Part 20 (1/2)

These phrases flew about like the last discharge of rockets at the end of a display of fireworks; and were uttered, perhaps, more in earnest than in jest.

”My good friend,” Emile said solemnly, ”I shall be quite satisfied with an income of two hundred thousand livres. Please to set about it at once.”

”Do you not know the cost, Emile?” asked Raphael.

”A nice excuse!” the poet cried; ”ought we not to sacrifice ourselves for our friends?”

”I have almost a mind to wish that you all were dead,” Valentin made answer, with a dark, inscrutable look at his boon companions.

”Dying people are frightfully cruel,” said Emile, laughing. ”You are rich now,” he went on gravely; ”very well, I will give you two months at most before you grow vilely selfish. You are so dense already that you cannot understand a joke. You have only to go a little further to believe in your Magic Skin.”

Raphael kept silent, fearing the banter of the company; but he drank immoderately, trying to drown in intoxication the recollection of his fatal power.

III. THE AGONY

In the early days of December an old man of some seventy years of age pursued his way along the Rue de Varenne, in spite of the falling rain.

He peered up at the door of each house, trying to discover the address of the Marquis Raphael de Valentin, in a simple, childlike fas.h.i.+on, and with the abstracted look peculiar to philosophers. His face plainly showed traces of a struggle between a heavy mortification and an authoritative nature; his long, gray hair hung in disorder about a face like a piece of parchment shriveling in the fire. If a painter had come upon this curious character, he would, no doubt, have transferred him to his sketchbook on his return, a thin, bony figure, clad in black, and have inscribed beneath it: ”Cla.s.sical poet in search of a rhyme.”

When he had identified the number that had been given to him, this reincarnation of Rollin knocked meekly at the door of a splendid mansion.

”Is Monsieur Raphael in?” the worthy man inquired of the Swiss in livery.

”My Lord the Marquis sees n.o.body,” said the servant, swallowing a huge morsel that he had just dipped in a large bowl of coffee.

”There is his carriage,” said the elderly stranger, pointing to a fine equipage that stood under the wooden canopy that sheltered the steps before the house, in place of a striped linen awning. ”He is going out; I will wait for him.”

”Then you might wait here till to-morrow morning, old boy,” said the Swiss. ”A carriage is always waiting for monsieur. Please to go away. If I were to let any stranger come into the house without orders, I should lose an income of six hundred francs.”

A tall old man, in a costume not unlike that of a subordinate in the Civil Service, came out of the vestibule and hurried part of the way down the steps, while he made a survey of the astonished elderly applicant for admission.

”What is more, here is M. Jonathan,” the Swiss remarked; ”speak to him.”

Fellow-feeling of some kind, or curiosity, brought the two old men together in a central s.p.a.ce in the great entrance-court. A few blades of gra.s.s were growing in the crevices of the pavement; a terrible silence reigned in that great house. The sight of Jonathan's face would have made you long to understand the mystery that brooded over it, and that was announced by the smallest trifles about the melancholy place.

When Raphael inherited his uncle's vast estate, his first care had been to seek out the old and devoted servitor of whose affection he knew that he was secure. Jonathan had wept tears of joy at the sight of his young master, of whom he thought he had taken a final farewell; and when the marquis exalted him to the high office of steward, his happiness could not be surpa.s.sed. So old Jonathan became an intermediary power between Raphael and the world at large. He was the absolute disposer of his master's fortune, the blind instrument of an unknown will, and a sixth sense, as it were, by which the emotions of life were communicated to Raphael.

”I should like to speak with M. Raphael, sir,” said the elderly person to Jonathan, as he climbed up the steps some way, into a shelter from the rain.

”To speak with my Lord the Marquis?” the steward cried. ”He scarcely speaks even to me, his foster-father!”

”But I am likewise his foster-father,” said the old man. ”If your wife was his foster-mother, I fed him myself with the milk of the Muses. He is my nursling, my child, carus alumnus! I formed his mind, cultivated his understanding, developed his genius, and, I venture to say it, to my own honor and glory. Is he not one of the most remarkable men of our epoch? He was one of my pupils in two lower forms, and in rhetoric. I am his professor.”

”Ah, sir, then you are M. Porriquet?”

”Exactly, sir, but----”

”Hus.h.!.+ hus.h.!.+” Jonathan called to two underlings, whose voices broke the monastic silence that shrouded the house.

”But is the Marquis ill, sir?” the professor continued.

”My dear sir,” Jonathan replied, ”Heaven only knows what is the matter with my master. You see, there are not a couple of houses like ours anywhere in Paris. Do you understand? Not two houses. Faith, that there are not. My Lord the Marquis had this hotel purchased for him; it formerly belonged to a duke and a peer of France; then he spent three hundred thousand francs over furnis.h.i.+ng it. That's a good deal, you know, three hundred thousand francs! But every room in the house is a perfect wonder. 'Good,' said I to myself when I saw this magnificence; 'it is just like it used to be in the time of my lord, his late grandfather; and the young marquis is going to entertain all Paris and the Court!' Nothing of the kind! My lord refused to see any one whatever. 'Tis a funny life that he leads, M. Porriquet, you understand.