. The tormentgrew intolerable.At last, one morning, he bethought himself how that Melmoth (now amongthe blessed) had made the proposal of an exchange, and how that he hadaccepted it; others, doubtless, would follow his example; for in an ageproclaimed, by the inheritors of the eloquence of the Fathers of theChurch, to be fatally indifferent to religion, it should be easy tofind a man who would accept the conditions of the contract in order toprove its advantages."There is one place where you can learn what kings will fetch in themarket; where nations are weighed in the balance and systems appraised;where the value of a government is stated in terms of the five-francpiece; where ideas and beliefs have their price, and everything isdiscounted; where God Himself, in a manner, borrows on the security ofHis revenue of souls, for the Pope has a running account there. Is itnot there that I should go to traffic in souls?"Castanier went quite joyously on 'Change, thinking that it would be aseasy to buy a soul as to invest money in the Funds. Any ordinary personwould have feared ridicule, but Castanier knew by experience that adesperate man takes everything seriously. A prisoner lying undersentence of death would listen to the madman who should tell him thatby pronouncing some gibberish he could escape through the keyhole; forsuffering is credulous, and clings to an idea until it fails, as theswimmer borne along by the current clings to the branch that snaps inhis hand.Toward four o'clock that afternoon Castanier appeared among the littleknots of men who were transacting private business after 'Change. Hewas personally known to some of the brokers; and while affecting to bein search of an acquaintance, he managed to pick up the current gossipand rumors of failure."Catch me negotiating bills for Claparon & Co., my boy. The bankcollector went round to return their acceptances to them this morning,"said a fat banker in his outspoken way. "If you have any of theirpaper, look out."Claparon was in the building, in deep consultation with a man wellknown for the ruinous rate at which he lent money. Castanier wentforthwith in search of the said Claparon, a merchant who had areputation for taking heavy risks that meant wealth or utter ruin. Themoney lender walked away as Castanier came up. A gesture betrayed thespeculator's despair."Well, Claparon, the bank wants a hundred thousand francs of you, andit is four o'clock; the thing is known, and it is too late to arrangeyour little failure comfortably," said Castanier."Sir!""Speak lower," the cashier went on. "How if I were to propose a pieceof business that would bring you in as much money as you require?""It would not discharge my liabilities; every business that I everheard of wants a little time to simmer in.""I know of something that will set you straight in a moment," answeredCastanier; "but first you would have to--""Do what?""Sell your share of Paradise. It is a matter of business like anythingelse, isn't it? We all hold shares in the great Speculation ofEternity.""I tell you this," said Claparon angrily, "that I am just the man tolend you a slap in the face. When a man is in trouble, it is no time toplay silly jokes on him.""I am talking seriously," said Castanier, and he drew a bundle of notesfrom his pocket."In the first place," said Claparon, "I am not going to sell my soul tothe Devil for a trifle. I want five hundred thousand francs before Istrike--""Who talks of stinting you?" asked Castanier, cutting him short. "Youshould have more gold than you could stow in the cellars of the Bank ofFrance."He held out a handful of notes. That decided Claparon."Done," he cried; "but how is the bargain to be made?""Let us go over yonder, no one is standing there," said Castanier,pointing to a corner of the court.Claparon and his tempter exchanged a few words, with their faces turnedto the wall. None of the onlookers guessed the nature of this by-play,though their curiosity was keenly excited by the strange gestures ofthe two contracting parties. When Castanier returned, there was asudden outburst of amazed exclamation. As in the Assembly where theleast event immediately attracts attention, all faces were turned tothe two men who had caused the sensation, and a shiver passed throughall beholders at the change that had taken place in them.The men who form the moving crowd that fills the Stock Exchange aresoon known to each other by sight. They watch each other like playersround a card table. Some shrewd observers can tell how a man will playand the condition of his exchequer from a survey of his face; and theStock Exchange is simply a vast card table. Everyone, therefore, hadnoticed Claparon and Castanier. The latter (like the Irishman beforehim[1]) had been muscular and powerful, his eyes were full of light,his color high. The dignity and power in his face had struck awe intothem all; they wondered how old Castanier had come by it; and now theybeheld Castanier divested of his power, shrunken, wrinkled, aged, andfeeble. He had drawn Claparon out of the crowd with the energy of asick man in a fever fit; he had looked like an opium eater during thebrief period of excitement that the drug can give; now, on his return,he seemed to be in the condition of utter exhaustion in which thepatient dies after the fever departs, or to be suffering from thehorrible prostration that follows on excessive indulgence in thedelights of narcotics. The infernal power that had upheld him throughhis debauches had left him, and the body was left unaided and alone toendure the agony of remorse and the heavy burden of sincere repentance.Claparon's troubles everyone could guess; but Claparon reappeared, onthe other hand, with sparkling eyes, holding his head high with thepride of Lucifer. The crisis had passed from the one man to the other.[1] Referring to John Melmoth--see note at head of this story.--EDITOR."Now you can drop off with an easy mind, old man," said Claparon toCastanier."For pity's sake, send for a cab and for a priest; send for the curateof Saint-Sulpice!" answered the old dragoon, sinking down upon thecurbstone.The words "a priest" reached the ears of several people, and produceduproarious jeering among the stockbrokers, for faith with thesegentlemen means a belief that a scrap of paper called a mortgagerepresents an estate, and the List of Fundholders is their Bible."Shall I have time to repent?" said Castanier to himself, in a piteousvoice, that impressed Claparon.A cab carried away the dying man; the speculator went to the bank atonce to meet his bills; and the momentary sensation produced upon thethrong of business men by the sudden change on the two faces, vanishedlike the furrow cut by a ship's keel in the sea. News of the greatestimportance kept the attention of the world of commerce on the alert;and when commercial interests are at stake, Moses might appear with histwo luminous horns, and his coming would scarcely receive the honors ofa pun; the gentlemen whose business it is to write the Market Reportswould ignore his existence.When Claparon had made his payments, fear seized upon him. There was nomistake about his power. He went on 'Change again, and offered hisbargain to other men in embarrassed circumstances. The Devil's bond,"together with the rights, easements, and privileges appertainingthereunto,"--to use the expression of the notary who succeededClaparon, changed hands for the sum of seven hundred thousand francs.The notary in his turn parted with the agreement with the Devil forfive hundred thousand francs to a building contractor in difficulties,who likewise was rid of it to an iron merchant in consideration of ahundred thousand crowns. In fact, by five o'clock people had ceased tobelieve in the strange contract, and purchasers were lacking for wantof confidence.At half-past five the holder of the bond was a house painter, who waslounging by the door of the building in the Rue Feydeau, where at thattime stockbrokers temporarily congregated. The house painter, simplefellow, could not think what was the matter with him. He "felt allanyhow"; so he told his wife when he went home.The Rue Feydeau, as idlers about town are aware, is a place ofpilgrimage for youths who for lack of a mistress bestow their ardentaffection upon the whole sex. On the first floor of the most rigidlyrespectable domicile therein dwelt one of those exquisite creatureswhom it has pleased heaven to endow with the rarest and most surpassingbeauty. As it is impossible that they should all be duchesses or queens(since there are many more pretty women in the world than titles andthrones for them to adorn), they are content to make a stockbroker or abanker happy at a fixed price. To this good-natured beauty, Euphrasiaby name, an unbounded ambition had led a notary's clerk to aspire. Inshort, the second clerk in the office of Matre Crottat, notary, hadfallen in love with her, as youth at two and twenty can fall in love.The scrivener would have murdered the Pope and run amuck through thewhole sacred college to procure the miserable sum of a hundred louis topay for a shawl which had turned Euphrasia's head, at which price herwaiting woman had promised that Euphrasia should be his. The infatuatedyouth walked to and fro under Madame Euphrasia's windows, like thepolar bears in their cage at the Jardin des Plantes, with his righthand thrust beneath his waistcoat in the region of the heart, which hewas fit to tear from his bosom, but as yet he had only wrenched at theelastic of his braces."What can one do to raise ten thousand francs?" he asked himself."Shall I make off with the money that I must pay on the registration ofthat conveyance? Good heavens! my loan would not ruin the purchaser, aman with seven millions! And then next day I would fling myself at hisfeet and say, 'I have taken ten thousand francs belonging to you, sir;I am twenty-two years of age, and I am in love with Euphrasia--that ismy story. My father is rich, he will pay you back; do not ruin me! Havenot you yourself been twenty-two years old and madly in love?' Butthese beggarly landowners have no souls! He would be quite likely togive me up to the public prosecutor, instead of taking pity upon me.Good God! if it were only possible to sell your soul to the Devil! Butthere is neither a God nor a Devil; it is all nonsense out of nurserytales and old wives' talk. What shall I do?""If you have a mind to sell your soul to the Devil, sir," said thehouse painter, who had overheard something that the clerk let fall,"you can have the ten thousand francs.""And Euphrasia!" cried the clerk, as he struck a bargain with the devilthat inhabited the house painter.The pact concluded, the frantic clerk went to find the shawl, andmounted Madame Euphrasia's staircase; and as (literally) the devil wasin him, he did not come down for twelve days, drowning the thought ofhell and of his privileges in twelve days of love and riot andforgetfulness, for which he had bartered away all his hopes of aparadise to come.And in this way the secret of the vast power discovered and acquired bythe Irishman, the offspring of Maturin's brain, was lost to mankind;and the various Orientalists, Mystics, and Archaeologists who take aninterest in these matters were unable to hand down to posterity theproper method of invoking the Devil, for the following sufficientreasons:--On the thirteenth day after these frenzied nuptials the wretched clerklay on a pallet bed in a garret in his master's house in the RueSaint-Honor. Shame, the stupid goddess who dares not behold herself,had taken possession of the young man. He had fallen ill; he wouldnurse himself; misjudged the quantity of a remedy devised by the skillof a practitioner well known on the walls of Paris, and succumbed tothe effects of an overdose of mercury. His corpse was as black as amole's back. A devil had left unmistakable traces of its passage there;could it have been Ashtaroth?* * * * *"The estimable youth to whom you refer has been carried away to theplanet Mercury," said the head clerk to a German demonologist who cameto investigate the matter at first hand."I am quite prepared to believe it," answered the Teuton."Oh!""Yes, sir," returned the other. "The opinion you advance coincideswith the very words of Jacob Boehme. In the forty-eighth propositionof _The Threefold Life of Man_ he says that 'if God hath brought allthings to pass with a LET THERE BE, the FIAT is the secret matrix whichcomprehends and apprehends the nature which is formed by the spiritborn of Mercury and of God.'""What do you say, sir?"The German delivered his quotation afresh."We do not know it," said the clerks."_Fiat?..._" said a clerk. "_Fiat lux!_""You can verify the citation for yourselves," said the German. "Youwill find the passage in the _Treatise of the Threefold Life of Man_,page 75; the edition was published by M. Migneret in 1809. It wastranslated into French by a philosopher who had a great admiration forthe famous shoemaker.""Oh! he was a shoemaker, was he?" said the head clerk."In Prussia," said the German."Did he work for the King of Prussia?" inquired a Boeotian of a secondclerk."He must have vamped up his prose," said a third."That man is colossal!" cried the fourth, pointing to the Teuton.That gentleman, though a demonologist of the first rank, did not knowthe amount of devilry to be found in a notary's clerk. He went awaywithout the least idea that they were making game of him, and fullyunder the impression that the young fellows regarded Boehme as acolossal genius."Education is making strides in France," said he to himself.THE END.