ON THAT DAY, about eight o'clock p.m., a man clad as a workman, and keeping his hand carefully on his vest pocket, as if on that night it contained a sum of money larger than workmen usually carry, left the Tuileries by the turning bridge, and inclining to the left, went entirely down one of the long aisles of trees which towards the Seine prolong that portion of the Champs Elysees formerly called the marble post, or the stone post, and now called Cours-la-Reine.
At the first cabaret on the road, the man seemed to undergo a violent mental contest, whence he emerged victorious. The res in lite was whether he would enter the cabaret or not. He passed on.
The temptation was renewed at the second, and at this moment a man who followed him like a shadow, though unseen, might have fancied he was about to yield, so much did he deviate from the straight line and incline towards that temple of Bacchus.
This time, also, temperance triumphed, and it is probable that if a third cabaret had not been met with, the shadow would have had to return, and thus break a vow he seemed to have made. The workman continued his route, not fasting, for he seemed already to have taken a decent quantity of liquor, but yet had sufficient self-control for his legs to bear him in a line sufficiently straight for all ordinary purposes.
Unfortunately, however, there was not only a third, but a fourth, fifth, and twentieth cabaret. The result was that the temptation was too often renewed, and the force of resistance not being in harmony with the power of temptation, he gave way at the third test.
True it is, that by a kind of transaction with himself, the workman, who had so long and so fortunately combated the demon of wine, as he entered the cabaret, stood erect at the counter, and asked for but one chopin.
The demon of wine, with which he had so long contended, seemed to be victoriously represented by the stranger who had followed him in the distance, taking care to remain unseen, but, however, never losing sight of his quarry.
It was, without doubt, to enjoy this particularly agreeable prospect that he sat on the parapet, just opposite the tap where the man drank his chopin, and set out just five minutes after, having drunk his chopin, the man crossed the door to resume his journey.
Who, however, can say when the lips once damped by wine will be dried? and who has not seen, as drunkards always do, that nothing excites the thirst so much as drinking? Scarcely had the ouvrier gone a hundred paces, than he felt such a thirst that he had to stop again, and on this occasion called, not for a chopin, but for a half-bottle.
The shadow had followed him did not seem at all dissatisfied at the delay caused by this quenchless thirst, but stopped at the angle of the wall of the cabaret; and though the man sat down at his ease and drank a whole quart to settle the half-bottle and chopin, the benevolent shadow exhibited no impatience, contented, when he came out, to follow him as he had done before.
About a hundred paces further on he had a new temptation and a ruder test to submit to: the ouvrier made a third halt, and this time, as his thirst continued to increase, he again asked for a bottle.
The argus had again to wait half an hour, a thing he did with the greatest patience.
Certainly, these five minutes, this half hour, successively lost, awakened something of remorse in the heart of the drinker. He took the precaution, before he set out again, to provide himself with an uncorked bottle, as he evidently did not wish to halt, but to continue on his journey drinking.
It was a prudent resolution, and one which did not delay him much, taking into consideration the curves and zig-zags which were the result of every approach of the bottle to his lips.
By an adroitly combined curve, he passed the barrier of Passy without any trouble; vessels carrying liquids, it is well known, not being liable to any octroi out of Paris.
A hundred paces from the barrier our man had occasion to congratulate himself on his ingenious precaution, for from that place cabarets became rarer, until at last there were none.
What was that to our philosopher? Like the sage of old, he carried about with him, not only his fortune, but his joy.
We say his joy, since, after getting half through his bottle, our traveller began to sing, and no one will deny but that song and laughter are the great means by which man exhibits joy.
The shadow appeared fully satisfied with the music, which it seemed to repeat in a low tone, and with an expression of pleasure which showed that it took great interest in it. But, unfortunately, the joy was ephemeral and the song short. The joy lasted just as long as the wine did; and when at last the empty bottle was pressed again and again to no purpose, the song changed into growls, which, becoming more and more deep, ended in imprecations.
These imprecations were addressed to unknown persecutors, of whom, as he staggered, our traveller complained.
“Base people,” said he, “to give poisoned wine to an old friend and to a master-workman! Pah! let him but send to me to fix his locks, and I will tell him: 'Bon soir, your majesty; let your majesty fix your own locks. Sire, you cannot make a lock as easily as you can a decree.' Catch me doing any such thing again; I care nothing about your keys, springs, and tumblers, only catch me there again, that is all. The villain! They certainly have poisoned me.”
Having spoken these words, he was overcome by the force of the poison, and fell headlong, three times, on the road, which fortunately was covered with a soft cushion of mud.
Our friend, on the two first occasions, arose without assistance. The operation was difficult, but was accomplished safely. The third time, after desperate efforts, he was forced to confess that the effort was beyond his power, and with a sigh, not unlike a groan, he seemed determined for that night to sleep on our common mother, earth.
At this point of discouragement and weakness, the shadow which had accompanied him from the Place Louis XV. with so much perseverance, and which had, in the distance, witnessed those abortive efforts to rise which we have sought to describe, approached him, went around him, and called a fiacre which chanced to pass.
“My friend,” said he to the driver, “my companion is ill; take these six livres, and put the poor devil inside your carriage, and take him to the inn at the Pont de Sevres. I will ride with you.”
There was nothing strange in one of the two riding with the driver, as both seemed very common men. Therefore, with the touching confidence people of that class have in each other, the driver said, “Six francs, where are they?”
“Here they are, my friend,” said the other, who did not seem in the least annoyed, at the same time giving the coachman a crown.
“All right, sir,” said the Automedon, softened by a sight of the king's effigy.
“Take up this poor devil, put him inside, shut the doors carefully, and try to make your two nags last until we reach the Pont de Sevres, and we will act then to you as you act to us.”
“Very well,” said the driver, “that is the way to talk. Be easy, I know what is what. Get on the box and keep our peacocks from cutting up capers. Dame! they already smell the stable, and are anxious to get into it.”
Without making any remark, the generous stranger did as he was directed, and the driver, carefully as he could, lifted up the drunken man and placed him between the seats, shut the door, got on the box, whipped up the horses, which at the melancholy gait hack horses acquire so easy passed the little hamlet of Pont de Jour, and in an hour reached the inn of the Pont de Sevres.
In the interior of this inn, after ten minutes devoted to the unpacking of Gamain, whom the reader has doubtless recognised before now, we will find the worthy locksmith, master over masters, seated at the same table with the same armourer we described in the opening of this history.
The host of the cabaret of the Pont de Sevres had gone to bed, and the least ray of light passed through the blinds, when the first knock of the philanthropist who had rescued Gamain sounded on the door.
The blows were so long and frequent that there was no possibility for the inmates of the cabaret, sleepy as they were, to resist so violent an attack.
Sleepy, and slumbering, and growling, the keeper of the house came to open the door himself, and in his own mind determined to give them a pretty scolding for so disturbing him, for, as he said, “the game was not worth the candle.”
It seemed, however, that the game was worth the candle, for at the first word spoken by the man who knocked so irreverently, the innkeeper took off his cap, and bowing in a most reverent, and in his costume most ridiculous manner, introduced Gamain and his escort into the little room where we previously have seen him, sipping his favourite vin de Burgogne.
Both driver and horses had done as well as they could, the one using his whip and the others their legs, which the stranger rewarded with a twenty-four sous piece for drink, in addition to the six livres he had already given.
Then, having seen Gamain firmly deposited in a chair, with his head on a table in front of him, he hastened to make the innkeeper bring two bottles of wine and a pitcher of water, and opened the blinds for the purpose of purifying the mephitic air of the house.
The host, after having himself brought two bottles of wine and a pitcher of water, the first promptly, but the latter after some delay, retired, and left his two guests together.
The stranger, as we have seen, had taken care to renew the air; then, before the window was closed, had placed a fiacon beneath the dilated nostrils of the locksmith, who snored as men do in that state of drunkenness, and who, could they hear themselves, would certainly be cured of their mad love of wine. The sovereign wisdom of the Most High does not, however, permit drunkards to hear themselves.
“The wretch—he has poisoned me—he has poisoned me.”
The armourer was pleased to see that Gamain was still under the influence of the same idea, and placed the flacon again beneath his nostrils, which, restoring some strength to the worthy son of Noah, permitted him to complete the last phrase, by adding to the words he had already pronounced two other words, which were the more horrible, as they signified a total abuse of confidence and want of heart:
“To poison a friend—a friend!”
“Fortunately,” said the armourer, “I was there with the antidote.”
“Yes, indeed,” murmured Gamain.
“But as one dose is not enough for such a person,” continued the stranger, “take another.'
He poured into half a glass of water four or five drops of the fluid in the flacon, which was only a solution of ammonia.
He then placed the glass close to Gamain's lips.
“Ah!” said he, “this is to be drunken with the mouth; I like it better than with the nose.”
He swallowed the contents of the glass. Scarcely had he done so, however, than he opened his mouth wide, and sneezed violently twice.
“Robber! what have you given me? Puh! Puh!”
“I have given you a liquid which will save your life.”
“Ah!” said he, “if it saves my life, you were right to give it me. But if you call it liquor, you are damnably mistaken.”
He sneezed again, opening his mouth and expanding his eyes, like a mute of old Greek tragedy.
The stranger took advantage of this pantomime to shut, not the window, but the blinds.
This was not without advantage, for Gamain began to open his eyes for the second or third time. During this movement, convulsive as it was, Gamain had looked around him, and with that sentiment of profound remembrance which drunkards have of the walls of a room, he recognised those which surrounded him.
In fact, in the many trips he was obliged to make to Paris, it was seldom that Gamain did not stop at the Pont de Sevres. This pause might almost be considered a necessity, the cabaret being half way. This recollection had a great effect. It restored the confidence of the locksmith, by proving to him that he was in the company of friends.
“Ah, ha!” said he, “I am half way, it seems.”
“Yes, thanks to me,” said the armourer.
“How, thanks to you?” said Gamain, looking from inanimate to living things, “thanks to you? who are you?”
“My dear Gamain, that proves to me that you have a bad memory.”
“Wait a bit, wait a bit; it seems to me that I have seen you before. But where was it? That is the thing.”
“Where? look around you, and the objects may, perhaps, arouse some recollections. When is another thing. Think, or it may he necessary to administer to you another dose of the antidote, to enable you to tell me.”
“No, I thank you, I have had enough of your antidote, and since I am saved a little, I will he content with that. Where did I see you?—where did I see you? Why here.”
“When did I see you?—wait; on the morning when I came from doing some work in Paris. It really seems I have luck with those enterprises.”
“Very well, and now what am I?”
“What are you?—a man who paid for my liquor. Consequently you are a good fellow. Give me your hand.”
“With especial pleasure, as between a master locksmith and a master armourer there is but one step.”
“Ah! well! There it is. I remember now. Yes, it was on the 6th of October, on the day of the king's return to Paris. We even talked of him on that day.”
“And I found your conversation very interesting, Master Gamain; on that account I am anxious to enjoy it again, and since memory has returned to you, if I am not indiscreet, tell me what you were doing, about an hour ago, stretched at your length in the street, within twenty feet of a carriage, which would have cut you in two if I had not passed by. Have you any troubles that you wish thus to commit suicide?”
“I commit suicide? My God! What was I doing there in the middle of the road? Are you sure I was there?”
Gamain looked at his coat. “Ah!” said he, “Madame Gamain will scold not a little. She told me not to put on my new coat. “Put on your old jacket, it is good enough for the Tuileries.'”
“How, the Tuileries?” said the stranger; “had you come from the Tuileries when I saw you?”
Gamain scratched his head, as if to rake up his ideas, which were not yet in order.
“Yes, I came from the Tuileries; what of that, though? Everybody knows I was the king's master. All know I served M. Veto.”
“How, M. Veto? Whom do you call M. Veto?”
“Ah! good: you know they give that name to the king. Where did you come from, anyhow? From China?”
“Bah! I attend to my business, and do not attend to politics.”
“You are very lucky. I do busy myself in politics, or rather I am forced to do so.” Gamain looked up to heaven and sighed.
“Bah!” said the stranger. “Have you been called to Paris to do some work for the person of whom you spoke when we first met?”
“Exactly. Only at that time I did not know whither I was going, for my eyes were bandaged; but this time I went with them opened.”
“You had no trouble, then, in recognising the Tuileries?”
“The Tuileries!” said Gamain, echoing his words, “who told you I went to the Tuileries?”
“You, just now. How do I know you came from the Tuileries? Why, you told me so yourself.”
“True,” said Gamain, speaking to himself; “how could he know, unless I told him myself?”
Then, speaking to the stranger, he said:
“Perhaps I was wrong to tell you; but, ma foi, you are not everybody. Well, since I told you so, I will not contradict it; I did not contradict it. I was at the Tuileries.”
“And,” said the stranger, “you worked with the king, who gave you twenty-five louis.”
“Yes; I have twenty-five louis now, in my pocket.”
Gamain put his hand in his pocket, and pulled out a handful of gold, mingled with silver and some copper.
“Wait a bit—five, six, seven—good, and I forgot all this. Twelve, thirteen, fourteen; just twenty-five louis. This is a sum which, as times go, is not found in the road. Twenty-three, twenty-four, twenty-five. Ah!” continued he, breathing with more liberty; “thank God, all is right! How did you know I had this money?”
“My dear M. Gamain, I have already had the honour to tell you that I found you asleep across the road, about twenty feet from a carriage, which was passing. I took down one of the lanterns of this carriage, and by its light saw two or three louis on the ground. As they must have come from your pocket, I put them back again, and in doing so, felt some twenty more. The coachman then said, shaking his head, 'No, monsieur, I cannot take that man; he is too rich for his dress. Twenty-five louis in a cotton-velvet jacket will make a man smell a gallows a mile off.' 'How, think you he is a robber?' It seems the word struck you. 'Robber! robber! I a robber?' said you. 'Certainly; or how else would you have twenty-five louis in your pocket?' 'I have them, because my pupil, the King of France, has given them to me,' said you. In fact, at these words I fancied that I knew you. I placed the lantern close to your face. 'Ah!' said I, 'all is explained; it is Gamain, the locksmith of Versailles. He has been at work with the king, who has given him twenty-five louis for the trouble. Come, I will answer for him.' As soon as I said I would do so, the driver made no more difficulty. I then placed in your pocket the louis d'or which had escaped, seated you in the carriage, and got on the seat and brought you here, where you have nothing to complain of except the desertion of your apprentice.”
“What, I spoke of an apprentice, and of his desertion?” said Gamain, more and more amazed.
“Now, only look! he no longer remembers what he has said.”
“How, did you not say so, just now? It was the fault of that fellow—I do not just now remember his name.”
“That is it. How, did you not just now say it was the fault of that fellow, Louis Lecomte, who promised to return with you to Versailles, and who, instead, merely burned you up with politeness?”
“Well, I might have said all this, but it yet is true.”
“Well, since it is true, why should you deny it? Do you know, my fine fellow, that it might be dangerous to talk in this way to another than myself?”
“Yes, but with you,” said Gamain, fawning on the count.
“With me? what does this mean?”
“It means to say, with a friend.”
“Ah, yes! you show great confidence to a friend. You say, 'it is true,' and then, 'it is not true.' The meaning of it is, that the other day you told me a story.”
“The story of the secret door you had been sent to fix at the house of some great lord, even the address of whom you had forgotten.”
“Well, you may believe me if you please, but on this time I also had to do with a door.”
“At the king's; only, instead of the staircase, it was the door of a bureau.”
“And you mean to say that the king, who is curious about locksmiths, sent for you to close a door for him. Bah!”
“Yet that is the truth. Poor man! he thought he could do without me, but it was of no use.”
“He then sent for you, by some confidential valet? By Huet, Darcy, or Weber?”
“Now you are exactly wrong. To assist him, he had employed a young man who knew less than he did. So that one day that fellow came to Versailles and said: 'Look here, Master Gamain; the king and I wish you to make a look. The damned thing will not turn.' 'What do you wish me to do?' I replied. 'Come and correct it,' said he. Then I said, 'It is not true; you are not sent |by the king, and you wish to get me into some scrape.' He said, 'Very well, the king has sent you these twenty-five louis to remove all suspicion.' He gave them to me.”
“Then these are the twenty-five louis he gave you.”
“No, not these; these are others. The first twenty-five were only on account.”
“Peste! Fifty louis for mending a toy? There is something beneath all that, Master Gamain.”
“That is what I say. Besides, you see, the other.”
“Well, he looked to me like a pretender. I should have questioned him, and asked him details about his tour in France, etc.”
“Yet you are not a man to be deceived, when an apprentice offers himself.”
“I do not say he was a deceiver. He managed the file and chisel well enough, and I have seen him cut a hot bar of iron by a single blow, and with a rat-tail file cut a hole, just as if he had a bit and brace. But you see, he was more theoretical than practical. He had no sooner finished his work than he washed his hands, which at once became white; would the hands of a true locksmith, like myself, ever become white?”
Gamain put forth two callous hands, which really did seem likely to defy all the almond paste ever made.
“But,” said the stranger, leading the locksmith back to the matter under consideration, “what did you do when you saw the king?”
“At first it seemed as if we were expected, for we were taken to the forge; there the king gave me a lock begun wrong, and which would not work.” Few locksmiths, you see, are able to make a lock with three beards, and no king can. I looked at it, I saw the joint, and said, 'Just leave me alone for an hour, and in that time I will fix it.' Then the king said, 'Well, Gamain, as you please; you are in your own shop; here are your files, pincers; work, my lad, work; we will go and fix the bureau for which the lock is intended.' He left with the apprentice.”
“By the great stairway?” asked the count, carelessly.
“No; by the little secret stairway, which opens into the king's study; when I had finished, I said, 'The bureau is a humbug, and they are shut up concocting some plot.' I sought to descend softly; I said to myself, 'I will open the door of the library, when I will see what they are about.'”
“Ah, they probably heard me; you know I am no dancing master; tread lightly as I could, the infernal stairway would creak. They heard me, and came to me, and just as I was about to put my hand on the door, 'crack,' it opened.”
“Wait a bit. 'Ah, ha, Gamain,' said the king, 'is it you?' 'Yes, I have done.' 'And so too have we,' said he. 'Come, I now intend to give you another job.' He pushed me through the library, but not so quickly that I did not see, on the table, a great map of France, for it had fleurs-de-lis at one of the corners.”
“You observed nothing particular on this map of France?”
“Yes, three long rows of pins stuck in, each at some distance from the other, reaching towards the sides of the map. One might have fancied them soldiers advancing by three different routes to the frontier.”
“My dear Gamain, your perspicacity is so great that nothing escapes it. And you think, instead of attending to the doors of the drawers, the king and his companion were busied with the map?”
“I am sure of it,” said Gamain.
“It is simple enough: the pins had wax heads—some were black, others red. Well, the king held in his hand, though he paid no attention to it, and occasionally picked his teeth with it, a pin with red wax on its head.”
“Gamain,” said the armourer, “if I ever discover any new system of locksmithing, I will not bring you into my room, nor will I suffer you even to pass through it. If I want you, I will bandage your eyes, as was done on the day you were taken to the great lord's; on that day, though, did you not perceive that the front entrance had ten steps, and that the house was on the Boulevard?”
“Wait a moment,” said Gamain, enchanted with the eulogium heaped on him, “you have not come to the end yet. There really was an armoire in question.”
“Ah, just guess; inserted in the wall, my friend.”
“The wall of the interior corridor, which leads from the king's bed-chamber to the dauphin's room.”
“Do you know that fact is, to me, peculiarly interesting. “Was that armoire open?”
“Not a bit; I looked round on all sides, and saw nothing, and said, 'Well, where is that armoire?' The king then looked around, and said, 'Gamain, I always had confidence in you, and therefore wished no one else to know my secret.' As he spoke, while the apprentice held the light for us, for this corridor is dark, the king moved a panel of the wood-work, and I saw a round hole about two feet across; as he saw my surprise, he said, 'See you that hole, my friend? I had it made to hide away money. This young man has assisted me during the three or four days he has been in the castle; now I must put the lock on in such a manner that the panel will resume its place and hide it as it hides the hole. Have you any need of assistance? this young man will assist you, as he assisted me. If not,' said he, 'I will employ him elsewhere.' 'Ah,' said I, 'you know that when I am at work I never want anybody with me. There are four hours' work here for a competent man, and as I am a master, all will be done in three. Go about your business, young man, and do you go about yours, sire. If you have anything to conceal, come back in three hours, and all will be done.' The king must have had something for the young man to do, for I never saw him again. After about three hours, the king came back, and said, 'Eh! Gamain, how do we get on?' 'So, so, sire, it is done,' and I showed him that the panel moved perfectly well—so well that it was a pleasure to hear it. There was not the least noise, and the lock worked like one of Vaucanson's automata. 'Come,' said he, 'Gamain, help me to count the money I place within there.' Then I counted one million, and he another, after which there were twenty-five over, and he said to me: 'There, Gamain, are twenty-five louis.' As they came very convenient to a poor man, who has five children, and not much out of the way when he had counted a million, I took them. What do you say now?”
The stranger moved his lips. “The fact is, he is mean.”
“Wait, that is not all. I took the twenty-five louis, and put them in my pocket. 'Thanks, sire,' said I, 'but with all this, I have eaten nothing to-day, and am dying of hunger and thirst.' I had scarcely spoken, when the queen came in by a masked door, so suddenly, that all at once I found her in front of me. She had in her hand a salver, on which was a glass of wine and a biscuit. 'Gamain,' said she, 'you must be hungry and thirsty, take this.” 'Ah,' said I to the queen,' you need not have put yourself out for me, it was not worth while.' Tell me what you think of that. To give a glass of wine to a man who is thirsty, and a biscuit to one who is hungry? What was the queen about? Anybody might know that were I hungry and thirsty, one glass of wine, one biscuit—pah!”
“It would have been better if I had. No, I drank it. As for the biscuit, I wrapped it up in a handkerchief, and said, 'What is not good for the father, is good for the children;' I then thanked her majesty, and set out for Versailles, swearing they would never catch me at the Tuileries again.”
“Why do you say it would have been better for you to have refused the wine?”
“Because they had put poison in it—scarcely had I passed the turning bridge, than I felt thirsty—and so thirsty! It was just where the river is on one side, and the wine-merchants on the other. Then I saw the bad properties of the wine they had given me. The more I drank, the more I wanted to drink, and thus it was till I lost all consciousness. They may rest assured, if ever I am called upon to give testimony against them, I will say they gave me twenty-five louis for working four hours and counting a million, and then, fearing lest I should tell where they hid the money, poisoned me like a dog.*”
* This was really the accusation made to the convention, by this ungrateful wretch, on the occasion of the trial of the queen.
“And I, my dear Gamain,” said the armourer, rising, for he now knew what he wished, “I will rely on your evidence, as it was I who gave you the antidote which, thank God, saved your life.”
Then Gamain, taking the hands of the stranger between his own, said, “Henceforth we are friends to the death.”
Refusing, with almost Spartan sobriety, the glass of wine which had been three or four times offered him by the man to whom he had sworn eternal fidelity, Gamain, on whom the ammonia had produced the double effect of instantaneously sobering him, and of disgusting him for three or four days with wine, resumed the route to Versailles, which he reached at four or five in the morning, with the king's louis and the queen's biscuit in his pocket.
Having remained in the cabaret, the false armourer took his tablets from his pocket—they were inlaid with gold—and wrote: “Behind the alcove of the king, the dark corridor leading to the dauphin's room. Iron armoire.
“To ascertain if Louis Lecomte, a locksmith's apprentice, be not Count Louis, son of the Marquis de Bouille, who came eleven days ago from Metz.”
