Chapter II: Front Matter (2)

Clarissa Mirabel was the only child of President Seguret. She was brought up in the country, in the old Chateau Perrie, which her father had bought at the outbreak of the Revolution. Owing to the political upheavals, and the uncertain condition of things, she did not enjoy the benefit of any regular instruction in her childhood. The profound isolation in which she grew up favored her inclination to romanticism. She idolized her parents; in the agitated period of anarchy, the girl, scarcely fourteen years old, exhibited at her father's side such a spirit of self-sacrifice and such devotion that she aroused the attention of Colonel Mirabel, who, five years later, came and sued for her hand. She did not love him,--she had shortly before entered into a singularly romantic relationship with a shepherd,--yet she married him, because her father bade her. The union was not happy; after three months she separated from her husband; the Colonel went with the army to Spain. At the conclusion of the war he returned, and Clarissa received an intimation of his desire that she should live with him; she refused, however, and declared her refusal, moreover, in writing, incensed that he should have sent strangers to negotiate with her. But she learned that he was wounded, and this caused a revulsion of feeling. In the night, by secret passages, with ceremonious formalities, the Colonel was carried into the chateau, and Clarissa tended him, in a remote chamber, with faithful care. As long as it remained secret, the new sort of relationship to the man as a lover fascinated her, but her mother discovered everything and believed that nothing stood in the way of a complete reconciliation between the pair. Clarissa succeeded in removing him; in a thicket near the village she had nightly rendezvous with him. Colonel Mirabel, however, grew weary of these singular doings; he obtained a position in Lyons, but died soon after from the consequences of his excesses.

Years passed; her mother, too, died, and Clarissa's grief was so overwhelming that she would spend entire days at the grave, and the influence of her more readily consoled father alone succeeded in inducing her to reconcile herself to her lonely, empty existence. Left completely to herself, she indulged in the pleasure of indiscriminate reading, and her wishes turned, with hidden passion, toward great experiences. Her peculiar tastes and habits made her a subject of gossip in the little town; she had children and half-grown boys and girls come to the chateau, and recited poems to them and trained them for acting. Her frank nature created enemies; she said what she thought, offended with no ill intention, caused confusion and gossip in all innocence, exaggerated petty things and overlooked great ones, took pleasure at times in masking, appearing in disguise, and impersonating imaginary characters, and captivated the susceptible by the charm of her speech, the bright versatility of her spirit, the winning heartiness of her manner.

She was now thirty-five years old; but not only because she was so exceedingly slender, small, and dainty, did she seem like a girl of eighteen--her nature, too, was permeated by a rare spirit of youth; and when her eye rested, absorbed and contemplative, upon an object, it had the clearness and dreamy sweetness of the gaze of a child. She was a product of the border: southern vivacity and northern gravity had resulted in a restless mixture; she was fond of musing, and, playful as a young animal, was capable of arousing in men of all sorts desire mingled with shyness.

The flood of reports concerning the death of the lawyer Fualdes left her, at first, unmoved, although her father, by his purchase of the domain of La Morne, seemed directly interested in the happenings, and new accounts were brought to the chateau daily. The occurrence was too complicated for her, and everything connected with it smelt too much of the unclean. Only when the name of Bastide Grammont was first mentioned did she prick up her ears, follow the affair, and have her father or the servants report to her the supposed course of events, displaying more interest than astonishment.

She knew nothing about Bastide Grammont. Nevertheless, his name, as soon as she heard it, fell like a weight upon her watchful soul. She began to make inquiries about him, ventured upon secret rides to La Morne, and led one or another of his servants to talk about him; nay, once she even succeeded in speaking with Charlotte Arlabosse, who was free again at that time. What she learned aroused a strange, pained astonishment; she had a feeling of having missed an important meeting.

In addition, she suddenly remembered having seen him. It must have been he, if she but half comprehended the confused descriptions of his person. It was a year ago, one early morning in the first days of spring. Seized by the general unrest with which the vernal season stirs the blood and rouses the sleeper sooner than his wont, she had wandered from the chateau, over the vine-clad hills, into the woody vale of Rolx. And as she strode through the dewy underbrush glistening with sunshine, above her the warbling of birds and the glowing blue of the celestial dome, beneath her the earth breathing like a sentient being, she caught sight of a man of powerful build who was standing erect, bareheaded, with nose in the air, and was enjoying with a preternatural eagerness, with distended gaze, all that lay open for enjoyment--the scents, the sun, the intoxicating dewiness, the splendor of the heavens. He seemed to scent it all, sniffing like a dog or a deer, and while his upturned face bore an expression of unfettered, smiling satisfaction, his arms, hanging by his side, trembled as in a spasm.

She was frightened then; she fled without his perceiving her, without his hearing the sound of her footsteps. Now the picture assumed a different significance. Often when she was alone she would abandon herself to a fancied image of that hour: how she had gone forward to meet the singular being, and by skilfully planned questions beguiled answer upon answer from his stubborn lips, and how, unable to disguise his feelings any longer, he had spontaneously opened his heart to her. And one night he came riding on a wild steed, forced his way into the castle, took her and rode away with her so swiftly that it seemed as if the storm was his servant, and lent wings to his steed. When the talk at table or in company turned upon Bastide Grammont and his murderous crime, of which no one stood in doubt, Clarissa never occupied herself with the enormity of the deed, which must forever separate such a man from the fellowship of the good. Enveloped in a voluptuous mist, she was sensible of the influence of his compelling force, of the heroic soul that spoke in his gestures, of the reality of his existence and the possibility of a close approach to the figure which persisted in haunting her troubled dreams. She was frightened at herself; she gazed into the dreaded depths of her soul, and she often felt as if she herself were lying in prison and Bastide were walking back and forth outside, planning means for forcing the door, while his swift steed was neighing in triumph.

Now she was entangled in all the talk, whisperings, and tales, and the whole mass of abominations, too, in which design and arbitrariness were hopelessly mingled, passed, steadily growing, before her. The thing had an increasingly strange effect upon her, and she felt as if she were breathing poisoned air; she would walk through one of the streets of Rodez and fancy that all eyes were fastened upon her in accusation, so that she hastened her steps, hurried home, pale and confused, and gazed at herself in the mirror with faltering pulse.

She had recently been entertained at the estate of a family on terms of friendship with her father. One day the master of the house, a scholar, was thrown into great agitation over the loss of a valuable manuscript. The servants were ordered to ransack every room, but no one was suspected of theft. Clarissa fell by and by into a painful state; she imagined that she was suspected; in every word she felt a sting, in every look a question; she took part in the search with anxious zeal, fevered visions of prison and disgrace already floated before her, she longed to hasten to her father, to assert her innocence--when suddenly the manuscript was found under some old books; Clarissa breathed again as if saved from peril of death, and never before had she been as witty, talkative, and captivatingly lovable as in the hours that followed.

When in the imagination of the multitude the lady with the green feathers grew steadily more distinct, along with the other figures implicated in the brutal slaughter of poor Fualdes, Clarissa was thrown into a consternation with which she only trifled at first, as if to test herself in a probability or balance herself upon a possibility, like a lad who with a pleasing shudder ventures upon the frozen surface of a stream to test its firmness. She devoured the reports in the newspapers. The timorous dallying grew into a haunting idea, chiefly owing to the fact that she really was the possessor of a hat with green feathers. That circumstance could not be regarded as remarkable. Fashion permitted the use of green, yellow, or red feathers; nevertheless, the possession of the hat became a torment to Clarissa. She dared no longer touch it; it seemed to her as if the feathers were enveloped in a bloody lustre, and she finally hid it in a lumber-room under the roof. She busied herself with plans of travel, and meant to visit Paris; but her resolution grew more shaky every day. Meanwhile June set in. A traveling theatrical company gave a number of performances in Rodez, and an officer by the name of Clemendot, who had long been pursuing Clarissa with declarations of love, but who had always, on account of his commonplaceness and evident crudity, been coolly, nay, at times ignominiously repulsed, brought her a ticket and invited her to accompany him to the theatre. She declined, but at the last moment she felt a desire to go, and had to suffer Captain Clemendot's taking the vacant seat to her right, after the rise of the curtain.

The troupe presented a melodrama, whose action dragged out at great length and with great gusto the misfortune and gruesome murder of an innocent youth. At the close of the last act a woman disguised as a man appeared upon the scene; she wore a pointed round hat, and a mask covered her face. A hurried love-scene, carried on in whispers, by the light of the dismal lamp of a criminal quarter, with the chief of the band of murderers, sealed the fate of the unhappy victim, who was kneeling in prayer. In the house an eager silence reigned, all eyes were burning. Clarissa seemed to hear the hundred hearts beat like so many hammers; she grew hot and cold, every feeling of the real present vanished, and when, in the ensuing interval. Captain Clemendot in his half humble, half impudent way became importunate, a shudder ran through her body, and at the fumes of wine which he exhaled she came near fainting. Suddenly she threw back her head, fixed her gaze upon his muddled, besotted countenance and asked in a low, sharp, hurried tone: "What would you say, Captain, if it were I--I--who was present at the Bancal house?"

Captain Clemendot turned pale. His mouth opened slowly, his cheeks quivered, his eyes glistened with fear, and when Clarissa broke into a soft, mocking, but not quite natural, laugh, he rose and, with an embarrassed farewell, left her. He was a simple man, as illiterate as a drummer, and, like everybody else in Rodez, completely under the sway of the blood-curdling reports. When the performance was at an end, he approached Clarissa, who, with an impassive air, was making her way to the exit, and asked whether she had been trying to jest with him, and she, her lips dry, and something like a prying hatred in her eyes, answered, laughing again: "No, no, Captain." After that her face resumed its earnest, almost sad, expression and her head dropped on her breast.

Clemendot went home with a disturbed mind, thoroughly convinced that he had received an important confession. He felt in duty bound to speak out, and unbosomed himself next morning to a comrade. The latter drew a second friend into the secret, they deliberated together, and by noon the magistrate had been informed. Monsieur Jausion had the Captain and Madame Mirabel summoned. After long and singular reflection Clarissa declared that the whole thing was a joke, and the magistrate was obliged to dismiss her for the present.

It was not joking, however, that the gentlemen wanted, but earnest. The Prefect, advised of what had happened, called in the evening on President Seguret and had a brief interview with the worthy man, who, shaken to his inmost soul, had to learn what a disgrace, to himself and her, his daughter had conjured up, menacing thus the peace of his old age. Clarissa was called in; she stood as if deprived of life before the two aged men, and the grief which spoke in her father's every motion and feature struck her heart with sorrow. She pleaded the thoughtlessness of the moment, the mad humor and confusion of her mind; in vain, the Prefect openly showed his incredulity. Monsieur Seguret, who in spite of his fondness for a jovial life, was of an exceedingly suspicious disposition, lacking, too, a firm and clear judgment of men, could not help regarding the depressed spirits of his daughter as a proof of guilt, and he explained to her, with cutting severity, that the truth alone would keep him from thrusting her from his heart. Clarissa ceased speaking; words rushed in upon her like destroying demons. The President grew sleepless and agitated, and wandered, distracted, about the castle all night long. His reflections consisted in fathoming Clarissa's nature on the side of its awful possibilities, and he very soon saw her impenetrable character covered with the blots and stigmas of the vice of romanticism. He, too, was completely under the spell of the general fanatical opinion, his experience could not hold out against the poisoned breath of calumny; the fear of being connected with the monstrous deed was stronger than the voice of his heart; suspicion became certainty, denial a lie. When he reflected upon Clarissa's past, her ungovernable desire to desert the beaten paths--a quality which appeared to him now as the gate to crime--no assumption was too daring, and her image interwove itself in the dismal web.

Sleep was banished from Clarissa, too. She surprised her father in the gray morning hours in his disturbed wanderings through the rooms, and threw herself sobbing at his feet. He made no attempt to console her or raise her; to her despairing question as to what she could be seeking in the Bancal house, since as a widow she was perfectly free to come and go as she pleased and could dispense with secrecy, the President's reply was a significant shrug; and so firmly was his sinister conjecture imbedded, that upon her dignified demand for a just consideration, he only flung back the retort: "Tell the truth."

The news was not slow to travel. Relatives and friends of the President made their appearance: amazed, excited, eager, malicious. To see the impenetrably peculiar, elusively unapproachable Clarissa cast into the mire was a sight they were all anxious to enjoy. A few of the older ladies attempted a hypocritically gentle persuasion, and Clarissa's contemptuous silence and the pained look of her eyes seemed to imply avowals. The Prefect came once more, accompanied by two officials. For the Government and the local functionaries everything was at stake; the cry for revenge of the citizens, anxious for their safety, the defiance and rancor of the Bonapartists, grew more violent every day, the papers demanded the conviction of the guilty persons, the rural population was on the point of a revolt. A witness who had no share in the deed itself, like Madame Mirabel, could quickly change and terminate everything; persuasion was brought to bear, she was promised, as far as the oath to which she subscribed in the Bancal house was concerned, a written dispensation from Rome, and a Jesuit priest whom the Mayor brought to the chateau expressly confirmed this. When everything proved vain and Clarissa began to oppose the cruel pressure by a stony calm, she was threatened with imprisonment, with having her disgrace and depravity made public through all France. And at these words of the Prefect her father fell upon his knees before her, as she had done that morning before him, and conjured her to speak. This was too much; with a shriek, she fell fainting to the floor.

Clarissa believed she remembered having spent the evening of the nineteenth of March with the Pal family, in Rodez; she believed she remembered that Madame Pal herself remarked to her the following day: "We were so merry yesterday, and perhaps at that very time poor Fualdes was being murdered." Upon referring to this, the Pals made a positive denial of everything; they denied that Clarissa had paid them a visit; nay, in their vague, cowardly fright, they even declared that they had been on bad terms with Madame Mirabel for years.

To human pity spirits blinded by fear and delusion were no longer accessible. Even had the sound sense of a single individual attempted resistance, it would have been useless; the giant avalanche could not be stayed. A diabolical plot was concocted, and it was the Prefect, Count d'Estournel, who perfected it in such wise that it promised the best success. Toward one o'clock at night a carriage drove into the castle grounds; Clarissa was compelled to enter it; the President, the Magistrate, the Prefect, were her companions. The carriage stopped in front of the Bancal house. Monsieur Seguret led his daughter into the ground floor room on the left, a cave-like chamber, gloomy as a bad conscience. On the shelf over the stove there stood a miserable little lamp whose light fell on two sheriff's officers and a lawyer's clerk, with stern countenances, leaning against the wall. The windows were hung with rags, the alcoves were pitchy dark, a mute silence reigned throughout the house.

"Do you know this place?" asked the Prefect with solemn deliberation. All turned their gaze upon Clarissa. In order to soften the frightful tension of her breast, she listened to the rain, which was beating against the wall outside; all her senses seemed to have gathered in her ear to that end. Her body grew limp, her tongue refused to utter more than "no" or "yes," and since the first promised new torment and agony, but the latter perchance peace, she breathed a "yes:" a little word, born of fear and exhaustion, and, scarce alive, winged with a mysterious power. Her mind, confused and consumed with longing, turned a phantom image, the creation of a thousand effervescent brains, into an actual experience. The half consciously heard, half distractedly read, became a burning reality. Her existence seemed strangely entangled in that of the man of the wood and dale, who had fervently lifted his head to heaven, and sniffed in the air with the expression of a thirsting animal. Now she stood upon the bridge which led to his domain; she beheld herself sitting at his feet, drops of blood from his outstretched hand fell upon her bowed head. Consternation on the one hand, and the most radiant hope on the other, seized her heart, while between there flamed like a torch, there rang out exultant like a battle-cry, the name Bastide Grammont, a plaything for her dreams.

An expression of relief flitted over the faces of the men upon this first syllable of a significant confession. President Seguret covered his eyes with his hand. He resolved in his heart to renounce his love for his misguided child. Clarissa felt it; all the ties which had hitherto bound her were broken.

She had, then, been in the room on the evening of the nineteenth of March? she was asked. She nodded. How had she come there? questioned Monsieur Jausion further, and his tone and mien were marked by a certain cautiousness and nicety, as if he feared to disturb the still timorous spirits of memory. Clarissa remained silent. Had she come by way of the Rue des Hebdomadiers? asked the Prefect. Clarissa nodded. "Speak! Speak!" thundered Monsieur Seguret suddenly, and even the two sheriff's officers were startled.

"I met several persons," Clarissa whispered in a tone so low that all involuntarily bent their heads forward. "I was afraid of them, and I ran, from fear, into the first open house."

Monsieur Jausion winked to the clerk. "Into this house, then?" he asked in a caressing voice, while the clerk seated himself on the bench near the stove and wrote in a crouching position.

Clarissa continued in the same plaintive whisper: "I opened the door of this room. Somebody seized me by the arm and led me into the alcove. He enjoined me to be silent. It was Bastide Grammont."

At last the name! But how different it was to pronounce it than merely to think it! Clarissa paused, while she closed her eyes and elapsed her hands convulsively. "After leaving me alone a while," she resumed as if speaking in her sleep, "he returned, bade me follow him and led me into the street. There he stood still and asked whether I knew him. I first said yes, then no. Thereupon he asked me if I had seen anything, and I said no. 'Go away!' he ordered, and I went. But I had not reached the centre of the town when he was again at my side and took my hand in his. 'I am not one of the murderers,' he protested, 'I met you and my only object was to save you. Swear that you will remain silent, swear on your father's life.' I swore, whereupon he left me. And that is all."

Monsieur Jausion smiled skeptically. "You claim, Madame, to have fled in here from the street," he remarked, "but it has been established by unexceptionable testimony that the gate was locked from eight o'clock on. How do you explain that?"

Clarissa remained mute, even her breath seemed to stop. The Prefect motioned to Monsieur Jausion to desist; for the present enough had been attained, it was enough that Bastide Grammont had been recognized by Clarissa. The resolve to force the criminal, who denied all share in the guilt, to a confession by having him unexpectedly confront the witness, came as a matter of course.

The gentlemen led Clarissa to the carriage, as she was scarcely able to walk. At home she lapsed into a peculiar state. First she lay back lethargically in a chair; suddenly she sprang up and cried: "Take away the murderers!" The door opened and the terrified face of a servant appeared in the crack. All the domestics stood waiting in the hall, most of them resolved to leave the President's service. Clarissa saw herself deprived of all the protection of love, and cast out from the circle where birth is respected and binding forms are recognized as the least of duties. She was exposed to every eye, the boldest gaze could pry into her inmost soul, she had become a public object, nothing about her was any longer her own, she herself could no longer find herself, find anything in herself upon which she could lean, she was branded, without and within, food for the general prurience, tossed defenselessly upon the filthy floods of gossip, the centre of a fearful occurrence from which she could no more dissever her thoughts. Sadness, grief, anxiety, scorn, these were no longer feelings for her, her blood coursed too wildly for that; uncertainty of herself dominated her, doubts as to her perception, doubts as to visible things in general; and now and then she would prick her finger with a needle just to feel the pain, which would serve as evidence of her being awake and might preserve her heart from decay. Added to this, the torment she suffered from the intrusive: appeals to tell the truth, the jeers from below, the command from above, the thirst for revenge and the ineffaceableness of a word once spoken; lastly, she saw the whole world filled with red tongues, ceaselessly chattering; bloody tongues with snakelike movements, directed toward her; every object she touched turned into a slippery tongue. Human countenances grew dim, save one, which, despite guilt and condemnation, was enthroned, in heroic suffering, high above the others, nay, appeared preeminent through his guilt as well as his defiance. And the day she was told that she was to confront Bastide Grammont in order to accuse him, her pulses beat in joyous measure again for the first time, and she arrayed herself as if for a festival.

The meeting was to take place in the magistrate's office. Besides Monsieur Jausion and his clerks, Counselor Pinaud, who had returned, was present. Monsieur Jausion cast a malicious glance at him over his spectacles as Clarissa Mirabel, decked in lace, rustled in, bowed smiling to the gentlemen, and then swept her gaze with cheerful calmness over the inhospitable room. From a frame in the centre of the wall the fat and ill-humored face of the King looked down upon her, as ill-humored as if each one of his subjects were especially repugnant to him. She forgot that it was only a picture that hung before her and looked up with a coquettish pout.

The magistrate made a sign, a side-door was thrown open, and Bastide Grammont, with hands chained together and with an officer of justice on either side of him, walked in. Clarissa gave a low cry and her face turned livid.

Prison atmosphere enveloped Bastide. The shaggy hair, the long, neglected beard, the staring, somewhat dazed look, the slight stoop, as of a carrier of burdens, of the gigantic form, the secretly quivering wrath upon his newly furrowed brow--all proclaimed their cause and origin. Yes, he seemed to carry about him the invisible walls which filled him with agony and gloom, and which, month after month, pictured to him with more and more hopeless brilliance the images of freedom, until finally they refused to delude him with blooming tree or flourishing field; then they resembled the desolate gray of an autumn evening, when the air already smacks of winter, the hearse rattles oftener than usual past the garden-gate toward the little churchyard, and the rising half-moon floats in glowing radiance in the misty azure like a bleeding, divided heart.

And yet that haughty eye, in which shone the resolve to be true to himself? And yet that strangely bitter scorn in his mien which might be compared to the cautious and at the same time majestic crouching of a tiger cat? The infinite contempt with which he looked at the hands of the clerks, prepared to write, his inner freedom and grand detachment in spite of the handcuffs and the two soldiers?

It was this that wrung the cry from Clarissa's lips, and drove the mad merriment from her face. Not, indeed, because she was forced to behold the former genius of the woods and wilds bound and shattered, but because she recognized as in a flash of lightning that that hand could not have wielded a murderous knife, that such a deed did not touch the circle of his being, even if he may have been capable of the act, and that all was in vain, an incomprehensible intoxication and madness, an impenetrable horror, an exhibition of hypocrisy and disease, A dizziness seized her as if she were falling from a high tower. She was ashamed of her showy dress, its conspicuous finery, and in passionate excitement she tore the costly lace from her arms and, with an expression of the utmost loathing, threw it on the ground.

Monsieur Jausion must have interpreted it differently. Again he smiled at Monsieur Pinaud, but this time in triumph, as if he would say: the sample tallies. "Do you know this lady, Bastide Grammont?" he asked the prisoner. Bastide turned his head aside, and his look of careless, bitter disdain cut Clarissa to the quick. "I don't know her," he replied gloomily, "I have never seen her."

And once more Monsieur Jausion smiled, as if to correct a parsing error, and murmured: "That is not possible; Madame Mirabel, dressed at that time as a man, and with a hat with green feathers, was in the Bancal house, and was led by you yourself to the street, where you received her oath. I beg you to call it to mind."

Bastide's face contracted as if at the annoying persistence of a fly, and he repeated in a loud, energetic tone: "I don't know the lady. I have never seen her." And his tightly compressed lips betrayed his firm resolve to remain silent.

Monsieur Jausion adjusted his wig and looked troubled. "What answer have you to that, Madame?" he asked, addressing Clarissa.

"He may not know that I saw him," she said in a whisper, but her voice had the penetrating quality of the chirping of a cricket.

Bastide turned toward her once more, and in the somewhat oblique glance of his wearily brilliant eyes there was a mixture of curiosity and scorn, no more, however, than would be bestowed upon a mushroom or a spider. Inwardly he weighed, as it were, the slender, childlike form, wondered casually at the agitation of her gestures, her flashing eyes, the helpless twitching of her lips, wondered at the lace lying on the floor, and thought he was dreaming when he became aware that an imploring gesture of her hands was meant for him.

The magistrate sprang up and, with distorted face, cried: "Do not jest with us, Madame, it may cost you dear. Speak out, then! A forced oath is not valid! The peace of your fellow-citizens, the peace of the country is at stake. Free yourself from the spell of the wretched being! Your infamous smile, Grammont, will be laid to your account on the day of the sentence."

Counselor Pinaud stepped forward and murmured a few words into the ear of Bastide, who lifted his arms, and with an expression of consuming rage pressed his clenched, chained hands to his eyes. Clarissa staggered to the magistrate's table, and while a deadly pallor overspread her cheeks, she shrieked: "It is all a lie! Lie! Lie!"

Monsieur Jausion measured her from head to foot. "Then I place you in the position of an accused person, Madame, and declare you under arrest."

A gleam of mournful satisfaction flitted over Clarissa's features. Swiftly, with the lightning-like wheeling of a dancer, she turned toward Bastide Grammont, looked at him as one looks up at a stormy sky after a sultry day, and with a pained, long-drawn breath, she called his name in a low voice. He, however, stepped back as if at an impure touch, and never before had Clarissa encountered such a glance and expression of disdain. Her knees shook, a feeling of distress overcame her, her eyes filled with tears. It was only when the door of the prison closed behind her that the helpless sensation of being flogged left her. Shame and remorse overpowered her; even the mysteriousness of her position afforded her but slight consolation. Controlled by no law, she seemed to have been shoved off the track upon which, in the ordinary course of nature, cause and effect, cumbrously linked together, crawl along in the slow process of experience.

In accordance with her station, she had been assigned the best room in the prison. The first hours she lay on the straw-bed and writhed in agony. When the keeper on her urgent request brought a light, as she feared she would go insane in the darkness, the candle-light fell upon the image of Christ upon the cross with the crown of thorns, which hung upon the gray-tinted wall. She gave a shriek, her overstrained senses found in the features of the Saviour a resemblance to those of Bastide Grammont. His lips had had the same agonized curve when he pressed his clenched hands to his eyes.

Once more she rebelled against the boundless injustice. To live with the world was her real element; her entire nature was attuned to a kindly understanding with people. She asked for paper and pen, and wrote a letter to the Prefect.

"Justice, Count!" she wrote. "It is still time to prevent the worst. Remember the difficulty you had in extorting from me what was supposed to be the truth, remember the threats which made me compliant. I am a victim of circumstances. Whatever I confessed is false. No man of sense can discover the stamp of probability in my statements. In a freak of desperation I bore false witness. Tell my father that his cruelty is more sure to rob him of his daughter than her seeming transgression. Already I know not what I should believe, the past escapes my memory, my confidence begins to totter. If it is too much to ask for justice, then I beg for mercy. My destiny seeks to try me, but my heart is clear as the day."

It was in vain. It was too late for words, even if the mouth of a prophet had proclaimed them in tones of thunder. The next morning many of the witnesses and prisoners were brought before Clarissa. Thus there were Bach, the Bancals, the soldier Colard, Rose Feral, Missonier, and little Madeleine Bancal. Bousquier was ill. The sight of the crushed, slouching, phantom-like creatures, intimidated by a hundred torments, revengefully ready for any deed, disturbed her to the core, and gave her at the same time a feeling of indelible contamination. "Is she the one?" each of the unfortunates was asked--and with insolent indifference they answered: "It is she." Missonier alone stood there laughing like an idiot.

Clarissa was amazed. She had not expected that the answers would be characterized by such assurance, such a matter-of-fact air. With inward sobs she held from her what was undeniable in the present situation, and shudderingly sought a path in her memory to that past situation on which the present was founded and which she was asked to verify. Her agitated spirit crept back to her earlier years, back to her youth, to her childhood, in order to discover her inimical second-self; that which had seemed weird and strange gradually became the essence and centre of her being, and the fateful night in Bancal's house turned, like the rest of the world, into a vision of blood and wounds.

But athwart the gloomy fancies the way led to Bastide Grammont; a flowery path among burning houses. It seemed fine to her to be assured of his guilt. Perchance he had pressed his lips to hers before he had clutched the murderous knife. She coupled her own obscurely felt guilt with his greater one. That which cut him off from humanity bound him to her. His reasons for the deed? She did not concern herself about them. No doubt it had struck root when she had first beheld him, when he had swallowed in a breath all the wood, all the springtime. No matter whether he dipped his hands in the sunlight or in blood, both pertained to his image, to her mysterious passion, and Fualdes was the evil genius and the destructive principle. "Ah," she reflected in her singular musing, "had I known of it, I should have committed the deed myself and might have been a heroine like Charlotte Corday!" Why, however, did he deny it, why was he silent? Why that look of overwhelming contempt, which she could not forget and which still scorched her skin like a brand of infamy? Was he too proud to bow to a sentence which put his crime on a level with that of any highwayman? No doubt he did not recognize his judges. She could, then, draw him down to herself, make him dependent upon the breath of her lips; and she forgot the iron alternatives that confront one's destiny here, and let herself go like a child that knows nothing of death.

The trial before the court of assizes was set for the sixteenth of October. At noon of the tenth, Clarissa requested an interview with Monsieur Jausion. Conducted before the magistrate, she declared she knew about the whole matter, and wished to confess everything. In a voice trembling with excitement. Monsieur Jausion summoned his clerks.

"I came into the room and saw the knife glisten," Clarissa confessed. "I took refuge in the alcove, Bastide Grammont hurried after me, embraced and kissed me. He confided to me that Fualdes must die, for the old devil had destroyed his happiness and made life worthless to him. Bastide was intoxicated, as it were, with enthusiasm, and when I raised objections, he stopped my mouth with kisses once more, yes, he kissed me so hard that I could not offer any resistance. Then he had me take an oath, whereupon he left me and I heard a groaning, I heard a terrible cry; little Madeleine Bancal, who was lying in bed, raised herself suddenly and wept. Then I lost consciousness, and when I regained it I found myself in the street."

She recounted this story in a mechanically measured tone; her voice had a metallic ring, her eyes were veiled and half closed, her little hands hung heavy at her side, and when she ceased she gazed before her with a pleased smile.

"You had consorted with Bastide Grammont before that, then?" questioned the Magistrate.

"Yes, we met in the forest. In the neighborhood of La Morne there is an old well in the field; there, also, we used to meet frequently; particularly at night and by moonlight. Once Bastide took me on his horse and we rode at a furious pace to the gorge at Guignol. I asked, 'What are you fleeing from, Bastide?' for I was cold with fright; and he whispered: 'From myself and from the world.' Otherwise, however, he was always gentle. I have never known a better man."

More and more silvery rang her voice, and finally she spoke like one transported or asleep. Her statement was read aloud to her; she affixed her signature calmly and without hesitation, whereupon Monsieur Jausion stated to her that she was free.

In the chateau she was met by a hostile silence. The few domestics who remained whispered insolently behind her back. Nobody looked to her comfort, she had to fetch the pitcher of water herself from the kitchen. In the meantime when President Seguret returned home, he already knew, as did the whole town, about Clarissa's confession. The circumstance of her amorous relation to Bastide shed a sudden light upon preceding events and wove a halo about her former silence. But Monsieur Seguret only hardened his heart all the more, and when he passed her as she stood on the threshold of her room, he turned away his head with a gesture of disgust.

In the evening the President entertained a number of his friends. In the course of the meal the door opened and Clarissa made her appearance. Monsieur Seguret sprang from his chair, rage robbing him of speech. "Do not dare," he stammered hoarsely, "do not dare!"

Regardless of that, Clarissa advanced to the edge of the table. A radiant, bewitching expression lit up her countenance. She turned her full gaze upon her father, so that he dropped his glance as if dazzled. "Do not revile me, father," she said gently in a tone of captivating entreaty.

She turned to one of the guests with a commonplace question. The gentleman addressed hesitated, seemed confounded, astonished, but was unable to resist. Her features, pallid from the prison atmosphere, had acquired something dreamily spiritual; the most ordinary word from her lips had a charm of its own.

The conversation became general; the guests conquered, nay, forgot, their secret amazement. Clarissa's wit and playful humor exercised a great fascination. Along with them, there was a sensuously pungent air about her which does not escape men, her gestures had something flattering, her eyes glowed with a romantic fire. Disturbed, lending but a reluctant ear. Monsieur Seguret could, nevertheless, not wholly evade the witchery which took his guests captive. A power stronger than his resolve forced him to leniency; he took a timid share in the conversation, in spite of the heavy load upon his heart. The talk turned upon politics, books, art, hunting, the war, nothing and everything--a sparkling interchange of polished phrases and sparkling reflections, of smiles and plaudits, jest and earnest. At times it seemed like a scene in a play enacted with masterly skill, or as if a light intoxication induced by champagne had exhilarated their spirits; each one was at his best and strove to outdo himself, and Clarissa held and led them all, like a fairy who upon a chariot of clouds guides a flock of pigeons.

Shortly after midnight she rose, a fleeting, complacent, capricious smile flashing across her face, and, with a rather affected bow, she left the room, the men relapsing into a sudden, strange silence. Monsieur Seguret was agitated when he conducted his guests to the door, and they left the chateau as silently as thieves.

The President strode up and down the entrance-hall awhile, his thoughts chasing each other like a fleeing troop of wild animals. As the echo of his footsteps struck him unpleasantly, he stepped out into the garden, and, strolling in the winding paths, he inhaled the fresh night air with a feeling of relief. As lie was leaving the avenue of yews, a streak of light fell across the path; Monsieur Seguret stepped upon the low wall encircling a small fountain and could thus look into Clarissa's room, the windows of which stood open. With difficulty he refrained from crying out in astonishment on beholding Clarissa in a loose nightdress, dancing with an expression of ecstasy and with passionate movements. Her eyes were tightly closed, as if they were sealed, her eyebrows lifted in coquettish anxiety, her shoulders rocked in a stream of inaudible tones whose tempo seemed now hurried, now excessively slow. Suddenly she seized something and held it before her,--it was a mirror; glancing into it, she recoiled with a shudder and let it fall, so that the listener could hear the clinking of the broken glass; then she went up to the window, tore her dress from her bosom, laid her hand upon her bare breast and looked straight in the direction where Monsieur Seguret was standing. He crouched down as if a gun had been aimed at him; Clarissa, however, did not see him; she fixed her gaze awhile upon the sweeping clouds and then closed the window. The President remained standing at his post some time longer and was unable to divert the current of his thoughts. Whom is she deceiving? he pondered, distressed--herself, or people in general, or God?

For the first time in many days Clarissa enjoyed a peaceful sleep once more. Yet when she laid herself in her white bed the pillows seemed to assume a purple hue and she fell into slumber as into an abyss. She dreamed of landscapes, of weird old houses, and of a sky that looked like clotted blood. She herself wandered in the silvery light, and without feeling any touch or seeing any human form, she nevertheless had a sensation of passionate kisses being pressed upon her lips, and there was a stirring in her body as of life taking shape.

This strange mood and agitation endured for days afterward. A silvery veil lay between her and the world. For fear of rending it, she spoke in low tones and walked with measured steps; beyond it, the sun had no more illuminating power than the moon. When, on the evening before the trial, she was returning from a stroll in the fields, she saw two women standing in the gateway of the chateau. One of them hurried forward to meet her, threw herself on her knees and seized her hands. It was Charlotte Arlabosse. "What have you done?" murmured the beautiful girl, panting. "He is innocent, by Christ's Passion, he is innocent! Have mercy, Madame, even if not upon me, at least upon his old mother!"

The crimson of the setting sun lit up her features, distorted by grief. Behind Charlotte there stood a lady of portly build, with great warts on her hands; yet her face was thin, and her countenance as motionless as that of the dead. She resembled a tree exuberant in strength, whose crown is blighted.

Clarissa made a deprecatory gesture, yet she retained a friendly and calm air. A second later, she thought she beheld herself in the kneeling figure, beheld her double; and a cruel triumph filled her heart. "Have no care, my child," said she, smiling, in a low voice; "as far as Bastide is concerned, everything is already settled." Thereupon she opened the gate and walked into the house. Charlotte arose and gazed motionless through the grating.

That night Clarissa retired early, but she awoke at four o'clock and began dressing. She selected a black velvet dress, and, as her only ornament, she fastened a diamond star in the edge of it at her bare neck. Her heart beat faster the nearer the hour approached. At eight o'clock the carriage drew up; it was a long drive to Alby, where the Court of Assizes sat. Monsieur Seguret had ridden away early in the morning, nobody knew whither.

The walls of the old town had hardly come in sight before such a mass of people was to be seen on the road that the horses were obliged to slacken their pace. They surrounded the carriage and gazed with strained attention into the open windows; women lifted up their children that they, too, might see the famous Madame Mirabel. She did not seek to escape the general curiosity; with the happy smile of a bride she sat there, her fine black brows lifted high on her forehead.

On the stroke of ten President Enjalran, who was to preside at the trial, appeared in the overcrowded hall, and after the reading of the lengthy indictment Bastide was summoned to the hearing.

Firm as if cast in bronze he stood before the judge's table. His answers were cool, terse, and clear. From beginning to end he now saw through the senseless fable, woven of stupidity and malice. By a biting sarcasm he showed his unutterable contempt of all the accusations against him, thus placing the counsel assigned to him at the last moment, with whom he stubbornly refused to confer, in no slight embarrassment.

Now and then he turned his glance toward the tall, church-like windows, and when he caught sight of a bird that had alighted on the sill and dug his yellow bill into the feathers on his breast, he lost his self-command for a moment and his lips parted in pain.

His examination lasted but a short time. It was only a matter of form, for his fate was sealed. With Bach, Colard, and the other accomplices, Monsieur d'Enjalran's task was easy; their testimony was petrified, as it were. Bousquier had died in prison. Of the others, each one sought to grab at a little remnant of innocence; they produced the impression of men crushed and wholly bereft of will-power. A sensation was created by old Bancal, who became hysterical during his examination, and then, protesting his innocence, behaved like a madman. The humpbacked Missonier grinned when the question of his presence at the murder was discussed; he had become brutalized by his long imprisonment and the repeated examinations. Little Madeleine Bancal behaved like an actress, and greeted her acquaintances and patrons in the audience by throwing them kisses. Rose Feral turned deadly pale at the sight of the bloody rags on the Judge's table, and could not utter a word. Madame Bancal remembered that Monsieur Fualdes was dragged into her house by six men, that he was made to sign a number of papers, crisscross, as she said. The day following, she had found one of these bills, made out upon stamped paper, but as it was stained with blood, had burned it. More than that she positively refused to confess, met all questions with a stolid silence, and declared finally that whatever else she knew she would confide to her confessor alone.

The witnesses testified placidly the most incredible things. Their memory was so good that they recollected the hour and minute of the merest trifles, which are forgotten from one day to the next. In night and fog they had seen and recognized people, their features, their gestures, the color of their clothes. They had heard speaking, whispering, sighing, through thick walls. A beggar by the name of Laville, who used to sleep in Missonier's stable, had heard not only the organ-grinders but also four men carrying a burden, something like men dragging a barrel. Bastide Grammont laughed repeatedly at statements which he declared to be shameless lies. When the Bancal woman began her testimony he remarked that since it came so late he had expected that the old woman would be delivered of it with still greater difficulty. To another witness he represented, in a vibrating voice, how the hand of Heaven rested heavy upon her, and reminded her of the awful death of her child. He was like a fencer whose opponent is the mist; nobody, indeed, replied to him, he stood alone, the contradictions which he believed he had demonstrated remained there, that was all. At first he was self-confident and maintained his composure, looked firmly into the witnesses' faces; then he felt as if his sense for the significance of words were leaving him, not alone for his own but for that of all the words in existence, or as if the ground were giving way under him and he were falling irresistibly from space to space into an awful, infinite, boundless void. His mind refused to work; he asked himself, horrified, whether this was still life, dared call itself life; Nature's glorious structure seemed to him ravaged like a wall rent by a storm, the speaking mouth of all these people struck him as nothing but a chasm convulsively and repellently opening and shutting, darkness invaded his spirit, he burned with a feeling of shame, he felt ashamed in the name of the nameless God, ashamed that his body was molded like that of these creatures around him. He had loved the world, had once loved the people in it; now he was ashamed of them. It pained him to think that he had ever cherished hopes, buoyed up his heart with promises, that sunshine and sky had ever been able to lure from him a joyful glance, sportive words a smile; he wished he had, like the stone by the wayside, never betrayed what he felt, so that he might not have been doomed to bear witness before his own branded, scourged, unspeakably humiliated self. Thought alone seemed offensive enough to him, how much more so what he could have said; it was nothing, less than a breath. What could he depend upon? what hope for? They had no faith, not even in his scorn, not even in his silence. And Bastide locked himself up, and looked into the dawning countenance of Death.

It was already growing dark when the King's evidence, Madame Mirabel, was finally summoned to the court-room, and the whole tired assemblage started up convulsively like a single body. She entered, and in spite of the close air of the room, she seemed to be shivering. She trembled visibly on taking the oath. Monsieur d'Enjalran urged her to testify in accordance with the truth. In a strange, uniformly dull tone, yet speaking rather hurriedly, she repeated the statement that she had made before the examining magistrate. An oppressive silence pervaded the hall, and her voice, in consequence, grew steadily lower. She knew now a multitude of details, had seen the long knife lying on the table, had seen Bancal and Colard bring in a wooden tub, and the lawyer Fualdes sitting with bowed shoulders near the lamp, writing. She had also seen the mysterious stranger with the wooden leg, and noticed that Bach and Bousquier unfolded a large white cloth. To the question why she had appeared in men's clothes, she gave no reply. And when, with fingers convulsively clasped, head bowed, her slender body bent slightly forward, writhing almost imperceptibly, as if in the clutches of an animal, yet with that blissful, sweet smile which lent her countenance an expression of subdued madness, she related with bated breath how Bastide had embraced and kissed her in the dark adjoining room, he sprang up suddenly, wrung his hands in despair and made a few hurried steps until he stood at Clarissa's side. His heavy breathing was audible to all.