ON THE EVENING of the day when M. Louis de Bouille had the honour to be received by the queen first, and by the king afterwards, between five and six o'clock, there passed on the third and fourth story of an old, small and sombre house, of Rue de la Juiverie, a scene to which we beg our readers to permit us to introduce them all.
The interior of the room is miserable; it is occupied by three persons—a man, a woman, and a child.
The man wears an old uniform of a sergeant of the French Guards, venerated since July 14, when the French Guards joined the people, and exchanged shots with the Germans of M. de Lambesq and the Swiss of M. de Bezenval.
He has in his hand a full pack of cards, from the ace, deux, trois of the same colour, to king. He tries for the hundredth, for the thousandth, and for the ten thousandth time to effect a perfect martingale. A card with as many holes as there are stars lies by him.
The woman wears an old silk dress; misery seems in her case the more terrible, because it appears with the remnants of luxury. Her hair is supported by a copper comb, which once was gilt. Her hands are scrupulously clean, and from that cleanliness have acquired a certain aristocratic air. Her nails were carefully rounded; and her slippers, out of shape and with holes made in them here and there, were once brodes, with gold, were worn over the remnants of dress stockings.
Her face was that of a woman of thirty-four or five years, which if artistically managed according to the fashion of the day, would give the wearer a right to assume any age with lustrum, as the Abbe Celle said, and even two lustra; women ever cling closely to twenty-nine. That face, however, without rouge and Spanish white, deprived of all means of concealing grief and misery, the third and fourth wings of time, seemed four years older than it was in fact.
The child is five years old; his hair is frise an chertibui; his cheeks, are round; he has the devilish eyes of his mother, the gourmande mouth of the father, and the caprices and idleness of both.
He is clad in the remnants of an old mottled velvet habit: and while he eats a piece of bread covered with confits by the grocer at the next corner, tears to pieces the remnant of an old tri-coloured sash fringed with copper, and throws the fragments into an old grey felt hat.
The room is lighted by a candle with a huge wick, to which an empty bottle serves as a candlestick, and which, while it places the man in the light, leaves the rest of the room in total darkness.
If after all this, explained with our usual precision, the reader has learned nothing, listen.
The child speaks first; after having thrown down the last of his bread and butter, and thrown himself down on the bed, which is now reduced to a mere mattress:
“Mamma, I do not want any more bread and preserves, puh!”
“Well, Toussaint, what do you wish?”
“Do you hear, Beausire?” said the woman.
“He shall have some to-morrow.”
“I shall have it to-night!” cries the child, with an angry yell which betokens a stormy time.
“Toussaint, my child, you had best be silent, or I will have to settle with you!”
“You touch him, drunkard!” said the mother, “and you will have to settle with me,” and she stretched forth that white hand, which, thanks to the care taken with her nails, might on occasions become a claw.
“Who the devil wishes to touch him? You know very well what I mean, for though one sometimes beats the dresses of Eve, mother, one always respects the jacket of the child; come, kiss your dear Beausire, who in eight days will be rich as a king.”
“When you are rich as a king, my dear fellow, I will kiss you; but—now! no, no!”
“But I tell you, it is certain as if I had a million. Give me an advance for good luck, and then the baker will trust us.”
“Bah! the idea of a man who wants credit for four pounds of bread, talking about millions!”
“I want some barley-sugar,” cried the child in a tone becoming more and more menacing.
“Come now, you man of millions, give the child some barley-sugar!”
“Well,” said he, “yesterday I gave you my last piece of twenty-four sous.”
“Since you have money,” said the child, turning to her whom M. Beausire called Oliva, “give me a sou to buy some barley-sugar. ”
“Here are two, you bad boy, and take care not to hurt yourself as you go down the steps.”
“Thank you, dear mother,” said the child, leaping up with joy, and now reaching her his hand.
The woman having looked after the child until the door closed on him, glanced at the father, and said:
“Ah! M. de Beausire! will your intelligence extract us from our miserable condition? Unless it do, I must have recourse to mine.”
She pronounced these last words with the finniking air of a woman who looks in the glass and says, Do not be alarmed; with such a face one does not die of hunger.
“You know, dear Nicole, that I am very busy,” said M. de Beausire.
“Yes, in shuffling cards and pricking a piece of paste-board.”
“There you begin again! M. de Beausire! I warn you that I shall go among my old acquaintances, and see if I can find no one who has influence, and who will be kind enough to lock you up as a madman at Charenton!”
“But if I tell you, it is infallible!”
“Ah! if M. de Richelieu were not dead!” murmured the woman in a low voice.
“If the Cardinal de Rohan were not ruined!”
“One might find resources, and one would not be forced to share the misery of an old rector like this!”
With the gesture of a queen, Mademoiselle Nicole Legay, called Madame Oliva, pointed disdainfully at Beausire.
“But I tell you.,” said the man, “to-morrow we shall be rich!”
“M. Beausire, show me the first ten louis of your millions, and I will believe the rest!”
“Well, you shall see this evening the ten first louis d'or. That is exactly the sum promised me.”
“And you will give them to me, dear De Beausire?” said Nicole, eagerly.
“I will give you five to buy a silk dress for yourself and a velvet jacket for the young one. And with the other five I will win the millions!”
“You are going to play again?”
“Yes. I have found my martingale.”
“Yes, like that one with which you lost the sixty thousand livres left of your Portuguese business!”
“Money idly earned never lasts,” said Beausire, sententiously. “I always thought that from the manner that money was acquired, it would do us no good.”
“Then this comes to you by inheritance? You had an uncle who died in the Indies, I presume, and he has left you these ten louis?”
“These ten louis, Mademoiselle Nicole Legay,” said Beausire, with an air of great superiority, “will be gained honestly! do you understand? even honourably! The more so, as it is a cause in which I and all the nobility in France are interested.”
“You are then noble, M. Beausire?” said Nicole, mockingly.
“Say De Beausire, if you please, Madame Legay de Beausire,” added he; “as the certificate of your child's birth, in the register of the church of St. Paul, which your servant Jean Baptiste Toussaint de Beausire signed when he gave the boy his own name.”
“A very pretty present,” murmured Nicole.
“And my fortune,” added De Beausire, emphatically.
“If you grant him nothing else, the poor child is certain to die in the almshouse or hospital.”
“Indeed, Nicole,” said the man. “This is insupportable, you are never satisfied.”
“Then, do not hear it,” said Nicole, letting loose the dyke of her long-repressed wrath. “Eh! good God! who asks you to hear it? Thank God I am not anxious either for myself or for my child, and am ready this very evening to seek my fortune elsewhere.” Nicole took three steps towards the door.
“Beausire advanced to the same door, which he barred with his arms. “But when you are told that this fortune—”
“Will come this evening. Even if the martingale be lost, which is impossible, after all my calculations, we will only have lost five louis. That is all.”
“There are moments when five louis are a fortune, Mr. Spenthrift. You do not know that you have wasted the whole of our income.”
“That, Nicole, proves my merit. If I did waste, I wasted what I had gained. Besides, there is a god who watches over adroit people.”
“Ah yes! down there, perhaps.”
“Nicole,” said Beausire, seriously, “are you an atheist?”
Nicole shrugged her shoulders.
“Do you belong to the school of Voltaire, which denies a providence?”
“There is nothing astonishing in the fact that one sprung, like you, from the people, should have such ideas; but I inform you, that they do not suit my social caste, and my ideas of right and wrong.”
“M. de Beausire, you are insolent.”
“I, do you understand me, madame? have faith, and if any one should say that my son, Jean Baptiste Toussaint de Beausire, who went downstairs with two sous, to buy a piece of barley-sugar, will come up with a purse of gold in his hand, I would say, certainly, if it be the will of God.”
Beausire lifted his eyes piously to heaven.
Just then the voice of the young heir was heard on the stairway, shouting lustily, “Papa! mamma!” and the nearer he came, the louder he bellowed.
“What has happened?” said Nicole, as she opened the door anxiously, as even the worst mothers do for their children's sake. “Come, child, come.”
“Papa! mamma!” said the voice, coming closer and closer, like that of ventriloquist, imitating sounds from the depth of a cave.
“I would not be surprised,” said Beausire, “if the miracle were accomplished, for the child's voice is so joyous, that he may have found the purse spoken of.”
Just then the child appeared at the top step of the stairway, and rushed into the room, having in one hand a stick of barley-sugar, clasping a bundle of candy to hie breast, and showing in his right hand a louis d'or, which in the dimness of the candle shone like the star Aldebaran.
“My God!” said Nicole, suffering the door to close itself. “What has happened?” She covered the gelatinous face of the young vagabond with such kisses that nothing makes disgusting, for they are a mother's.
“This is,” said Beausire, adroitly taking possession of the gold louis d'or, “good, and, is worth twenty-four livres.”
He then said to the child, “Tell me, my son, where you found this; for I wish to look for the others.”
“I did not find it, papa,” said the child. “It was given to me.”
“Who gave it to you?” said the mother.
“A gentleman, who came into the grocer's while I was there,” and as he spoke, the young scamp crushed the barley-sugar in his teeth; “a gentleman—
Beausire echoed the words, “A gentleman?”
“Yes, papa, a gentleman, who came into the grocer's while I was there, and said, 'Monsieur, do you not now serve a nobleman named De Beausire?'”
Beausire looked up proudly, and Nicole shrugged her shoulders. “What said the grocer, my son?” asked Beausire.
“He replied: 'I do not know if he be noble or not, but his name is Beausire.' 'Does he not live near here?' asked the gentleman. 'Here, in the house next door to the left, on the third story, at the head of the staircase. This is his son.' 'Give all sorts of good things to this child,' said he, 'I will pay.' He then said to me, 'Here, my lad, is a louis, to buy more when they are gone.' He then put the money in my hand, the grocer gave me this package, and I left very well satisfied. Where is my louis?”
The child, who had not seen the sleight of hand by which Beausire took possession of his louis, began to look around for it everywhere.
“Awkward fellow,” said Beausire, “you have lost it.”
“No, no, no!” said the young one.
The discussion might have been serious, but for an event we are about to relate, and which necessarily terminated it.
While the child, though evidently in doubt himself, was hunting everywhere on the floor for the money, which was snugly ensconced in Beausire's pocket, while Beausire admired the intelligence of young Toussaint, manifested by his relating the story we just told, while Nicole partook of her husband's admiration of the precocious eloquence, and asked who the bestower of bonbons and giver of gold possibly could be, the door opened, and a voice of exquisite softness exclaimed:
“Bon soir, M. de Beausire, bon soir, Toussaint, bon soir, Mdlle. Nicole.”
All turned to the place whence the voice came. At the door, smiling on this family picture, was a man elegantly dressed.
“Ah! the gentleman who gave me the bonbons!” exclaimed Toussaint.
“Count Cagliostro!” said Nicole and Beausire.
“You have a charming child, M. de Beausire, and you should be proud of him.”
After these gracious words of the count, there was a moment of silence, during which Cagliostro advanced to the middle of the chamber, and looked around him, without doubt, to form an idea of the moral and pecuniary condition of his old acquaintances.
“Ah! monsieur! what a misfortune, I have lost my louis!” exclaimed Toussaint.
Nicole was about to tell the truth, but she reflected that if she held her tongue, the child might get another louis, which she would inherit.
“You have lost your louis, my poor child?” said Cagliostro; “here are two more; try not to lose them this time.”
“Here, mamma,” said he, turning to Nicole, “here is one for me, and another for you.”
The child divided his treasure with his mother.
Cagliostro had remarked the tenacity with which the false sergeant followed his purse. As he saw it disappear in the depth of his pocket, the lover of Nicole sighed.
“Eh! what, M. de Beausire,” said Cagliostro, “always melancholy?”
“Yes, count, and you always a millionaire.”
“Eh, my God! You, who are one of the greatest philanthropists I ever knew in all modern times and in antiquity, should be aware of an axiom, honoured in all times, 'Money does not bring happiness.' I have seen you comparatively rich.”
“Yes, it is true. I had a hundred thousand francs. But what are a hundred thousand francs to the huge sums you expend?”
“Now tell me,” said Cagliostro, “would you change your position, even though you have not one louis, except that you took from the unfortunate Toussaint?”
“Monsieur!” said the old bailiff.
“Do not let us quarrel, M. de Beausire; we did so once, and you had to look on the other side of the window for your sword. You remember? See what a thing it is to have memory. Well, I ask you now, would you change your position, though you have only the unfortunate louis you took from poor Toussaint,” on this occasion the allegation passed without any recrimination, “for the precarious position from which I have sought to extricate you?”
“Indeed, count, you are right: I would not change. Alas, at that time I was separated from my dear Nicole.”
“And slightly pursued by the police, on account of your Portugal affair, M. de Beausire. It was a bad affair, as far as I can recollect.”
“It is forgotten, count,” said Beausire.
“Ah! so much the better, for it must have made you uneasy. Do not, however, be too confident that such is the case. Rude divers are found in the police, and it matters not how deep the waters of oblivion be, some of them might reach the bottom; a great crime is found as easy as a rich pearl.”
“But, count, for the misery to which we are reduced—
“You would be happy. You only need a thousand louis to be completely happy.”
The eyes of Nicole glittered; those of Beausire seemed a jet of flame.
Beausire said, “With the half we would buy, that is to say, had we twenty-four thousand livres, we would buy a farm, with the other, some little rent, and I would become a labourer.”
“While Nicole would devote herself entirely to the education of her child.”
“Like Cornelia. Monsieur de Beausire, this would be beautiful; but you do not expect to earn that money in the affair you are at present engaged in.”
Beausire trembled. “What affair?”
“That in which you are to figure as a sergeant of the guards—the affair for which you have a rendezvous to-night under the arches of the Place Royale?”
Beausire became pale as death. “Count,” said he, clasping his hands in a supplicating manner.
“Good! you digress already; am I a policeman?”
“Now I told you,” said Nicole, “that you were engaged in some wicked business.”
“Then you too, Mdlle. Legay, know about this business?”
“No, count, only this: whenever he conceals anything from me, the reason is, that it is bad, and I cannot be quiet.”
“Everything has a good and a bad side; good for some, bad for others; any operation cannot be good for all or bad for all. Well, it is important to be on the right side.”
“Well, and it appears that I am not to be on the right side?”
“Not at all, M. de Beausire, not at all; I will add even, that if you engage in it on this occasion, not your honour, but your life will be in danger; besides risking your fortune, you will certainly be hung.”
“Monsieur,” said De Beausire, trying to keep his countenance, but wiping away the sweat on his brow, “noblemen are not hung.”
“That is true; but to obtain the honour of decollation, it will be necessary to prove your pedigree, which probably is so long, that the court would become weary, and order you to be hung. But perhaps you will say, when the cause is good the mode matters little:
'Tis not the axe that brings disgrace, but crime!'
Yet more and more terrified, De Beausire said: “Yes; one is not so much devoted to his opinions as to shed one's life for them.”
“Diable, 'one can live but once,' as a great poet said, not so great as the first, however, but who yet had something of reason about him.”
“Count, in the course of the little intercourse I have had with you. I have observed that you have a way of talking which makes a man's hair stand erect, especially if he be a timid man.”
“Diable, that is not my intention,” said Cagliostro: “besides, you are not a timid man.”
“No,” said Beausire, “not if it be necessary to be otherwise, but under certain circumstances.”
“Yes, I understand: where the galleys for theft are behind a man, and before him a gallows for high treason, lese-nation now, as it used to be called lese-majeste. It would be now lese-nation to carry away the king.”
“Monsieur!” said Beausire, with terror.
“Unfortunate man!” said Oliva: “was it on this carrying away that you built all your hopes of gold?”
“And he was not altogether wrong, my dear, except as I had the honour just now to tell you, everything has a good and a bad side. Beausire was stupid enough to kiss the bad faces, to side with the wrong parties; he has but to change, and all will be right.”
“Count,” cried Beausire, “what must I do?”
“Fancy one thing, my dear sir,” said Cagliostro.
“Suppose your plot fails; suppose the accomplices of the masked man, the man with the brown cloak, be arrested and condemned to death. Suppose—do not be offended by supposition; after supposition we will ultimately arrive at a fact—suppose yourself one of those accomplices—suppose the rope around your neck, and in reply to your lamentations you were told—for in such a situation a man always laments, more or less, be he ever so brave—”
“Go on, count, go on, for mercy's sake. It seems to me I am already strangled.”
“Pardieu, it is not surprising, I suppose, to you to feel the rope around your neck, eh? Well, suppose they were to reply to all your lamentations, my dear M. de Beausire, 'It is your own fault'?”
“'How is this?' the voice will say; 'you might not only have escaped from the unpleasant fix in which you are, but also have gained a thousand louis, with which you could have bought the pretty house in which you were to have lived with Mademoiselle Oliva and little Toussaint, with the income of five hundred livres, derived from the twelve thousand not expended in the purchase of the house, you might live, as you say, like a farmer, wearing slippers in summer and wooden shoes in winter. Instead of this charming picture, however, we have before our eyes the Place de Greve, planted with two or three ugly-looking scaffolds, from the arm of the highest of which you hang. Pah! De Beausire, the prospect is bad.'”
“How, though, could I escape this evil exit? How else could I have gained the thousand louis, and assured the tranquillity of Nicole and Toussaint?”
“You still will ask questions. 'Nothing will be more facile,' the voice will reply. 'You had Count Cagliostro within two feet of you.' 'I know him,' you will say; 'a foreign nobleman living in Paris, and who is wearied to death when news is scarce.' 'That is it; well, you had only to go to him, and say, “Count.”'”
“'I did not, though, know where he lived—I did not know that he was in Paris—I did not even know that he was alive.'
“'Then, my dear M. de Beausire,' the voice will answer, 'he came to you for the very purpose, and from that time confess that you had no excuse. Well, you had only to say to him: “Count, I know you are always anxious for news.” “I am.” “I have something rare: Monsieur, the brother of the king, conspires.”—“Bah! yes.”—“With the Marquis de Favras.”—“Not possible!”—“Yes, I speak advisedly, for I am one of his agents.” “Indeed! what is the object of the plot?” “To carry away the king, and carry him to Peronne. Well, count, to amuse you, I will come every day and every hour to inform you of the-state of affairs.” Then the count, who is a generous nobleman, would have answered: “M. de Beausire, will you really do this?” “Yes.” “Well, as every trouble deserves a salary, if you keep the promise you have made, I have in a certain place twenty-four thousand livres, which will be at your service: I will put them on this risk, that if you inform me of the day when the king is to be taken away by M. de Favras, when you come to tell me, on my honour as a gentleman, the twenty-four thousand livres will be given you, as are these ten louis, not as a loan to he repaid, but as a simple gift.”'”
At these words, Cagliostro took the heavy purse from his pocket, and took ten louis, which, to tell the truth, Beausire advanced an open hand to receive.
Cagliostro put aside his hand.
“Excuse me, M. de Beausire, but I suppose we can return to suppositions?”
“Yes; but,” said M. de Beausire, whose eyes shone like two pieces of burning coal, “did you not say, count, that from supposition to supposition, we would gradually reach the fact?”
Beausire hesitated; let us say that it was not poverty, fidelity to a promise, nor conscience, which caused this hesitation. No; he simply was afraid that the count would not keep his word.
“My dear Beausire, I know what is passing in your mind.”
“Yes, count, you do; I hesitate to betray a confidence reposed in me.”
Looking up to heaven, he shook his head, like a man who says, “Ah, it is very hard!”
“No, that is not it, and you are another proof of the truth of the proverb, 'No one knows himself.'”
“What then is it?” asked Beausire, a little put out by the facility with which the count read every heart.
“You are afraid that after having promised, I will not give you the thousand louis.”
“All is natural enough; but give me a security. For though I proposed the matter, I should be safe.”
“Security; the count certainly needs none.”
“A security, which satisfies me, body for body.”
“What security?” asked De Beausire.
“Mademoiselle Nicole Oliva Legay.”
“Oh!” said Nicole, “if the count promises, it is enough; it is as certain as if we had it, Beausire.”
“See, monsieur, the advantage of fulfilling our promises scrupulously. One day, when Mdlle. Legay was much sought after by the police, I made her an offer, to find a refuge _in my house. She hesitated. I promised, and in spite of every temptation I had to undergo, and you, sir, can understand them better than any other, I kept my promise, M. de Beausire. Is not that so, mademoiselle?”
“'Yes, by our little Toussaint, I swear it.”
“Do you think, then, Mdlle. Nicole, that I will keep my word to M. de Beausire, to give him a thousand louis, if he will inform me of the day of the king's flight, or De Favras' arrest, without taking into consideration that I now loose the knot being woven around his neck, and you be for ever removed from danger of the cord and gallows. Apropos of that old affair. I do not promise for the future; for one moment let us talk. There are vocations.”
“For my part, monsieur,” said Nicole. “all is fixed as if the notary had already set his seal on it.”
“Well, my dear lady,” said Cagliostro, as he arranged on the table the ten louis, which he had not parted with, “infuse your convictions into the heart of M. de Beausire, and all is decided.” He by a gesture bade her talk to Beausire.
The conversation lasted only five minutes, but, it is proper to say, was very animated.
In the interim, Cagliostro looked at the pierced card, and shook his head, as if he recognised an old acquaintance.
“Ah, ah!” said he, “it is the famous martingale of M. Law, which you have discovered again. I have lost a million on it.”
This observation seemed to give a new activity to the conversation between Beausire and Nicole. At last Beausire decided. He advanced to Cagliostro, open-handed, like a man who had just made an indissoluble contract.
The count drew back his hand, and said, “Monsieur, among gentlemen, a word passes. I have given you mine, give me yours.”
“By my faith, sir, it is settled.”
“That is enough, sir,” said Cagliostro.
Taking from his pocket a watch, enriched with diamonds, on which was the portrait of King Frederick of Prussia, he said:
“It wants a quarter of nine, M. de Beausire; at nine exactly, you are expected under the arches of the Place Royale, on the side of Hotel Sully; take these louis, put them in your vest pocket, put on your coat, gird on your sword; you must not be waited for.”
Beausire did not wait to be told twice. He took the money, put it in his pocket, put on his coat, and left.
“Where shall I find you, count?”
“At the cemetery of St. Jean, if you please. When one wishes to talk of such things, without being heard, it must not be among the living.”
“As soon as you be disengaged. The first will wait for the second.”
