Chapter V: Part 5

Matters had stood thus for years, and yet, after the week of miserable suspicion I had lived through, the quick look and shrug struck me strangely, even while I took his hand after I had kissed my mother, and saluted Madame Bernard. His hand? No, only his finger tips as usual, and they trembled a little as I touched them. How often had my own hand shrunk with unconquerable repugnance from that contact! I listened while he repeated the same phrases of sympathy with my sorrow which he had already written to me while I was at Compiègne. I listened while Madame Bernard uttered other phrases to the same effect; and then the conversation resumed its course, and, during the half-hour that ensued, I looked on, speaking hardly at all, but mentally comparing the physiognomy of my stepfather with that of the visitor, and that of my mother. The contemplation of those three faces produced a curious impression upon me; it was that of their difference, not only of age, but of intensity, of depth. There was no mystery in my mother's face, it was as easy to read as a page in clear handwriting! The mind of Madame Bernard, a worldly, trumpery mind, but harmless enough, was readily to be discerned in her features, which were at once refined and commonplace. How little there was of reflection, of decision, of exercise of will, in short of individuality, behind the poetic grace of the one and the pretty affectations of the other! What a face, on the contrary, was that of my stepfather, with its strong individuality and its vivid expression! In this man of the world, as he stood there talking with two women of the world, in his blue, furtive eyes, too wide apart, and always seeming to shun observation, in his prematurely gray hair, his mouth set round with deep wrinkles, in his dark, blotched complexion, there seemed to be a creature of another race. What passions had worn those furrows? what vigils had hollowed those eyeballs? Was this the face of a happy man, with whom everything had succeeded, who, having been born to wealth and of an excellent family, had married the woman he loved; who had known neither the wearing cares of ambition, the toil of money-getting, nor the stings of wounded self-love? It is true, he suffered from some complaint; but why was it that, although I had hitherto been satisfied with this answer, it now appeared to me childish and even foolish? Why did all these marks of trouble and exhaustion suddenly strike me as effects of a secret cause, and why was I astonished that I had not sooner sought for it? Why was it that in his presence, contrary to my expectations, contrary to what had happened about my mother, I was wrong to think thus, and harbour suspicion from which I had hoped to emerge with a free mind? Why, when our eyes met for just one second, was I afraid that he might read my thoughts in my glance, and why did I shift them with a pang of shame and terror? Ah! coward that I was, triple coward! Either I was wrong to think thus, and at any price I must know that I was wrong; or, I was right and I must know that too. The sole resource henceforth remaining to me for the preservation of my self-respect was ardent and ceaseless search after certainty.

That such a search was beset with difficulty I was well aware. Mow was I to get at facts? The very position of the problem which I had before me forbade all hope of discovering anything whatsoever by a formal inquiry. What, in fact, was the matter in question? It was to make myself certain whether M. Termonde was or was not the accomplice of the man who had led my father into the trap in which he had lost his life. But I did not know that man himself; I had no data to go upon except the particulars of his disguise and the vague speculations of a Judge of Instruction. If I could only have consulted that Judge, and availed myself of his experience? How often since have I taken out the packet containing the denunciatory letters, with the intention of showing them to him and imploring advice, support, suggestions, from him. But I have always stopped short before the door of his house; the thought of my mother barred its entrance against me. What if he, the Judge of Instruction in the case, were to suspect her as my aunt had done? Then I would go back to my own abode, and shut myself up for hours, lying on the divan in my smoking-room and drugging my senses with tobacco. During that time I read and re-read the fatal letters, although I knew them by heart, in order to verify my first impression with the hope of dispelling it. It was, on the contrary, deepened. The only gain I obtained from my repeated perusals was the knowledge that this certainty, of which I had made a point of honour to myself, could only be psychological. In short, all my fancies started from the moral data of the crime, apart from physical data which I could not obtain. I was therefore obliged to rely entirely, absolutely, upon those moral data, and I began again to reason as I had done at Compiègne. "Supposing," said I to myself, "that M. Termonde is guilty, what state of mind must he be in? This state of mind being once ascertained, how can I act so as to wrest some sign of his guilt from him?" As to his state of mind I had no doubt. Ill and depressed as I knew him to be, his mind troubled to the point of torment, if that suffering, that gloom, that misery were accompanied by the recollection of a murder committed in the past, the man was the victim of secret remorse. The point was then to invent a plan which should give, as it were, a form to his remorse, to raise the spectre of the deed he had done roughly and suddenly before him. If guilty, it was impossible but that he would tremble; if innocent, he would not even be aware of the experiment. But how was this sudden summoning-up of his crime before the man whom I suspected to be accomplished? On the stage and in novels one confronts an assassin with the spectacle of his crime, and keeps watch upon his face for the one second during which he loses his self-possession; but in reality there is no instrument except unwieldy, unmanageable speech wherewith to probe a human conscience. I could not, however, go straight to M. Termonde and say to his face: "You had my father killed!" Innocent or guilty, he would have had me turned from the door as a madman!

After several hours of reflection, I came to the conclusion that only one plan was reasonable, and available: this was to have a private talk with my stepfather at a moment when he would least expect it, an interview in which all should be hints, shades, double meanings, in which each word should be like the laying of a finger upon the sorest spots in his breast, if indeed his reflections were those of a murderer. Every sentence of mine must be so contrived as to force him to ask himself: "Why does he say this to me if he knows nothing? He does know something. How much does he know?" So well acquainted was I with every physical trait of his, the slightest variations of his countenance, his simplest gestures, that no sign of disturbance on his part, however slight, could escape me. If I did not succeed in discovering the seat of the malady by this process, I should be convinced of the baselessness of those suspicions which were constantly springing up afresh in my mind since the death of my aunt. I would then admit the simple and probable explanation--nothing in my father's letters discredited it--that M. Termonde had loved my mother without hope in the lifetime of her first husband, and had then profited by her widowhood, of which he had not even ventured to think. If, on the contrary, I observed during our interview, that he was alive to my suspicions, that he divined them, and anxiously followed my words; if I surprised that swift gleam in his eye which reveals the instinctive terror of an animal, attacked at the moment of its fancied security, if the experiment succeeded, then--then--I dared not think of what then? The mere possibility was too overwhelming. But should I have the strength to carry on such a conversation? At the mere thought of it, my heart-beats were quickened, and my nerves thrilled. What! this was the first opportunity that had been offered to me of action, of devoting myself to the task of vengeance, so coveted, so fully accepted during all my early years, and I could hesitate? Happily, or unhappily, I had near me a counsellor stronger than my doubts, my father's portrait, which was hung in my smoking-room. When I awoke in the night and plunged into these thoughts, I would light my candle and go to look at the picture. How like we were to each other, my father and I, although I was more slightly built! How exactly the same we were! How near to me I felt him, and how dearly I loved him! With what emotion I studied those features, the lofty forehead, the brown eyes, the rather large mouth, the rather long chin, the mouth especially, half-hidden by a black moustache cut like my own; it had no need to open, and cry out: "André, André, remember me!" Ah, no, my dear dead father, I could not leave you thus, without having done my utmost to avenge you, and it was only an interview to be faced, only an interview!

My nervousness gave way to determination at once feverish and fixed--yes, it was both--and it was in a mood of perfect self-mastery, that, after a long period of mental conflict, I repaired to the hotel on the boulevard, with the plan of my discourse clearly laid out. I felt almost sure of finding my stepfather alone; for my mother was to breakfast on that day with Madame Bernard. M. Termonde was at home, and, as I expected, alone in his study. When I entered the room, he was sitting in a low chair, close to the fire, looking chilly, and smoking. Like myself in my dark hours, he drugged himself with tobacco. The room was a large one, and both luxurious and ordinary. A handsome bookcase lined one of the walls. Its contents were various, ranging from grave works on history and political economy to the lightest novels of the day. A large, flat writing-table, on which every kind of writing-material was carefully arranged, occupied the middle of the room, and was adorned with photographs in leather cases. These were portraits of my mother and M. Termonde's father and mother. At least one prominent trait of its owner's character, his scrupulous attention to order and correctness of detail, was revealed by the aspect of my stepfather's study; but this quality, which is common to so many persons of his position in the world, may belong to the most commonplace character as well as to the most refined hypocrite. It was not only in the external order and bearing of his life that my stepfather was impenetrable, none could tell whether profound thoughts were or were not hidden behind his politeness and elegance of manner. I had often reflected on this, at a period when as yet I had no stronger motive for examining into the recesses of the man's character than curiosity, and the impression came to me with extreme intensity at the moment when I entered his presence with a firm resolve to read in the book of his past life.

We shook hands, I took a seat opposite to his on the other side of the hearth, lighted a cigar, and said, as if to explain my unaccustomed presence:

"Mamma is not here?"

"Did she not tell you, the other day, that she was to breakfast with Madame Bernard? There's an expedition to Lozano's studio,"--Lozano was a Spanish painter much in vogue just then--"to see a portrait he is painting of Madame Bernard. Is there anything you want to have told to your mother?" he added, simply.

These few words were sufficient to show me that he had remarked the singularity of my visit. Ought I to regret or to rejoice at this? He was, then, already aware that I had some particular motive for coming; but this very fact would give all their intended weight to my words. I began by turning the conversation on an indifferent matter, talking of the painter Lozano and a good picture of his which I knew, "A Gipsy-dance in a Tavern-yard at Grenada." I described the bold attitudes, the pale complexions, the Moorish faces of the gitanas, and the red carnations stuck into the heavy braids of their black hair, and I questioned him about Spain. He answered me, but evidently out of mere politeness. While continuing to smoke his cigar, he raked the fire with the tongs, and taking up one small piece of charred wood after another between their points. By the quivering of his fingers, the only sign of his nervous sensitiveness which he was unable entirely to keep down, I could observe that my presence was then, as it always was, disagreeable to him. Nevertheless he talked on with his habitual courtesy, in his low voice, almost without tone or accent, as though he had trained himself to talk thus. His eyes were fixed on the flame, and his face, which I saw in profile, wore the expression of infinite weariness that I knew well, an indescribable sadness, with long deep lines, and the mouth was contracted as though by some bitter thought ever present. Suddenly, I looked straight at that detested profile, concentrating all the attention I had in me upon it, and, passing from one subject to another without transition, I said:

"I paid a very interesting visit this morning."

"In that you are agreeably distinguished from me," was his reply, made in a tone of utter indifference, "for I wasted my morning in putting my correspondence in order."

"Yes," I continued, "very interesting. I passed two hours with M. Massol."

I had reckoned a good deal on the effect of this name, which must have instantly recalled the inquiry into the mystery of the Imperial Hotel to his memory. The muscles of his face did not move. He laid down the tongs, leaned back in his chair, and said in an absent manner:

"The former Judge of Instruction? What is he doing now?"

Was it possible that he really did not know where the man, whom, if he were guilty, he ought to have dreaded most of all men, was then living? How was I to know whether this indifference was feigned? The trap I had set appeared to me all at once a childish notion. Admitting that my stepfather's pulses were even now throbbing with fever, and that he was saying to himself with dread: "What is he coming to? What does he mean?" why, this was a reason why he should conceal his emotion all the more carefully. No matter. I had begun; I was bound to go on, and to hit hard--or cease to hit at all.

"M. Massol is Counsellor to the Court," I replied, and I added--although this was not true--"I see him often. We were talking this morning of criminals who have escaped punishment. Only fancy his being convinced that Troppmann had an accomplice. He founds his belief on the details of the crime, which presupposes two men, he says. If this be true it must be admitted that 'Messieurs The Assassins' have a kind of honour of their own, however odd that may appear, since the child-killing monster let his own head be cut off without denouncing the other. Nevertheless, the accomplice must have had some bad times before him, after the discovery of the bodies and the arrest of his comrade. I, for my part, would not trust to that honour, and if the humour took me to commit a crime, I should do it by myself. Would you?" I asked jestingly.

These two little words meant nothing, were merely an insignificant jest, if the man to whom I put my odd question was innocent. But, if he were guilty, those two little words were enough to freeze the marrow in his bones. He surrounded himself with smoke while listening to me, his eyelids half veiled his eyes; I could no longer see his left hand, which hung over the far side of his chair, and he had put the right into the pocket of his morning-coat. There was a short pause before he answered me--very short--but the interval, perhaps a minute, that divided his reply from my question was a burning one for me. But what of this? It was not his way to speak in a hurry; and besides, my question had nothing interesting in it if he were not guilty, and if he were, would he not have to calculate the bearing of the phrase which he was about to utter with the quickness of thought? He closed his eyes completely--his constant habit--and said, in the unconcerned tone of a man who is talking generalities:

"It is a fact that scraps of conscience do remain intact in very depraved individuals. One sees instances of this especially in countries where habits and morals are more genuine and true to nature than ours. There's Spain, for instance, the country that interests you so much; when I lived in Spain, it was still infested by brigands. One had to make treaties with them in order to cross the Sierras in safety; there was no case known in which they broke the contract. The history of celebrated criminal cases swarms with scoundrels who have been excellent friends, devoted sons, and constant lovers. But I am of your opinion, and I think it is best not to count too much upon them."

He smiled as he uttered the last words, and now he looked full at me with those light blue eyes which were so mysterious and impassible. No, I was not of a stature to cope with him, to read his heart by force. It needed capacity of another kind than mine to play in the case of this personage the part of the magnate of police who magnetises a criminal. And yet, why did my suspicions gather force as I felt the masked, dissimulating, guarded nature of the man in all its strength? Are there not natures so constituted that they shut themselves up without cause, just as others reveal themselves; are there not souls that love darkness as others love daylight? Courage, then, let me strike again.

"M. Massol and I," I resumed, "have been talking about what kind of life Troppmann's accomplice must be leading, and also Rochdale's, for neither of us has relinquished the intention of finding him. Before M. Massol's retirement he took the precaution to bar the limitation by a formal notice, and we have several years before us in which to search for the man. Do these criminals sleep in peace? Are they punished by remorse, or by the apprehension of danger, even in their momentary security? It would be strange if they were both at this moment good, quiet citizens, smoking their cigars like you and me, loved and loving. Do you believe in remorse?"

"Yes, I do believe in remorse," he answered. Was it the contrast between the affected levity of my speech, and the seriousness with which he had spoken, that caused his voice to sound grave and deep to my ears? No, no; I was deceiving myself, for without a thrill he had heard the news that the limitation had been barred, that the case might be re-opened any day--terrible news for him if he were mixed up with the murder--and he added, calmly, referring to the philosophic side of my question only:

"And does M. Massol believe in remorse?" "M. Massol," said I, "is a cynic. He has seen too much wickedness, known too many terrible stories. He says that remorse is ay question of stomach and religious education, and that a man with a sound digestion, who had never heard anything about hell in his childhood, might rob and kill from morning to night without feeling any other remorse than fear of the police. He also maintains, being a sceptic, that we do not know what part that question of the other life plays in solitude; and I think he is right, for I often begin to think of death, at night, and I am afraid;--yes, I, who don't believe in anything very much, am afraid. And you," I continued, "do you believe in another world?"

"Yes." This time I was sure that there was an alteration in his voice.

"And in the justice of God?"

"In His justice and His mercy," he answered, in a strange tone.

"Singular justice," I said vehemently, "which is able to do everything, and yet delays to punish! My poor aunt used always to say to me when I talked to her about avenging my father: 'I leave it to God to punish,' but, for my part, if I had got hold of the murderer, and he was there before me--if I were sure--no, I would not wait for the hour of that tardy justice of God."

I had risen while uttering these words, carried away by involuntary excitement which I knew to be unwise. M. Termonde had bent over the fire again, and once more taken up the tongs. He made no answer to my outburst. Had he really felt some slight disturbance, as I believed for an instant, at hearing me speak of that inevitable and dreadful morrow of the grave which fills myself with such fear now that there is blood upon my hands? I could not tell. His profile was, as usual, calm and sad. The restlessness of his hands--recalling to my mind the gesture with which he turned and returned his cane while my mother was telling him of the disappearance of my father--yes, the restlessness of his hands was extreme; but he had been working at the fire with the same feverish eagerness just before. Silence had fallen between us suddenly; but how often had the same thing happened? Did it ever fail to happen when he and I were in each other's company? And then, what could he have to say against the outburst of my grief and wrath, orphan that I was? Guilty, or innocent, it was for him to be silent, and he held his peace. My heart sank; but, at the same time, a senseless rage seized upon me. At that moment I would have given my remaining life for the power of forcing their secret from those shut lips, by any mode of torture.

My stepfather looked at the clock--he, too, had risen now--and said: "Shall I put you down anywhere? I have ordered the carriage for three o'clock, as I have to be at the club at half-past. There's a ballot coming off to-morrow." Instead of the down-stricken criminal I had dreamed of, there stood before me a man of society thinking about the affairs of his club. He came with me so far as the hall, and took leave of me with a smile.

Why, then, a quarter of an hour afterwards, when we passed each other on the quay, I, going homewards on foot, he in his coupé--yes--why was his face so transformed, so dark and tragic? He did not see me. He was sitting back in the corner, and his clay-coloured face was thrown out by the green leather behind his head. His eyes were looking--where, and at what? The vision of distress that passed before me was so different from the smiling countenance of a while ago that it shook me from head to foot with an extraordinary emotion.

XII

This impression of dread kept hold of me during the whole of that evening, and for several days afterwards. There is infinite distance between our fancies, however precise they may be, and the least bit of reality. My father's letters had stirred my being to its utmost depths, had summoned up tragic pictures before my eyes; but the simple fact of my having seen the agonised look in my stepfather's face, after my interview with him, gave me a shock of an entirely different kind. Even after I had read the letters repeatedly, I had cherished a secret hope that I was mistaken, that some slight proof would arise and dispel suspicions which I denounced as senseless, perhaps because I had a foreknowledge of the dreadful duty that would devolve upon me when the hour of certainty had come. Then I should be obliged to act on a resolution, and I dared not look the necessity in the face. No, I had not so regarded it, previous to my meeting with my enemy, when I saw him cowering in anguish upon the cushions of his carriage. Now I would force myself to contemplate it. What should my course be, if he were guilty? I put this question to myself plainly t and I perceived all the horror of the situation. On whatever side I turned I was confronted with intolerable misery. That things should remain as they were I could not endure. I saw my mother approach M. Termonde, as she often did, and touch his forehead caressingly with her hand or her lips. That she should do this to the murderer of my father! My very bones burned at the mere thought of it, and I felt as though an arrow pierced my breast. So be it! I would act; I would find strength to go to my mother and say: "This man is an assassin," and prove it to her--and lo! I was already shrinking from the pain that my words must inflict on her. It seemed to me that while I was speaking I should see her eyes open wide, and, through the distended pupils, discern the rending asunder of her being, even to her heart, and that she would go mad or fall down dead on the spot, before my eyes. No, I would speak to her myself. If I held the convincing proof in my hands I would appeal to justice. But then a new scene arose before me. I pictured my mother at the moment of her husband's arrest. She would be there, in the room, close to him. "Of what crime is he accused?" she would ask, and she would have to hear the inevitable answer. And I should be the voluntary cause of this, I, who, since my childhood, and to spare her a pang, had stifled all my complaints at the time when my heart was laden with so many sighs, so many tears, so much sorrow, that it would have been a supreme relief to have poured them out to her. I had not done so then, because I knew that she was happy in her life, and that it was her happiness only that blinded her to my pain. I preferred that she should be blind and happy. And now? Ah! how could I strike her such a cruel blow, dear and fragile being that she was? The first glimpse of the double prospect of misery which my future offered if my suspicions proved just, was too terrible for endurance, and I summoned all my strength of will to shut out a vision which must bring about such consequences. Contrary to my habit, I persuaded myself into a happy solution. My stepfather looked sad when he passed me in his coupé; true, but what did this prove? Had he not many causes of care and trouble, beginning with his health, which was failing from day to day? One fact only would have furnished me with absolute, indisputable proof; if he had been shaken by a nervous convulsion while we were talking, if I had seen him (as Hamlet, my brother in anguish, saw his uncle) start up with distorted face, before the suddenly-evoked spectre of his crime. Not a muscle of his face had moved, not an eyelash had quivered;--why, then, should I set down this untroubled calm to amazing hypocrisy, and take the discomposure of his countenance half an hour later for a revelation of the truth? This was just reasoning, or at least it appears so to me, now that I am writing down my recollections in cold blood. They did not prevail against the sort of fatal instinct which forced me to follow this trail. Yes, it was absurd, it was mad, gratuitously to imagine that M. Termonde had employed another person to murder my father; yet I could not prevent myself from constantly admitting that this most unlikely suggestion of my fancy was possible, and sometimes that it was certain. When a man has given place in his mind to ideas of this kind he is no longer his own master; either he is a coward, or the thing must be fought out. It was due to my father, my mother, and myself that I should _know_. I walked about my rooms for hours, thinking these thoughts, and more than once I took up a pistol, saying to myself: "Just a touch, a slight movement like this and I am cured for ever of mortal pain." But the handling of the weapon, the touch of the smooth barrel, reminded me of the mysterious scene of my father's death. It called up before me the sitting-room in the Imperial Hotel, the disguised man waiting, my father coming in, taking a seat at the table, turning over the papers laid before him, while a pistol, like this one in my hand, was levelled at him, close to the back of his neck; and then the fatal crack of the weapon, the head dropping down upon the table, the murderer wrapping the bleeding neck in towels and washing his hands, coolly, leisurely, as though he had just completed some ordinary task. The picture roused in me a raging thirst for vengeance. I approached the portrait of the dead man, which looked at me with its motionless eyes. What! I had my suspicions of the instigator of this murder, and I would leave them unverified because I was afraid of what I should have to do afterwards! No, no; at any price, I must in the first place know!

Three days passed. I was suffering tortures of irresolution, mingled with incoherent projects no sooner formed than they were rejected as impracticable. To know?--this was easily said, but I, who was so eager, nervous, and excitable, so little able to restrain my quickly-varying emotions, would never be able to extort his secret from so resolute a man, one so completely master of himself as my stepfather. My consciousness of his strength and my weakness made me dread his presence as much as I desired it. I was like a novice in arms who was about to fight a duel with a very skilful adversary; he desires to defend himself and to be victorious, but he is doubtful of his own coolness. What was I to do now, when I had struck a first blow and it had not been decisive? If our interview had really told upon his conscience, how was I to proceed to the redoubling of the first effect, to the final reduction of that proud spirit? My reflections had arrived and stopped at this point, I was forming and re-forming plans only to abandon them, when a note reached me from my mother, complaining; that I had not gone to her house since the day on which I had missed seeing her, and telling me that my stepfather had been very ill indeed two days previously with his customary liver complaint. Two days previously, that was on the day after my conversation with him. Here again it might be said that fate was making sport of me, redoubling the ambiguity of the signs, the chief cause of my despair. Was the imminence of this attack explanatory of the agonised expression of my stepfather's face when he passed me in his carriage? Was it a cause, or merely the effect of the terror by which he had been assailed, if he was guilty, under his mask of indifference, while I flung my menacing words in his face? Oh, how intolerable was this uncertainty, and my mother increased it, when I went to her, by her first words.

"This," she said, "is the second attack he has had in two months; they have never come so near together until now. What alarms me most is the strength of the doses of morphine he takes to lull the pain. He has never been a sound sleeper, and for some years he has not slept one single night without having recourse to narcotics; but he used to be moderate--whereas, now----"

She shook her head dejectedly, poor woman, and I, instead of compassionating her sorrow, was conjecturing whether this, too, was not a sign, whether the man's sleeplessness did not arise from terrible, invincible remorse, or whether it also could be merely the result of illness.

"Would you like to see him?" asked my mother, almost timidly, and as I hesitated she added, under the impression that I was afraid of fatiguing him, whereas I was much surprised by the proposal, "he asked to see you himself; he wants to hear the news from you about yesterday's ballot at the club." Was this the real motive of a desire to see me, which I could not but regard as singular, or did he want to prove that our interview had left him wholly unmoved? Was I to interpret the message which he had sent me by my mother as an additional sign of the extreme importance that he attached to the details of "society" life, or was he, apprehending my suspicions, forestalling them? Or, yet again, was he, too, tortured by the desire to know, by the urgent need of satisfying his curiosity by the sight of my face, whereon he might decipher my thoughts?

I entered the room--it was the same that had been mine when I was a child, but I had not been inside its door for years--in a state of mind similar to that in which I had gone to my former interview with him. I had, however, no hope now that M. Termonde would be brought to his knees by my direct allusion to the hideous crime of which I imagined him to be guilty. My stepfather occupied the room as a sleeping-apartment when he was ill, ordinarily he only dressed there. The walls, hung with dark green damask, ill-lighted by one lamp, with a pink shade, placed upon a pedestal at some distance from the bed, to avoid fatigue to the sick man's eyes, had for their only ornament a likeness of my mother by Bonnat, one of his first female portraits. The picture was hung between the two windows, facing the bed, so that M. Termonde, when he slept in that room, might turn his last look at night and his first look in the morning upon the face whose long-descended beauty the painter had very finely rendered. No less finely had he conveyed the something half-theatrical which characterised that face, the slightly affected set of the mouth, the far-off look in the eyes, the elaborate arrangement of the hair. First, I looked at this portrait; it confronted me on entering the room; then my glance fell on my stepfather in the bed. His head, with its white hair, and his thin yellow face were supported by the large pillows, round his neck was tied a handkerchief of pale blue silk which I recognised, for I had seen it on my mother's neck, and I also recognised the red woollen coverlet that she had knitted for him; it was exactly the same as one she had made for me; a pretty bit of woman's work on which I had seen her occupied for hours, ornamented with ribbons and lined with silk. Ever and always the smallest details were destined to renew that impression of a shared interest in my mother's life from which I suffered so much, and more cruelly than ever now, by reason of my suspicion. I felt that my looks must betray the tumult of such feelings, and, while I seated myself by the side of the bed, and asked my stepfather how he was, in a voice that sounded to me like that of another person, I avoided meeting his eyes. My mother had gone out immediately after announcing me, to attend to some small matters relative to the well-being of her dear invalid. My stepfather questioned me upon the ballot at the club which he had assigned as a pretext for his wish to see me. I sat with my elbow on the marble top of the table and my forehead resting in my hand; although I did not catch his eye I felt that he was studying my face, and I persisted in looking fixedly into the half-open drawer where a small pocket-pistol, of English make, lay side by side with his watch, and a brown silk purse, also made for him by my mother. What were the dark misgivings revealed by the presence of this weapon placed within reach of his hand and probably habitually placed there? Did he interpret my thoughts from my steady observation? Or had he, too, let his glance fall by chance upon the pistol, and was he pursuing the ideas that it suggested in order to keep up the talk it was always so difficult to maintain between us? The fact is that he said, as though replying to the question in my mind: "You are looking at that pistol, it is a pretty thing, is it not?" He took it up, turned it about in his hand, and then replaced it in the drawer, which he closed. "I have a strange fancy, quite a mania; I could not sleep unless I had a loaded pistol, there, quite close to me. After all it is a habit which does no harm to any one, and might have its advantages. If your poor father had carried a weapon like that upon him when he went to the Imperial Hotel, things would not have gone so easily with the assassin."

This time I could not refrain from raising my eyes and seeking his. How, if he were guilty, did he dare to recall this remembrance? Why, if he were not, did his glance sink before mine? Was it merely in following out an association of ideas that he referred thus to the death of my father; was it for the purpose of displaying his entire unconcern respecting the subject-matter of our last interview; or was he using a probe to discover the depth of my suspicion? After this allusion to the mysterious murder which had made me fatherless, he went on to say:

"And, by-the-bye, have you seen M. Massol again?"

"No," said I, "not since the other day."

"He is a very intelligent man. At the time of that terrible affair, I had a great deal of talk with him, in my capacity as the intimate friend of both your father and mother. If I had known that you were in the habit of seeing him latterly, I should have asked you to convey my kind regards."

"He has not forgotten you," I answered. In this I lied; for M. Massol had never spoken of my stepfather to me; but that frenzy which had made me attack him almost madly in the conversation of the other evening had seized upon me again. Should I never find the vulnerable spot in that dark soul for which I was always looking? This time his eyes did not falter, and whatever there was of the enigmatical in what I had said, did not lead him to question me farther. On the contrary, he put his finger on his lips. Used as he was to all the sounds of the house, he had heard a step approaching, and knew it was my mother's. Did I deceive myself, or was there an entreaty that I would respect the unsuspecting security of an innocent woman in the gesture by which he enjoined silence? Was I to translate the look that accompanied the sign into: "Do not awaken suspicion in your mother's mind, she would suffer too much;" and was his motive merely the solicitude of a man who desires to save his wife from the revival of a sad remembrance? She came in; with the same glance she saw us both, lighted by the same ray from the lamp, and she gave us a smile, meant for both of us in common, and fraught with the same tenderness for each. It had been the dream of her life that we should be together thus, and both of us with her, and, as she had told me at Compiègne, she imputed the obstacles which had hindered the realisation of her dream to my moody disposition. She came towards us, smiling, and carrying a silver tray with a glass of Vichy water upon it; this she held out to my stepfather, who drank the water eagerly, and, returning the glass to her, kissed her hand.

"Let us leave him to rest," she said, "his head is burning." Indeed, in merely touching the tips of his fingers, which he placed in mine, I could feel that he was highly feverish; but how was I to interpret this symptom, which was ambiguous like all the others, and might, like them, signify either moral or physical distress? I had sworn to myself that I would know; but how?--how?

I had been surprised by my stepfather's having expressed a wish to see me during his illness; but I was far more surprised when, a fortnight later, my servant announced M. Termonde in person, at my abode. I was in my study, and occupied in arranging some papers of my father's which I had brought up from Compiègne. I had passed these two weeks at my poor aunt's house, making a pretext of a final settlement of affairs, but in reality because I needed to reflect at leisure upon the course to be taken with respect to M. Termonde, and my reflections had increased my doubts. At my request, my mother had written to me three times, giving me news of the patient, so that I was aware he was now better and able to go out. On my return, the day before, I had selected a time at which I was almost sure not to see any one for my visit to my mother's house. And now, here was my stepfather, who had not been inside my door ten times since I had been installed in an apartment of my own, paying me a visit without the loss of an hour. My mother, he said, had sent him with a message to me. She had lent me two numbers of a review, and she now wanted them back as she was sending the yearly volume to be bound; so, as he was passing the door, he had stepped in to ask me for them. I examined him closely while he was giving this simple explanation of his visit, without being able to decide whether the pretext did or did not conceal his real motive. His complexion was more sallow than usual, the look in his eyes was more glittering, he handled his hat nervously.

"The reviews are not there," I answered; "we shall probably find them in the smoking-room."

It was not true that the two numbers were not there; I knew their exact place on the table in my study; but my father's portrait hung in the smoking-room, and the notion of bringing M. Termonde face to face with the picture, to see how he would bear the confrontation, had occurred to me. At first he did not observe the portrait at all; but I went to the side of the room on which the easel supporting it stood, and his eyes, following all my movements, encountered it. His eyelids opened and closed rapidly, and a sort of dark thrill passed over his face; then he turned his eyes carelessly upon another little picture hanging upon the wall. I did not give him time to recover from the shock; but, in pursuance of the almost brutal method from which I had hitherto gained so little, I persisted:

"Do you not think," said I, "that my father's portrait is strikingly like me? A friend of mine was saying the other day that if I had my hair arranged in the same way, my head would be exactly like----"

He looked first at me, and then at the picture, in the most leisurely way, like an expert in painting examining a work of art, without any other motive than that of establishing its authenticity. If this man had procured the death of him whose portrait he studied thus, his power over himself was indeed wonderful. But--was not the experiment a crucial one for him? To betray his trouble would be to avow all? How ardently I longed to place my hand upon his heart at that moment and to count its beats.

"You do resemble him," he said at length, "but not to that degree. The lower part of the chin especially, the nose and the mouth, are alike, but you have not the same look in the eyes, and the brows, forehead, and cheeks are not of the same shape."

"Do you think," said I, "that the resemblance is strong enough for me to startle the murderer if he were to meet me suddenly here, and thus?"--I advanced upon him, looking into the depths of his eyes as though I were imitating a dramatic scene. "Yes," I continued, "would the likeness of feature enable me to produce the effect of a spectre, on saying to the man, 'Do you recognise the son of him whom you killed?'"

"Now we are returning to our former discussion," he replied, without any farther alteration of his countenance; "that would depend upon the man's remorse, if he had any, and on his nervous system."

Again we were silent. His pale and sickly but motionless face exasperated me by its complete absence of expression. In those minutes--and how many such scenes have we not acted together since my suspicion was first conceived--I felt myself as bold and resolute as I was the reverse when alone with my own thoughts. His impassive manner drove me wild again; I did not limit myself to this second experiment, but immediately devised a third, which ought to make him suffer as much as the two others, if he were guilty. I was like a man who strikes his enemy with a broken-handled knife, holding it by the blade in his shut hand; the blow draws his own blood also. But no, no; I was not exactly that man; I could not doubt or deny the harm that I was doing to myself by these cruel experiments, while he, my adversary, hid his wound so well that I saw it not. No matter, the mad desire to know overcame my pain.

"How strange those resemblances are," I said, "my father's handwriting and mine are exactly the same. Look here."

I opened an iron safe built into the wall, in which I kept papers which I especially valued, and took out first the letters from my father to my aunt which I had selected and placed on top of the packet. These were the latest in date, and I held them out to him, just as I had arranged them in their envelopes. The letters were addressed to "Mademoiselle Louise Cornélis, Compiègne;" they bore the post-mark and the quite legible stamp of the days on which they were posted in the April and May of 1864. It was the former process over again. If M. Termonde were guilty, he would be conscious that the sudden change of my attitude towards himself, the boldness of my allusions, the vigour of my attacks were all explained by these letters, and also that I had found the documents among my dead aunt's papers. It was impossible that he should not seek with intense anxiety to ascertain what was contained in those letters that had aroused such suspicions in me? When he had the envelopes in his hands I saw him bend his brows, and I had a momentary hope that I had shattered the mask that hid his true face, that face in which the inner workings of the soul are reflected. The bent brow was, however, merely a contraction of the muscles of the eye, caused by regarding an object closely, and it cleared immediately. He handed me back the letters without any question as to their contents.

"This time," said he, simply, "there really is an astonishing resemblance." Then, returning to the ostensible object of his visit--"And the reviews?" he asked.

I could have shed tears of rage. Once more I was conscious that I was a nervous youth engaged in a struggle with a resolutely self-possessed man. I locked up the letters in the safe, and I now rummaged the small bookcase in the smoking-room, then the large one in my study, and finally pretended to be greatly astonished at finding the two reviews under a heap of newspapers on my table. What a silly farce! Was my stepfather taken in by it? When I had handed him the two numbers, he rose from the chair that he had sat in during my pretended search in the chimney-corner of the smoking-room, with his back to my father's portrait. But, again, what did this attitude prove? Why should he care to contemplate an image which could not be anything but painful to him, even if he were innocent?

"I am going to take advantage of the sunshine to have a turn in the Bois," said he. "I have my coupé; will you come with me?"