Chapter VII: Book V: Lafcadio (1)

“_There is only one remedy! One thing alone_
_can cure us from being ourselves!_ ...”

“_Yes; strictly speaking, the question is not how_
_to get cured, but how to live._”
--JOSEPH CONRAD,
Lord Jim, p. 225.

I

After Lafcadio, with the solicitor’s help--Julius acting as intermediary--had come into the 40,000 francs a year left him by the late Count Juste-Agénor de Baraglioul, his chief concern was to let no signs of it appear.

“Off gold plate perhaps,” he had said to himself at the time, “but the same victuals.”

What he had not considered--or perhaps what he had not yet learned--was that his victuals for the future would have a different taste. Or, put it like this: since struggling with his hunger gave him as much pleasure as indulging his appetite, his resistance--now that he was no longer pressed by want--began to slacken. To speak plainly, thanks to a naturally aristocratic disposition he had not allowed himself to be forced by necessity into committing a single one of those actions--which he might very well commit now, out of a gambling or a mocking humour, just for the fun of putting his pleasure before his interest.

In obedience to the Count’s wishes he had not gone into mourning.

A mortifying experience awaited him when he went to replenish his wardrobe in the shops which had been patronised by his last uncle, the Marquis de Gesvres. On his mentioning this gentleman’s name as a recommendation, the tailor pulled out a number of bills which the Marquis had neglected to pay. Lafcadio had a fastidious dislike to swindling; he at once pretended that he had come on purpose to settle the account, and paid ready money for his new clothes. The same misadventure awaited him at the bootmaker’s. When it came to the shirtmaker, Lafcadio thought it more prudent to choose another.

“Oh, Uncle de Gesvres, if only I knew your address, it would be a pleasure to send you your receipted bills,” thought Lafcadio. “You would despise me for it. No matter! I’m a Baraglioul and from this day forward, you scamp of a marquis, I dismiss you from my heart.”

There was nothing to keep him in Paris--or to call him elsewhere; he crossed Italy by short stages, making his way to Brindisi, where he meant to embark on some liner bound for Java.

He was sitting all alone in a compartment of the train which was carrying him away from Rome, and contemplating--not without satisfaction--his hands in their grey doeskin gloves, as they lay on the rich fawn-coloured plaid, which, in spite of the heat, he had spread negligently over his knees. Through the soft woollen material of his travelling-suit he breathed ease and comfort at every pore; his neck was unconfined in its collar which without being low was unstarched, and from beneath which the narrow line of a bronze silk neck-tie ran, slender as a grass-snake, over his pleated shirt. He was at ease in his skin, at ease in his clothes, at ease in his shoes, which were cut out of the same doeskin as his gloves; his foot in its elastic prison could stretch, could bend, could feel itself alive. His beaver hat was pulled down over his eyes and kept out the landscape; he was smoking dried juniper, after the Algerian fashion, in a little clay pipe and letting his thoughts wander at their will. He thought:

“---- The old woman with the little white cloud above her head, who pointed to it and said: ‘It won’t rain to-day!’ that poor, shrivelled old woman whose sack I carried on my shoulders” (he had followed his fancy of travelling on foot for four days across the Apennines, between Bologna and Florence, and had slept a night at Covigliajo) “and whom I kissed when we got to the top of the hill ... one of what the _curé_ of Covigliajo would have called my ‘good actions.’ I could just as easily have throttled her--my hand would have been steady--when I felt her dirty wrinkled skin beneath my fingers.... Ah! how caressingly she stroked and dusted my coat collar and said ‘_figlio mio! carino!_’ ... I wonder what made my joy so intense when afterwards--I was still in a sweat--I lay down on the moss--not smoking though--in the shade of that big chestnut-tree. I felt as though I could have clasped the whole of mankind to my heart in my single embrace--or strangled it, for that matter. Human life! What a paltry thing! And with what alacrity I’d risk mine if only some deed of gallantry would turn up--something really rather pleasantly rash and daring!... All the same, I can’t turn alpinist or aviator.... I wonder what that hidebound old Julius would advise.... It’s a pity he’s such a stick-in-the-mud! I should have liked to have a brother.

“Poor Julius! So many writers and so few readers! It’s a fact. People read less and less nowadays ... to judge by myself, as they say. It’ll end by some catastrophe--some stupendous catastrophe, reeking with horror. Printing will be chucked overboard altogether; and it’ll be a miracle if the best doesn’t sink to the bottom with the worst.

“But the curious thing would be to know what the old woman would have said if I had begun to squeeze. One imagines _what would happen if_, but there’s always a little hiatus through which the unexpected creeps in. Nothing ever happens exactly as one thinks it’s going to.... That’s what makes me want to act.... One does so little!... ‘Let all that can be, be!’ That’s my explanation of the Creation.... In love with what might be. If I were the Government I should lock myself up.

“Nothing very exciting about the correspondence of that Monsieur Gaspard Flamand which I claimed as mine at the Poste Restante at Bologna. Nothing that would have been worth the trouble of returning to him.

“Heavens! how few people one meets whose portmanteau one would care to ransack!... And yet how few there are from whom one wouldn’t get some queer reaction if one knew the right word--the right gesture!... A fine lot of puppets; but, by Jove, one sees the strings too plainly. One meets no one in the streets nowadays but jackanapes and blockheads. Is it possible for a decent person--I ask you, Lafcadio--to take such a farce seriously? No, no! Be off with you! It’s high time! Off to a new world! Print your foot upon Europe’s soil and take a flying leap. If in the depths of Borneo’s forests there still remains a belated anthropopithex, go there and reckon the chances of a future race of mankind....

“I should have liked to see Protos again. No doubt he’s made tracks for America. He used to make out that the barbarians of Chicago were the only persons he esteemed.... Not voluptuous enough for my taste--a pack of wolves! I’m feline by nature.... Well, enough of that!

“The _padre_ of Covigliajo with his cheery face didn’t look in the least inclined to deprave the little boy he was talking to. He was certainly in charge of him. I should have liked to make friends with him--not with the _curé_, my word!--but with the little boy.

“How beautiful his eyes were when he raised them to mine! He was as anxious and as afraid to meet my look as I his--but I looked away at once. He was barely five years younger than I. Yes, between fourteen and sixteen--not more. What was I at that age? A _stripling_[H] full of covetousness, whom I should like to meet now; I think I should take a great fancy to myself.... Faby was quite abashed at first to feel that he had fallen in love with me; it was a good thing he made a clean breast of it to my mother; after that he felt lighterhearted. But how irritated I was by his self-restraint! Later on in the Aures, when I told him about it under the tent, we had a good laugh together.... I should like to see him again; it’s a pity he’s dead. Well, enough of that!

“The truth is, I hoped the _curé_ would dislike me. I tried to think of disagreeable things to say to him--I could hit on nothing that wasn’t charming. It’s wonderful how hard I find it not to be fascinating. Yet I really can’t stain my face with walnut juice, as Carola recommended, or start eating garlic.... Ah! don’t let me think of that poor creature any more. It’s to her I owe the most mediocre of my pleasures.... Oh!! What kind of ark can that strange old man have come out of?”

The sliding door into the corridor had just let in Amédée Fleurissoire. Fleurissoire had travelled in an empty compartment as far as Frosinone. At that station a middle-aged Italian had got into his carriage and had begun to stare at him with such glowering eyes that Fleurissoire had made haste to take himself off.

In the next compartment, Lafcadio’s youthful grace, on the contrary, attracted him.

“Dear me! What a charming boy!” thought he; “hardly more than a child! On his holidays, no doubt. How beautifully dressed he is! His eyes look so candid! Oh, what a relief it will be to be quit of my suspicions for once! If only he knew French, I should like to talk to him.”

He sat down opposite to him in the corner next the door. Lafcadio turned up the brim of his hat and began to consider him with a lifeless and apparently indifferent eye.

“What is there in common between me and that squalid little rat?” reflected he. “He seems to fancy himself too. What is he smiling at me like that for? Does he imagine I’m going to embrace him? Is it possible that there exist women who fondle old men? No doubt he’d be exceedingly astonished to know that I can read writing or print with perfect fluency, upside down, or in transparency, or in a looking-glass, or on blotting-paper--a matter of three months’ training and two years’ practice--all for the love of art. Cadio, my dear boy, the problem is this: to impinge on that fellow’s fate ... but how?... Oh! I’ll offer him a cachou. Whether he accepts or not, I shall at any rate hear in what language.”

“_Grazio! Grazio!_” said Fleurissoire as he refused.

“Nothing doing with the old dromedary. Let’s go to sleep,” went on Lafcadio to himself, and pulling the brim of his hat down over his eyes, he tried to spin a dream out of one of his youthful memories.

He saw himself back at the time when he used to be called Cadio, in that remote castle in the Carpathians where his mother and he spent two summers in company with Baldi, the Italian, and Prince Wladimir Bielkowski. His room is at the end of a passage. This is the first year he has not slept near his mother.... The bronze door-handle is shaped like a lion’s head and is held in place by a big nail.... Ah! how clearly he remembers his sensations!... One night he is aroused from a deep sleep to see Uncle Wladimir--or is it a dream?--standing by his bedside, looking more gigantic even than usual--a very nightmare, draped in the fold of a huge rust-coloured caftan, with his drooping moustache, and an outrageous night-cap stuck on his head like a Persian bonnet, so that there seems no end to the length of him. He is holding in his hand a dark lantern, which he sets down on the table near the bed, beside Cadio’s watch, pushing aside a bag of marbles to make room for it. Cadio’s first thought is that his mother is dead or ill. He is on the point of asking, when Bielkowski puts his finger on his lips and signs to him to get up. The boy hastily slips on his bathing-wrap, which his uncle takes from the back of a chair and hands to him--all this with knitted brows and the look of a person who is not to be trifled with. But Cadio has such immense faith in Wladi that he hasn’t a moment’s fear. He pops on his slippers and follows him, full of curiosity at these goings-on and, as usual, all athrill for amusement.

They step into the passage; Wladimir advances gravely--mysteriously, carrying the lantern well in front of him; they look as if they are accomplishing a rite or walking in a procession; Cadio is a little unsteady on his feet, for he is still dazed with dreaming; but curiosity soon clears his brains. As they pass his mother’s room, they both stop for a moment and listen--not a sound! The whole house is fast asleep. When they reach the landing they hear the snoring of a footman whose room is in the attics. They go downstairs. Wladi’s stockinged feet drop on the steps as softly as cotton-wool; at the slightest creak he turns round, looking so furious that Cadio can hardly keep from laughing. He points out one particular step and signs to him not to tread on it, with as much seriousness as if they were really in danger. Cadio takes care not to spoil his pleasure by asking himself whether these precautions are necessary, nor what can be the meaning of it all; he enters into the spirit of the game and slides down the banister, past the step.... He is so tremendously entertained by Wladi that he would go through fire and water to follow him.

When they reach the ground floor, they both sit down on the bottom step for a moment’s breathing-space; Wladi nods his head and gives vent to a little sigh through his nose, as much as to say: ‘My word! we’ve had a narrow squeak!’ They start off again. At the drawing-room door, what redoubled precautions! The lantern, which it is now Cadio’s turn to hold, lights up the room so queerly that the boy hardly recognises it; it seems to him fantastically big; a ray of light steals through a chink in the shutters; everything is plunged in a supernatural calm; he is reminded of a pond the moment before the stealthy casting of a net; and he recognises all the familiar objects, each one there in its place--but for the first time he realises their strangeness.

Wladi goes up to the piano, half opens it and lightly touches two or three notes with his finger-tips, so as to draw from them the lightest of sounds. Suddenly the lid slips from his hand and falls with a terrific din. (The mere recollection of it made Lafcadio jump again.) Wladi makes a dash at the lantern, muffles it and then crumples up into an arm-chair; Cadio slips under the table; they stay endless minutes, waiting motionless, listening in the dark ... but no--nothing stirs in the house; in the distance a dog bays the moon. Then gently, slowly, Wladi uncovers the lantern.

In the dining-room, with what an air he unlocks the sideboard! The boy knows well enough it is nothing but a game, but his uncle seems actually taken in by it himself. He sniffs about as though to scent out where the best things lie hid; pounces on a bottle of Tokay; pours out two small glasses full for them to dip their biscuits in; signs to Cadio to pledge him, with finger on lip; the glasses tinkle faintly as they touch.... When the midnight feast is over, Wladi sets to work to put things straight again; he goes with Cadio to rinse the glasses in the pantry sink, wipes them, corks the bottle, shuts up the biscuit box, dusts away the crumbs with scrupulous care and gives one last glance to see that everything is tidy again in the cupboard.... Right you are! Not the ghost of a trace!

Wladi accompanies Cadio back to his bedroom door and takes leave of him with a low bow. Cadio picks up his slumbers again where he had left them, and wonders the next day whether the whole thing wasn’t a dream.

An odd kind of entertainment for a little boy! What would Julius have thought of it?...

* * * * *

Lafcadio, though his eyes were shut, was not asleep; he could not sleep.

“The old boy over there believes I am asleep,” thought he; “if I were to take a peek at him through my eyelids, I should see him looking at me. Protos used to make out that it was particularly difficult to pretend to be asleep while one was really watching; he claimed that he could always spot pretended sleep by just that slight quiver of the eyelids ... I’m repressing now. Protos himself would be taken in....”

The sun meanwhile had set, and Fleurissoire, in sentimental mood, was gazing at the last gleams of its splendour as they gradually faded from the sky. Suddenly the electric light that was set in the rounded ceiling of the railway carriage, blazed out with a vividness that contrasted brutally with the twilight’s gentle melancholy. Fleurissoire was afraid, too, that it might disturb his neighbour’s slumbers, and turned the switch; the result was not total darkness but merely a shifting of the current from the centre lamp to a dark blue night-light. To Fleurissoire’s thinking, this was still too bright; he turned the switch again; the night-light went out, but two side brackets were immediately turned on, whose glare was even more disagreeable than the centre light’s; another turn, and the night-light came on again; at this he gave up.

“Will he never have done fiddling with the light?” thought Lafcadio impatiently. “What’s he up to now? (No! I’ll _not_ raise my eyelids.) He is standing up. Can he have taken a fancy to my portmanteau? Bravo! He has noticed that it isn’t locked. It was a bright idea of mine to have a complicated lock fitted to it at Milan and then lose the key, so that I had to have it picked at Bologna! A padlock, at any rate, is easy to replace.... God damn it! Is he taking off his coat? Oh! all the same, let’s have a look!”

Fleurissoire, with no eyes for Lafcadio’s portmanteau, was struggling with his new collar and had taken his coat off, so as to be able to put the stud in more easily; but the starched linen was as hard as cardboard and he struggled in vain.

“He doesn’t look happy,” went on Lafcadio to himself. “He must be suffering from a fistula or some unpleasant complaint of that kind. Shall I go to his help? He’ll never manage it by himself....”

Yes, though! At last the collar yielded to the stud. Fleurissoire then took up his tie, which he had placed on the seat beside his hat, his coat and his cuffs, and going up to the door of the carriage, looked at himself in the window-pane, endeavouring, like Narcissus in the water, to distinguish his reflection from the surrounding landscape.

“He can’t see.”

Lafcadio turned on the light. The train at that moment was running alongside a bank, which could be seen through the window, illuminated by the light cast upon it from one after another of the compartments of the train; a procession of brilliant squares was thus formed which danced along beside the railroad and suffered, each one in its turn, the same distortions, according to the irregularities of the ground. In the middle of one of these squares danced Fleurissoire’s grotesque shadow; the others were empty.

“Who would see?” thought Lafcadio. “There--just to my hand--under my hand, this double fastening, which I can easily undo; the door would suddenly give way and he would topple out; the slightest push would do it; he would fall into the darkness like a stone; one wouldn’t even hear a scream.... And off to-morrow to the East!... Who would know?”

The tie--a little ready-made sailor knot--was put on by now and Fleurissoire had taken up one of the cuffs and was arranging it upon his right wrist, examining, as he did so, the photograph above his seat, which represented some palace by the sea, and was one of four that adorned the compartment.

“A crime without a motive,” went on Lafcadio, “what a puzzle for the police! As to that, however, going along beside this blessed bank, anybody in the next-door compartment might notice the door open and the old blighter’s shadow pitch out. The corridor curtains, at any rate, are drawn.... It’s not so much about events that I’m curious, as about myself. There’s many a man thinks he’s capable of anything, who draws back when it comes to the point.... What a gulf between the imagination and the deed!... And no more right to take back one’s move than at chess. Pooh! If one could foresee all the risks, there’d be no interest in the game!... Between the imagination of a deed and.... Hullo! the bank’s come to an end. Here we are on a bridge, I think; a river....”

The window-pane had now turned black and the reflections in it became more distinct. Fleurissoire leant forward to straighten his tie.

“Here, just under my hand the double fastening--now that he’s looking away and not paying attention--upon my soul, it’s easier to undo than I thought. If I can count up to twelve, without hurrying, before I see a light in the country-side, the dromedary is saved. Here goes! One, two, three, four (slowly! slowly!), five, six, seven, eight, nine ... a light!...”

II

Fleurissoire did not utter a single cry. When he felt Lafcadio’s push and found himself facing the gulf which suddenly opened in front of him, he made a great sweep with his arm to save himself; his left hand clutched at the smooth framework of the door, while, as he half turned round, he flung his right well behind him and over Lafcadio’s head, sending his second cuff, which he had been in the act of putting on, spinning to the other end of the carriage, where it rolled underneath the seat.

Lafcadio felt a horrible claw descend upon the back of his neck, lowered his head and gave another push, more impatient than the first; this was followed by the sensation of nails scraping through his flesh; and after that, nothing was left for Fleurissoire to catch hold of but the beaver hat, which he snatched at despairingly and carried away with him in his fall.

“Now then, let’s keep cool,” said Lafcadio to himself. “I mustn’t slam the door to; they might hear it in the next carriage.”

He drew the door towards him, in the teeth of the wind, and then shut it quietly.

“He has left me his frightful sailor hat; in another minute I should have kicked it after him, but he has taken mine along with him and that’s enough. That was an excellent precaution of mine--cutting out my initials.... But there’s the hatter’s name in the crown, and people don’t order a beaver hat of that kind every day of the week.... It can’t be helped, I’ve played now.... Perhaps they’ll think it an accident.... No, not now that I’ve shut the door.... Stop the train?... Come, come, Cadio! no touching up! You’ve only yourself to thank.

“To prove now that I’m perfectly self-possessed, I shall begin by quite quietly seeing what that photograph is the old chap was examining just now.... _Miramar!_ No desire at all to go and visit _that_.... It’s stifling in here.”

He opened the window.

“The old brute has scratched me ... I’m bleeding.... He has made me very ill. I must bathe it a little; the lavatory is at the end of the corridor, on the left. Let’s take another handkerchief.”

He reached down his portmanteau from the rack above him and opened it on the seat, in the place where he had been sitting.

“If I meet anyone in the corridor I must be calm.... No! my heart’s quiet again. Now for it!... Ah! his coat! I can easily hide it under mine. Papers in the pocket! Something to while away the time for the rest of the journey.”

The coat was a poor threadbare affair of a dingy liquorice colour, made of a harsh-textured and obviously cheap material; Lafcadio thought it slightly repulsive; he hung it up on a peg in the small lavatory into which he locked himself; then, bending over the basin, he began to examine himself in the glass.

There were two ugly furrows on his neck; one, a thin red streak, starting from the back of his neck, turned leftwards and came to an end just below the ear; the other and shorter one, was a deep scratch just above the first; it went straight up towards the ear, the lobe of which it had reached and slightly torn. It was bleeding, but less than might have been expected; on the other hand, the pain, which he had hardly felt at first, began to be pretty sharp. He dipped his handkerchief into the basin, staunched the blood and then washed the handkerchief. “Not enough to stain my collar,” thought he, as he put himself to rights; “all is well.”

He was on the point of going out; just then the engine whistled; a row of lights passed behind the frosted window-pane of the closet. Capua! The station was so close to the scene of the accident that the idea of jumping out, running back in the dark and getting his beaver back again, flashed, dazzling, on his mind. He regretted his hat, so soft and light and silky, at once so warm and so cool, so uncrushable, so discreetly elegant. But it was never his way to lend an undivided ear to his desires--nor to like yielding--even to himself. More than all, he hated indecision, and for ten years he had kept on him, like a fetish, one of a pair of cribbage dice, which Baldi had given him in days gone by; he never parted from it; it was there, in his waistcoat pocket.

“If I throw six,” he said to himself as he took it out, “I’ll get down.”

He threw five.

“I shall get down all the same. Quick, the victim’s coat!... Now for my portmanteau....”

He hurried to his compartment.

Ah! how futile seem all exclamations in face of the extravagance of fact! The more surprising the occurrence, the more simple shall be my manner of relating it. I will therefore say in plain words, merely this--when Lafcadio got back to his compartment, his portmanteau was gone!

He thought at first that he had made a mistake, and went out again into the corridor.... But no! It was the right place. There was the view of Miramar.... Well, then? He sprang to the window and could not believe his eyes. There, on the station platform, and not very far from his carriage, his portmanteau was calmly proceeding on its way in company of a strapping fellow who was carrying it off at a leisurely walk.

Lafcadio’s first instinct was to dash after him; as he put out his hand to open the door, the liquorice coat dropped on to the floor.

“Tut! tut! in another moment I should have put my foot in it.... All the same, that rascal would go a little quicker if he thought there was a chance of my coming after him. Can he have seen ...?”

At this moment, as he was leaning his head out of the carriage window, a drop of blood trickled down his cheek.

“Well! Good-bye to my portmanteau! It can’t be helped! The throw said I wasn’t to get out here. It was right.”

He shut the door and sat down again.

“There were no papers in my portmanteau and my linen isn’t marked. What are the risks?... No matter, I’d better sail as soon as possible; it’ll be a little less amusing perhaps, but a good deal wiser.”

In the meantime the train started again.

“It’s not so much my portmanteau that I regret as my beaver, which I really should have liked to retrieve. Well! let’s think no more about it.”

He filled another pipe, lit it, and then, plunging his hand into the inside pocket of Fleurissoire’s coat, pulled out: a letter from Arnica, a Cook’s ticket and a large yellow envelope, which he opened.

“Three, four, five, six thousand-franc notes! Of no interest to honest folk!”

He returned the notes to the envelope and the envelope to the coat pocket.

But when, a moment later, he examined the Cook’s ticket, Lafcadio’s brain whirled. On the first page was written the name of _Julius de Baraglioul_. “Am I going mad?” he asked himself. “What can he have had to do with Julius?... A stolen ticket?... No, not possible!... a borrowed ticket ... must be. Lord! Lord! Perhaps I’ve made a mess of it. These old gentlemen are sometimes better connected than one thinks....”

Then, his fingers trembling with eagerness, he opened Arnica’s letter. The circumstances seemed too strange; he found it difficult to fix his attention; he failed, no doubt, to make out the exact relationship existing between Julius and the old gentleman, but, at any rate, he managed to grasp that Julius was in Rome. His mind was made up at once; an urgent desire to see his brother possessed him--an unbridled curiosity to find out what kind of repercussion this affair would set up in that calm and logical mind.

“That’s settled. I shall sleep to-night at Naples, get out my trunk, and to-morrow morning return by the first train to Rome. It will certainly be a good deal less wise, but perhaps a little more amusing.”

III

At Naples Lafcadio went to a hotel near the station; he made a point of taking his trunk with him, because travellers without luggage are looked at askance, and because he was anxious not to attract attention; then he went out to buy a few necessary articles of toilette and another hat instead of the odious straw (beside which, it was too tight) which Fleurissoire had left him. He wanted to buy a revolver as well, but was obliged to put this purchase off, as the shops were already shutting.

The train he took next day started early, arriving in Rome in time for lunch.

His intention was not to approach Julius until after the newspapers had appeared with an account of the “crime.” The _crime_! This word seemed odd to him, to say the very least; and _criminal_ as applied to himself totally inappropriate. He preferred _adventurer_--a word as pliable as his beaver and as easily twisted to suit his liking.

The morning papers had not yet mentioned the _adventure_. He awaited the evening ones with impatience, for he was eager to see Julius and to feel for himself that the game had begun; until then the time hung heavy on his hands, as with a child playing at hide-and-seek, who, no doubt, doesn’t want to be found, but wants, at any rate, to be sure he is being looked for. The vagueness of this state was one with which he was not as yet familiar; and the people he elbowed in the street seemed to him particularly commonplace, disagreeable and hideous.

When the evening came he bought the _Corriere_ from a newspaper-seller in the Corso; then he went into a restaurant, but he laid the paper all folded on the table beside him and forced himself to finish his dinner without looking at it--out of a kind of bravado, and as though he thought in this way to put an edge on his desire; then he went out, and once in the Corso again, he stopped in the light of a shop window, unfolded the paper and on the second page saw the following head-line:

CRIME, SUICIDE ... OR ACCIDENT

He read the next few paragraphs, which I translate:

Last evening in the railway station at Naples, the company’s
servants found a man’s coat in the rack of a first-class carriage
of the train from Rome. In the inside pocket of this coat, which
is of a dark brown colour, was an unfastened envelope containing
six thousand-franc notes. There were no other papers by which to
identify the missing owner. If there has been foul play, it is
difficult to account for the fact that such a considerable sum of
money should have been left in the victim’s coat; it may, at any
rate, be inferred that the motive was not robbery.

There were no traces of a struggle to be seen in the compartment;
but under one of the seats a man’s shirt-cuff was discovered with
the link attached; this article was in the shape of two cats’
heads, linked together by a small silver-gilt chain, and carved out
of a semi-transparent quartz, known as opalescent feldspar, and
commonly called moonstone by jewellers.

A thorough investigation of the railway line is being made.

Lafcadio crumpled the paper up in his hand.

“What! Carola’s sleeve-links now! The old boy is a regular public meeting-place!”

He turned the page and read in the stop-press news:

RECENTISSIME

DEAD BODY FOUND ON RAILWAY LINE

Without waiting to read further, Lafcadio hurried to the Grand Hotel. He slipped his visiting-card into an envelope after adding the following words underneath his name:

CENTER LAFCADIO WLUIKI

would be glad to know whether Count Julius de Baraglioul is not in
need of a secretary.

He sent it up.

A manservant at last came to where he was waiting in the hall, led him along various passages and ushered him in to where Julius was sitting.

His first glance showed Lafcadio a copy of the _Corriere della Sera_, which had been thrown down in a corner of the room. On a table in the middle a large, uncorked bottle of eau-de-Cologne was exhaling its powerful perfume. Julius held out his arms.

“Lafcadio! My dear fellow!... How very glad I am to see you!”

His ruffled hair waved in agitated fashion on his temples; he seemed strangely excited; in one hand he held a black spotted handkerchief, with which he fanned himself.

“You are certainly one of the persons I least expected to see, but the one in the world I was most wanting to talk to this evening.... Was it Madame Carola who told you I was here?”

“What an odd question!”

“Why! as I’ve just met her.... I’m not sure, though, that she saw me.”

“Carola! Is she in Rome?”

“Didn’t you know?”

“I’ve just this minute arrived from Sicily and you are the first person I have seen. I’ve no desire to see her.”

“I thought she was looking extremely pretty----”

“You’re not hard to please.”

“I mean, prettier than she did in Paris.”

“Exoticism, no doubt--but if you’re feeling randy....”

“Lafcadio! Such language from you to me isn’t permissible.”

Julius tried to look severe, but only succeeded in pulling a face. He went on:

“You find me in a great state of agitation. I’m at a turning-point of my career. My head is burning and I feel, as it were, giddy all over, as if I were going to evaporate. I have come to Rome for a sociological congress, and during the three days I’ve spent here I’ve been going from surprise to surprise. Your arrival is the finishing touch.... I don’t recognise myself any longer.”

He was striding about the room; suddenly he stopped beside the table, seized the bottle, poured a stream of scent on to his handkerchief, applied it like a compress to his forehead and left it there.

“My dear young friend--if you’ll allow me to call you so.... My new book! I think I’ve got the hang of it. The way in which you spoke to me of _On the Heights_ in Paris, makes me think that you will not find this one uninteresting.”

His feet sketched a kind of pirouette; the handkerchief fell to the ground. Lafcadio hastened to pick it up and, as he was stooping, he felt Julius’s hand laid gently on his shoulder, just as once before he had felt Juste-Agénor’s. Lafcadio smiled and raised himself.

“I’ve known you such a short time,” said Julius, “and yet this evening I can’t help talking to you like a....”

He stopped.

“I’m listening like a brother, Monsieur de Baraglioul,” Lafcadio was emboldened to take up the words, “--since you allow me to.”

“You see, Lafcadio, in the set which I frequent in Paris--smart people, and literary people, and ecclesiastics and academicians--there is really nobody I can speak to--nobody, I mean, to whom I can confide the new preoccupations which beset me. For I must confess to you that, since our last meeting, my point of view has completely changed.”

“So much the better,” said Lafcadio impertinently.

“You can’t imagine, because you aren’t in the trade, how an erroneous system of ethics can hamper the free development of one’s creative faculties. So nothing is further from my old novels than the one I am planning now. I used to demand logic and consistency from my characters, and in order to make quite sure of getting them, I began by demanding them from myself. It wasn’t natural. We prefer to go deformed and distorted all our lives rather than not resemble the portrait of ourselves which we ourselves have first drawn. It’s absurd. We run the risk of warping what’s best in us.”

Lafcadio continued to smile as he waited for what was to come next, amused to recognise, at this remove, the effect of his first remarks.

“How shall I put it, Lafcadio? For the first time I see before me a free field.... Can you understand what that means? A free field!... I say to myself that it always has been, always will be free, and that up till now the only things to hinder me have been impure considerations--questions of a successful career, of public opinion--the poet’s continual vain hope of reward at the hands of ungrateful judges. Henceforth I hope for nothing--except from myself--henceforth I hope for everything from myself--I hope for everything from the man who is sincere--everything and anything! For now I feel in myself the strangest possibilities. And as it’s only on paper, I shall boldly let myself go. We shall see! We shall see!”

He took a deep breath, flung himself back sideways with one shoulder-blade raised, almost as if a wing were already beginning to sprout, and as if he were stifling with the weight of fresh perplexities. He went on incoherently in a lower voice:

“And since the gentlemen of the Academy shut the door in my face, I’ll give them good cause for it; for they had none--no cause whatever.”

His voice suddenly turned shrill as he emphasised the last words; then he went on more calmly:

“Well, then, this is what I have imagined.... Are you listening?”

“With my whole soul,” said Lafcadio, still laughing.

“And do you follow me?”

“To the devil himself!”

Julius again soused his handkerchief and sat down in an arm-chair; Lafcadio sat himself astride on a chair opposite him.

“The hero is to be a young man whom I wish to make a criminal.”

“I see no difficulty in that.”

“Hum! hum!” said Julius, who was not to be done out of his difficulty.

“But since you’re a novelist, once you set about imagining, what’s to prevent you imagining things just as you choose?”

“The stranger the things I imagine, the more necessary it is to find motives and explanations for them.”

“It’s easy enough to find motives for crime.”

“No doubt ... but that’s exactly what I don’t want to do. I don’t want a motive for the crime--all I want is an explanation of the criminal. Yes! I mean to lead him into committing a crime gratuitously--into wanting to commit a crime without any motive at all.”

Lafcadio began to prick up his ears.

“We will take him as a mere youth. I mean him to show the elegance of his nature by this--that he acts almost entirely in play, and as a matter of course prefers his pleasure to his interest.”

“Rather unusual, I should say,” ventured Lafcadio.

“Yes, isn’t it?” said Julius, enchanted. “Then, we must add that he takes pleasure in self-control.”

“To the point of dissimulation.”

“We’ll endow him, then, with the love of risk.”

“Bravo!” exclaimed Lafcadio, more and more amused. “If, added to that, he is a fellow who can lend an ear to the demon of curiosity, I think your pupil will be done to a turn.”

Progressing in this way by leaps and bounds, each in turn overtaking and overtaken by the other, one would have likened them to two schoolboys playing leap-frog.

_Julius._ First of all, I imagine him training himself. He is an adept at committing all sorts of petty thefts.

_Lafcadio._ I’ve often wondered why more aren’t committed. It’s true that the opportunity of committing them usually occurs only to people who are free from want and without any particular hankerings.

_Julius._ Free from want! Yes, I told you so. But the only opportunities that tempt him are the ones that demand some skill--some cunning.

_Lafcadio._ And which run him, no doubt, into some danger.

_Julius._ I said that he enjoys risk. But swindling is odious to him; he doesn’t want to appropriate things, but finds it amusing to displace them surreptitiously. He’s as clever at it as a conjurer.

_Lafcadio._ And, besides, he’s encouraged by impunity.

_Julius._ Yes, but sometimes vexed by it too. If he isn’t caught, it must be because the job he set himself was too easy.

_Lafcadio._ He eggs himself on to take greater risks.

_Julius._ I make him reason this way....

_Lafcadio._ Do you really think he reasons?

_Julius_ (continuing). The author of a crime is always found out by the need he had to commit it.

_Lafcadio._ We said that he was very clever.

_Julius._ Yes, and all the cleverer because he acts with perfect coolness. Just think! A crime that has no motive either of passion or need! His very reason for committing the crime is just to commit it without any reason.

_Lafcadio._ _You_ reason about his crime--_he_ merely commits it.

_Julius._ There is no reason that a man who commits a crime without reason should be considered a criminal.

_Lafcadio._ You’re too subtle. You have carried him to such a pitch that you have made him what they call “a free man.”

_Julius._ At the mercy of the first opportunity.

_Lafcadio._ I’m longing to see him at work. What in the world are you going to offer him?

_Julius._ Well, I was still hesitating. Yes, up till this very evening I was hesitating, and then, this very evening, the latest edition of the newspaper brought me just exactly the example I was in need of. A providential stroke! Frightful! Only think of it! My brother-in-law has just been murdered!

_Lafcadio._ What! the old fellow in the railway carriage was....

_Julius._ He was Amédée Fleurissoire. I had just lent him my ticket and seen him off at the station. An hour before starting he had taken six thousand francs out of the bank, and as he was carrying them on his person, he was a little bit anxious as he left me; he had fancies--more or less gloomy fancies--presentiments. Well, in the train....

But you’ve seen the paper?

_Lafcadio._ Only the head-lines.

_Julius._ Listen! I’ll read it to you. (He unfolded the _Corriere_.) I’ll translate as I go along.

“This afternoon, in the course of a thorough investigation of the
line between Rome and Naples, the police discovered the body of a
man lying in the dry bed of the Volturno, about five kilometers
from Capua--no doubt the unfortunate owner of the coat that was
found last night in a railway carriage. The body is that of a man
of about fifty years of age. [He looked older than he really was.]
No papers were on him which could give any clue to his identity.
[Thank goodness! That’ll give me time to breathe, at any rate.] He
had apparently been flung out of the railway carriage with
sufficient violence to clear the parapet of the bridge, which is
being repaired at this point and has been replaced by a wooden
railing. [What a style!] The height of the bridge above the river
is about fifteen metres. Death must have been caused by the fall,
as the body bears no trace of other injuries. The man was in his
shirt-sleeves; on his right wrist was a cuff similar to the one
picked up in the railway carriage, but in this case the sleeve-link
is missing. [What’s the matter?]”

Julius stopped. Lafcadio had not been able to suppress a start, for the idea flashed upon him that the sleeve-link had been removed since the committing of the crime--Julius went on:

“His left hand was found still clutching a soft felt hat....”

“Soft felt indeed! The barbarians!” murmured Lafcadio.

Julius raised his nose from the paper:

“What are you so astonished at?”

“Nothing! Nothing! Go on!”

“...soft felt hat much too large for his head and which
presumably belongs to the aggressor; the maker’s name has been
carefully removed from the lining, out of which a piece of leather
has been cut of the size and shape of a laurel leaf....”

Lafcadio got up and went behind Julius’s chair so as to read the paper over his shoulder--and perhaps, too, so as to hide his paleness. There could no longer be any doubt about it; his crime had been tampered with; someone else had touched it up; had cut the piece out of the lining--the unknown person, no doubt, who had carried off his portmanteau.

In the meantime Julius went on reading:

“...which seems to prove the crime was premeditated. [Why this
particular crime? My hero had perhaps merely taken general
precautions just at random....] As soon as the police had made the
necessary notes, the body was removed to Naples for the purposes of
identification. [Yes, I know they have the means there--and the
habit of preserving dead bodies....]”

“Are you quite sure it was he?” Lafcadio’s voice trembled a little.

“Bless my soul! I was expecting him to dinner this evening.”

“Have you informed the police?”

“Not yet. First of all, I must get clear in my own mind a little. I’m in mourning already, so from that point of view (as regards the dress question, I mean) there’s no need to bother; but you see, as soon as the victim’s name is published, I shall have to communicate with the family, send telegrams, write letters, make arrangements for the funeral, go to Naples to fetch the body.... Oh! my dear Lafcadio, there’s this congress I’ve got to attend--would you mind--would you consent to fetching the body in my place?”

“We’ll see about it.”

“That is, of course, if it won’t upset you too much. In the meantime I’m sparing my sister-in-law a period of cruel anxiety. She’ll never suspect from the vague accounts in the newspapers.... But to return to my subject. Well, then, when I read this paragraph in the paper, I said to myself: ‘This crime, which I can imagine to myself so easily, which I can reconstruct, which I can see--I know, I tell you, I know the reason for which it was committed; I know that if it hadn’t been for the inducement of the six thousand francs, it would never have been committed.’”

“But suppose....”

“Yes, yes. Let’s suppose for a moment that there had been no six thousand francs--or, better still, that the criminal didn’t take them--why, he’d have been my hero!”

Lafcadio in the meantime had risen; he picked up the paper which Julius had let fall, and opening it at the second page:

“I see,” he said in as cool a voice as he could muster, “I see that you haven’t read the latest news. That is exactly what _has_ happened. The criminal did _not_ take the six thousand francs. Look here! Read this: ‘_The motive of the crime, therefore, does not appear to be robbery._’”

Julius snatched the sheet that Lafcadio held out to him, read it eagerly, then passed his hand over his eyes, then sat down, then got up abruptly, darted towards Lafcadio, and seizing him with both arms, exclaimed:

“The motive of the crime not robbery!” and he shook Lafcadio in a kind of transport. “The motive of the crime not robbery! Why, then”--he pushed Lafcadio from him, rushed to the other end of the room, fanned himself, struck his forehead, blew his nose--“Why, then, I know--good heavens!--I know why the ruffian murdered him.... Oh! my unfortunate friend! Oh, poor Fleurissoire! So it was true what he said! And I who thought he was out of his mind! Why, then, it’s appalling!”

Lafcadio awaited the end of this outburst with astonishment; he was a little irritated; it seemed to him that Julius had no right to evade him in this manner.

“I thought that was the very thing you....”

“Be quiet! You know nothing about it. And here am I wasting my time with you, spinning these ridiculous fancies!.... Quick! my stick! my hat!”

“Where are you off to in such a hurry?”

“To inform the police, of course!”

Lafcadio placed himself in front of the door.

“First of all, explain,” said he imperatively. “Upon my soul, anyone would think you had gone mad.”

“It was just now that I was mad.... Oh, poor Fleurissoire! Oh, unfortunate friend! Luckless, saintly victim! His death just comes in time to cut me short in a career of irreverence--of blasphemy. His sacrifice has brought me to reason. And to think that I laughed at him!”

He had again begun to pace up and down the room; suddenly he stopped and laying his hat and stick beside the scent bottle on the table, he planted himself in front of Lafcadio:

“Do you want to know why the ruffian murdered him?”

“I thought it was without a motive.”

“To begin with,” exclaimed Julius furiously, “there’s no such thing as a crime without a motive. He was got rid of because he was in possession of a secret ... which he confided to me--an important secret--over-important for him, indeed. They were afraid of him. That’s what it was. There!... Oh! it’s all very well for you to laugh--you understand nothing about matters of faith.” Then, very pale and drawing himself up to his full height: “_I_ am the inheritor of that secret!”

“Take care! They’ll be afraid of you next.”

“You see how necessary it is to warn the police at once.”

“One more question,” said Lafcadio, stopping him again.

“No! Let me go. I’m in a desperate hurry. You may be certain that the continual surveillance under which they kept my poor brother and which terrified him to such a degree, will now be transferred to _me_--has now been transferred to me. You have no idea what a crafty set they are. Those people know everything, I tell you. It’s more important than ever that you should go and fetch the body instead of me. Now that I’m being watched as I am, there’s no knowing what mightn’t happen to me. Lafcadio, my dear fellow”--he clasped his hands imploringly--“I’ve no head at this moment, but I’ll make enquiries at the Questura as to how to get a proper authorisation. Where shall I send it to you?”

“I’ll take a room in this hotel. It’ll be more convenient. Good-bye, till to-morrow. Make haste! Make haste!”

He let Julius go. There was beginning to rise in him a feeling of profound disgust--a kind of hatred almost, of himself, of Julius, of everything. He shrugged his shoulders, and then took out of his pocket the Cook’s ticket, which he had found in Fleurissoire’s coat and which had the name of Baraglioul written on the first page; he put it on the table, well in sight, leaning it up against the scent bottle--then turned out the light and left the room.

IV

Notwithstanding all the precautions he had taken, notwithstanding his recommendations to the Questura, Julius de Baraglioul did not succeed in preventing the newspapers from divulging his relationship to the victim--nor, indeed, from mentioning in so many words the name and address of his hotel.

That evening, of a truth, he had gone through some incredibly sickening moments of apprehension, when, on his return from the Questura at midnight, he had found, placed in a conspicuous position in his room, the Cook’s ticket which had his name written in it and which he had lent to Fleurissoire. He had immediately rung the bell and, going out into the passage, pale and trembling, had begged the waiter to look under his bed--for he did not dare to look himself. A kind of inquiry, which he had held on the spot, led to no results; but what confidence can be placed in the personnel of big hotels?... However, after a good night’s sleep, behind a solidly bolted door, Julius had woken up more at ease. He was now under police protection. He wrote a number of letters and telegrams, which he took to the post himself.

On his return, he was told that a lady had asked for him; she had not given her name and was waiting for him in the reading-room. Thither Julius went and was not a little surprised to find Carola.