Section 14 of Library of World's Best Mystery and Detective Stories, Volume 4. Section 14. Melmoth Reconciled by Honoré de Balzac. Part 1. To Montchor le General Baron de Pomerol, a token of the friendship between our fathers, which survives in their sons, de Balzac. There is a special variety of human nature obtained in the social kingdom by a process analogous to that of the gardener's craft in the vegetable kingdom, to wit, by the forcing-house, a species of hybrid which can be raised neither from seed nor from slips. This product is known as the cashier, an anthropomorphous growth, watered by religious doctrine, trained up in fear of the guillotine, pruned by vice, to flourish on a third floor with an estimable wife by his side and an uninteresting family. The number of cashiers in Paris must always be a problem for the physiologist. Has anyone as yet been able to state correctly the terms of the proportion some wearing the cashier figures as the unknown ex? Where will you find the man who shall live with wealth like a cat with a caged mouse? This man, for further qualification, shall be capable of sitting boxed in by an iron grating for seven or eight hours a day during seven-eighths of the year, perched upon a cane-seeded chair in a space as narrow as Lieutenant's cabin on board of man of war. Such a man must be able to defy antilosis of the knee and thigh joints. He must have a soul above meanness in order to live meanly. Must lose all relish for money by dint of handling it. Demand this peculiar specimen of any creed, educational system, school, or institution you please, and select Paris, that city of fiery or deals, and branch establishment of hell, as the soil in which to plant the said cashier. So be it. Creeds, schools, institutions, and moral systems, all human rules and regulations, great and small, will, one after another, present much the same face that an intimate friend turns upon you when you ask him to lend you a thousand francs. With a dollarous dropping of the jaw they indicate the guillotine, much as your friend aforesaid will furnish you with the address of the moneylender, pointing you to one of the hundred gates by which a man comes to the last refuge of the destitute. Yet nature has her freaks in the making of a man's mind. She indulges herself and makes a few honest folk now and again, and now and then a cashier. Wherefore that race of corsairs whom we dignify with the title of bankers, the gentry who take out a license for which they pay a thousand crowns, as the priveteer takes out his letters of mark, hold these rare products of the incubations of virtue in such a steam that they can find them in cages in the counting houses, much as governments procure and maintain specimens of strange beasts at their own charges. If the cashier is possessed of an imagination or of a fervid temperament, if, as will sometimes happen to the most complete cashier, he loves his wife, and that wife grows tired of her lot, has ambitions or merely some vanity in her composition, the cashier is undone. Search the chronicles of the counting house. You will not find a single instance of a cashier attaining a position as it is called. They are sent to the hawks. They go to foreign parts. They vegetate on a second floor in the rue St. Louis among the market gardens of the Marais. Someday, when the cashiers of Paris come to a sense of their real value, a cashier will be hardly obtainable for money. Still, certain it is that there are people who are fit for nothing but to be cashiers, just as the bent of a certain order of mind inevitably makes for rescality. But, oh marvel of our civilization, society rewards virtue with an income of a hundred Louis in old age, a dwelling on a second floor, bread sufficient, occasional new bandana handkerchiefs, an elderly wife, and her offspring. So much for virtue. But, for the opposite course, a little boldness, a faculty for keeping on the windward side of the law, as Turin outflanked Montecuccelli, and society will sanction the theft of millions, shower ribbons upon the thief, cram him with honors, and smother him with consideration. Government, moreover, works harmoniously with this profoundly illogical reasoner, society. Government levies a conscription on the young intelligence of the kingdom at the age of seventeen or eighteen, a conscription of precocious power. Great ability is prematurely exhausted by excessive brain work before it is sent up to be submitted to a process of selection. Nurserymen sort and select seeds in much the same way. To this process the government brings professional appraisers of talent, men who can assay brains as experts assay gold at the mint. Five hundred such heads, set afire with hope, are sent up annually by the most progressive portion of the population, and of these the government takes one-third, puts them in sacks called the Ecoleze, and shakes them up together for three years. Though every one of these young plants represents vast productive power, they are made, as one may say, in two cashiers. They receive appointments, the rank and file of engineers is made up of them, they are employed as captains of artillery. There is no subaltern grade to which they may not aspire. Finally, when these men, the pick of the youth of the nation, fattened on mathematics and stuffed with knowledge, have attained the age of fifty years, they have their reward, and receive as the price of their services, the third floor lodging, the wife and family, and all the comforts that sweeten life for mediocrity. If from among this race of dupes, there should escape some five or six men of genius who climbed to the highest heights, is it not miraculous? This is an exact statement of the relations between talent and probity on the one hand, and government and society on the other, in an age that considers itself to be progressive. Without this prefatory explanation of recent occurrence in Paris would seem improbable. But preceded by this summing up of the situation, it will perhaps receive some thoughtful attention from minds capable of recognizing the real plague spots of our civilization. A civilization, which since 1815, has been moved by the spirit of gain rather than by the principles of honor. About five o'clock on a dull autumn afternoon, the cashier of one of the largest banks in Paris was still at his desk, working by the light of a lamp that had been lit for some time. In accordance with the use and want of commerce, the counting house was in the darkest corner of the low-sealed and far from spacious mezzanine floor, and at the very end of a passage lighted only by borrowed lights. The office doors along this corridor, each with its label, gave the place a look of a bathhouse. At four o'clock the stellar porter had proclaimed, according to his orders, the bank is closed, and by this time the departments were deserted, the letters dispatched, the clerks had taken their leave. The wives of the partners in the firm were expecting their lovers, the two bankers dining with their mistresses. Everything was in order. The place where the strong boxes had been bedded in sheet iron was just behind the little sanctum, where the cashier was busy. Doubtless he was balancing his books. The open fronts gave a glimpse of a safe of hammered iron, so enormously heavy, thanks to the science of the modern inventor, that burglars could not carry it away. The door only opened at the pleasure of those who knew its password. The letter lock was a warden who kept its own secret and could not be bribed. The mysterious word was an ingenuous realization of the open sesame in the Arabian Nights. But even this was as nothing. A man might discover the password, but unless he knew the lock's final secrets, the ultimate ratio of this gold-guarding dragon of mechanical science, it discharged a blunderbuss at his head. The door of the room, the balls of the room, the shutters of the windows in the room, the whole place, in fact, was lined with sheet iron a third of an inch in thickness, concealed behind the thin wooden paneling. The shutters had been closed, the door had been shut. If ever a man could feel confident that he was absolutely alone, and that there was no remote possibility of being watched by prying eyes, that man was the cashier of the House of New St. John and Company in the Rue Saint-Lazare. Accordingly, the deepest silence prevailed in that iron cave.  The stove is a mesmerist that plays no small part in the reduction of bank clerks and porters to a state of idiocy. A room with a stove in it is a retort in which the power of strong men is evaporated, where their vitality is exhausted and their wills enfeebled. Government offices are part of a great scheme for the manufacture of the mediocrity necessary for the maintenance of a feudal system on a pecuniary basis, and money is the foundation of the social contract. See, lay employees. The mephitic vapors in the atmosphere of a crowded room contribute in no small degree to bring about a gradual deterioration of intelligences. The brain that gives off the largest quantity of nitrogen asphyxiates the others in the long run. The cashier was a man of five and forty or thereabouts.  His complexion was brick-red. A few wrinkles had gathered about his eyes, but he had the smooth plump hands of a stout man. His blue cloth coats, a little rubbed and worn, and the creases and shininess of his trousers, traces of hard wear that cloth brush fails to remove, would impress a superficial observer with the idea that he was a thrifty and upright human being, sufficient of the philosopher or of the aristocrat to wear shabby clothes. But, unluckily, it is easy to find penny-wise people who will prove weak, wasteful, or incompetent in the capital things of life. The cashier were the ribbon of the legion of honor at his buttonhole, for he had been a major of dragoons in the time of the emperor. M. Dunasinjin, who had been a contractor before he became a banker, had had reason in those days to know the honorable disposition of his cashier, who then occupied a high position. Reverses of fortune had befell on the major, and the banker out of regard for him paid him five hundred francs a month. The soldier had become a cashier in the year 1813, after his recovery from a wound received at Studeznyanka during the retreat from Moscow, followed by six months of enforced idleness at Strasbourg, wither several officers had been transported by order of the emperor, that they might receive skilled attention. This particular officer, Cassanier by name, retired with the honorary grade of colonel, and a pension of two thousand four hundred francs. In ten years time the cashier had completely effaced the soldier, and Cassanier inspired the banker with such trust in him that he was associated in the transactions that went on in the private office behind his little counting-house. The baron himself had access to it by means of a secret staircase. There matters of business were decided. It was the bolting room where proposals were sifted, the privy council chamber where the reports of the money market were analyzed, circular notes issued thence, and finally the private ledger and the journal which summarized the work of all the departments were kept there. Cassanier had gone himself to shut the door which opened onto a staircase that led to the parlor occupied by the two bankers on the first floor of their hotel. This done he sat down at his desk again, and for a moment he gazed at a little collection of letters of credit drawn on the firm of Watts Childein of London. Then he had taken up the pen and imitated the banker's signature upon each. Newsyngen, he wrote, and eyed the forged signatures critically to see which seemed the most perfect copy. Suddenly he looked up as if a needle had pricked him. You are not alone. A boating voice seemed to cry in his heart, and indeed the forger saw a man standing at the little-graded window of the counting-house, a man whose breathing was so noiseless that he did not seem to breathe at all. Cassanier looked and saw that the door at the end of the passage was wide open. The stranger must have entered by that way. For the first time in his life the old soldier felt a sensation of dread that made him stare open-mouthed and wide-eyed at the man before him, and for that matter the appearance of the apparition was sufficiently alarming even if unaccompanied by the mysterious circumstances of so sudden an entry. The rounded forehead, the harsh coloring of the long oval face, indicated quite as plainly as the cut of his clothes that the man was an Englishman, raking of his native aisles.   The dried-up, emaciated creature seemed to carry within him some gnawing thought that consumed him and could not be appeased. He must have digested his food so rapidly that he could doubtless eat continually without bringing any trace of color into his face or features. A ton of to-kay, Vindi's succession, would not have caused any faltering in that piercing glance that read men's in most thoughts, nor dethroned the merciless reasoning faculty that always seemed to go to the bottom of things. There was something of the fell and tranquil majesty of a tiger about him. I have come to cash this bill of exchange, sir," he said. Cassaniere felt the tones of his voice thrill through every nerve with a violent shock similar to that given by a discharge of electricity. The safe is closed, said Cassaniere. It is open, said the Englishman, looking round the county house. Tomorrow is Sunday, and I cannot wait. The amount is four five hundred thousand francs. You have the money there, and I must have it. But how did you come in, sir? The Englishman smiled. That smile frightened Cassaniere. No words could have replied more fully, nor more preemptorily, than that scornful and imperial curl of the stranger's lips. Cassaniere turned away, took up fifty packets, each containing ten thousand francs in banknotes, and held them out to the stranger, receiving in exchange for them a bill accepted by the baron Junus engine. A sort of convulsive tremor ran through him as he saw a red gleam in the stranger's eyes when they fell on the forged signature on the letter of credit. It's it wants your signature, stammered Cassaniere, handing back the bill. Hands me your pen, answered the Englishman. Cassaniere handed him the pen, with which he had just committed forgery. The stranger wrote, John Melmoth. Then he returned the slip of paper and the pen to the cashier. Cassaniere looked at the handwriting, noticing that it had sloped from right to left in the eastern fashion, and Melmoth disappeared so noiselessly that when Cassaniere looked up again an exclamation broke from him, partly because the man was no longer there, partly because he felt a strange, painful sensation such as our imagination might take for an effect of poison. The pen that Melmoth had handled sent the same sickening heat through him that anemetic produces, but it seemed impossible to Cassaniere that the Englishman could have guessed his crime. His inward qualms he attributed to the palpitation of the heart that, according to received ideas, was sure to follow at once on such a turn as the stranger had given him. The devil take it, I am very stupid, Providence is watching over me, for if that brute had come round to see my gentleman to-morrow, my goose would have been cooked, said Cassaniere as he burned the unsuccessful attempts at forgery in a stove. He put the bill that he meant to take with him in an envelope, and helped himself to five hundred thousand francs in French and English banknotes from the safe which he locked. Then he put everything in order, lit a candle, blew out the lamp, took up his hat and umbrella, and went out sedately, as usual, to leave one of the two keys of the strong room with madame de Nussingen, in the absence of her husband the Baron. You are in luck, M. Cassaniere, said the banker's wife as she entered her room. We have a holiday on Monday. You can go into the country, or to Soysie. Madame, will you be so good as to tell your husband that the bill of exchange on Waschaldane, which was behind time, has just been presented? The five hundred thousand francs have been paid, so I shall not come back till noon on Tuesday. Good-bye, Monshure. I hope you will have a pleasant time. The same to you, madame, replied the old dragoon as he went out. He glanced as he spoke at a young man, well known in fashionable society at that time, her M. de Rastavnac, who was regarded as madame de Nussingen's lover. Madame remarked this later. The old boy looks to me as if he meant to play you some ill-turn. Saw. Impossible!  Pequizaw, said the cashier, walking into the porter's room, what made you let anybody come up after four o'clock? I have been smoking a pipe here in the doorway ever since four o'clock, said the man, and nobody has gone into the bank. Nobody has come out, either, except the gentleman. Are you quite sure? Yes, upon my word and honor. Stay, though, at four o'clock, M. Weber's friend came, a young fellow from a sir's du-telet-en-coe, in the brew-eau-bare. All right, said cashier, and he hurried away. The sickening sensation of heat that he had felt when he took back the pen returned in greater intensity. Mille diable, thought he, as he threaded his way along the boulevard de Gondes, haven't I taken proper precautions? Let me think, two clear days, Sunday and Monday, then a day of uncertainty, before they begin to look for me. Altogether three days and four nights respite. I have a couple of passports, and two different disguises. Is not that enough to throw the cleverest detective off the scent? On Tuesday morning I shall draw a million francs, in London, before the slightest suspicion has been aroused. My debts I am leaving behind for the benefit of my creditors, who will put a P on the bills, and I shall live comfortably in Italy for the rest of my days, as the Count Ferraro. I was alone with him when he died poor fellow in the marsh of Zambin, and I shall slip into his skin. Mille diable, the woman who is to follow after me, might give them a clue.  Why take her? I must leave her behind. Yes, I could make up my mind to do it. But I know myself.  Still nobody knows Aquilina. Shall I take her or leave her? You will not take her, cried a voice that filled Castanier with sickening dread. He turned sharply and saw the Englishman. The devil is in it, cried the cashier, aloud. Malmoth had passed his victim by this time, and if Castanier's first impulse had been to fasten a quarrel on a man who read his earned thoughts, he was so much torn by opposing feelings that the immediate result was a temporary paralysis. When he resumed his walk he fell once more into that fever of irresolution which besets those who are so carried away by passion that they are ready to commit a crime, but have not sufficient strength of character to keep it to themselves without suffering terribly in the process. So although Castanier had made up his mind to reap the fruits of a crime which was already half executed, he hesitated to carry out his designs. For him, as for many men of mixed character, in whom weakness and strength are equally blended, the least trifling consideration determines whether they shall continue to lead blameless lives or become actively criminal. In the vast masses of men enrolled in Napoleon's armies, there were many who, like Castanier, possessed the purely physical courage demanded on the battlefield, yet lacked the moral courage which makes a man as great in crime as he could have been in virtue. The letter of credit was drafted in such terms that immediately on his arrival he might draw twenty-five thousand pounds on the firm of Wadzchaudine, the London correspondence of the House of Newsonjin. The London House had been already advised of the draft about to be made upon them. He had written to them himself. He hadn't started an agent, chosen at random, to take his passage in a vessel which was to leave Portsmouth with a wealthy English family on board, who were going to Italy, and the passage money had been paid in the name of the Count's Ferrero. The smallest details of the scheme had been thought out. He had arranged matters so as to divert the search that would be made for him into Belgium and Switzerland, while he himself was at sea in the English vessel. Then by the time that Newsonjin might flatter himself that he was on the track of his late cashier, the said cashier, as the Count's Ferrero, hoped to be safe in Naples. He had determined to disfigure his face in order to disguise himself the more completely, and by means of an acid to imitate the scars of smallpox. Yet in spite of all these precautions, which surely seemed as if they must secure him complete immunity, his conscience tormented him. He was afraid. The even and peaceful life that he had led so long had modified the morality of the camp. His life was stainless as yet. He could not sully it without a pang. So for the last time he abandoned himself to all the influences of the better self that strenuously resisted. Shaw, he said at last, at the corner of the boulevard and the rue Montmartre. I will take a cab after the play this evening and go out to Versailles. A post-chase will be ready for me at my old quartermaster's place. He would keep my secret even if a dozen men were standing ready to shoot him down. The chances are all in my favor, so far as I see, so I shall take my little naqui with me, and I will go. You will not go, exclaimed the Englishman, and the strange tones of his voice drove all the cashier's blood back to his heart. Melmoth stepped into a tilbury, which was before him, and was whirled away so quickly that when Castaner looked up, he saw his foe some hundred paces away from him, and, before it even crossed his mind, to cut off the man's retreat, the tilbury was far on its way up the boulevard Montmartre. Well, upon my word there is something supernatural about this, said he to himself. If I were full enough to believe in God, I should think that he had sent St. Michael on my tracks. Suppose that the devil and the police should not let me go on this I please, so as to nab me in the nick of time? Did anyone ever see the like? But there, this is folly. Castaner went along the rue du Fabre Montmartre, slackening his pace as he neared the rue Richer. There on the second floor of a block of buildings, which looked out upon some gardens, lived the unconscious cause of Castaner's crime. A young woman, known in the quarters, as Madame de la Garde. A concise history of certain events in the cashier's past life must be given in order to explain these facts, and to give a complete presentment of the crisis when he yielded to temptation. Madame de la Garde said that she was a piedmontese. No one, not even Castaner, knew her real name. She was one of those young girls who were driven by dire misery, by inability to earn a living, or by fear of starvation, to have recourse to a trade which most of them loathe, many regard with indifference, and some few follow in obedience to the laws of their constitution. But on the brink of the Gulf of Prostitution in Paris, the young girl of sixteen, beautiful and pure as the Madonna, had met with Castaner. The older goon was too rough and homely to make his way in society, and he was tired of trampling the boulevard at night, and of the kind of conquests made there by golds. For some time past he had desired to bring a certain regularity into an irregular life. He was struck by the beauty of the poor child who had drifted by chance into his arms, and his determination to rescue her from the life of the streets was half benevolent, half selfish, as some of the thoughts of the best of men are apt to be. Social conditions mingle elements of evil with the promptings of natural goodness of heart, and the mixture of motives underlying a man's intentions should be leniently judged. Castaner had just cleverness enough to be very shrewd where his own interests were concerned, so he concluded to be a philanthropist on either count, and at first made her his mistress. Hey, hey, he said to himself in his soldierly fashion, I am an old woof, and a sheep shall not make a fool of me. Castaner, old man, before you set up housekeeping, reconnoiter the girl's character for a bit, and see if she is a steady sort. This irregular union gave the Piedmontese a status the most nearly approaching respectability among those which the world declines to recognize. During the first year she took the nom de guerre of Aquilina, one of the characters in Venice Preserved, which she had chance to read. She fancied that she resembled the courtesan in face and general appearance, and in a certain precocity of heart and brain of which she was conscious. When Castaner found that her life was as well regulated and virtuous as was possible for a social outlaw, he manifested a desire that they should live as husband and wife. So she took the name of Madame de la Garde in order to approach, as closely as Parisian usages permit, the conditions of a real marriage. As a matter of fact, many of these unfortunate girls have one fixed idea, to be looked upon as respectable middle-class women who lead humdrum lives of faithfulness to their husbands, women who would make excellent mothers, keepers of the household accounts, and menders of household linen. This longing springs from a sentiment so laudable that society should take it into consideration. But society, incargable as ever, will assuredly persist in regarding the married woman as a corvette duly authorized by her flag and papers to go on her own course, while the woman who was a wife, in all but name, is a pirate and an outlaw for lack of a document. A day came when Madame de la Garde would feign have signed herself, Madame Castanier. The cashier was put out by this. So you do not love me well enough to marry me, she said. Castanier did not answer. He was absorbed by his thoughts. The poor girl resigned herself to her fate. The extragoon was in despair. Nequey's heart softened toward him at the site of his trouble. She tried to soothe him. But what could she do when she did not know what ailed him? When Nequey made up her mind to know the secret, although she never asked him a question, the cashier duly confessed to the existence of Madame Castanier. This lawful wife, a thousand times accursed, was living in a humble way in Strasbourg on a small property there. He wrote to her twice a year, and kept the secret of her existence so well that no one suspected that he was married. The reason of this reticence? If it is familiar to many military men who may chance to be in a like predicament, it is perhaps worthwhile to give the story.  A Castanier was marked out by nature as a victim to the wiles of mothers with grown-up daughters left too long on their hands. It was at Nancy, during one of those brief intervals of repose, when the imperial armies were not on active service abroad, that Castanier was so unlucky as to pay some attention to a young lady with whom he danced at a redotto. The provincial name for the entertainments often given by the military to the townsfolk, or vice versa, and garrison towns. The scheme for invagling the gallant captain into matrimony was immediately set on foot, one of those schemes by which mothers secure accomplices in a human heart by touching all its motive springs, while they convert all their friends into fellow conspirators. Like all people possessed by one idea, these ladies press everything into the service of their great project, slowly elaborating their toils, much as the antlion excavates its funnel in the sand and lies in wait at the bottom for its victim. Suppose that no one strays, after all, into that carefully constructed labyrinth. Suppose that the antlion dies of hunger and thirst in her pit. Such things may be, but if any heedless creature once enters in, it never comes out. All the wires which could be pulled to induce action on the captain's part were tried. Appeals were made to the secret interested motives that always come into play in such cases. They worked on Castaner's hopes and on the weaknesses and vanity of human nature. Unluckily he had praised the daughter to her mother when he brought her back after a waltz. A little chat followed, and then an invitation in the most natural way in the world. Once introduced into the house, the dragoon was dazzled by the hospitality of a family who appeared to conceal their real wealth beneath a show of careful economy. He was skillfully flattered on all sides, and everyone extolled for his benefit the various treasures there displayed. A neatly timed dinner, served on plate, lent by an uncle, the attention showed to him by the only daughter of the house, the gossip of the town, a well-to-do sublutenant who seemed likely to cut the ground from under his feet. All the innumerable snares, in short of the provincial antlion, were sent for him, and to such good purpose that Castaner said five years later, to this day I do not know how it came about. The dragoon received fifteen thousand francs with the lady, who after two years of marriage became the ugliest and consequently the most peevish woman on earth. Luckily they had no children. The fair complexion, maintained by a Spartan regimen, the fresh, bright collar in her face, which spoke of an engaging modesty, became overspread with blotches and pimples. Her figure, which had seemed so straight, grew crooked. The angel became a suspicious and shrewish creature who drove Castaner frantic. Then the fortune took to itself wings. At length the dragoon, no longer recognizing the woman whom he had wedded, left her to live on a little property at Strasburg, until the time when it should please God to remove her to adorn paradise. She was one of those virtuous women who, for want of other occupation, would worry the life out of an angel with complainings, who, pray till, if their prayers are heard in heaven, they must exhaust the patience of the Almighty and say everything that is bad of their husbands and dove like murmurs over a game of Boston with their neighbors. When Aquilina learned all these troubles she clung still more affectionately to Castaner, and made him so happy, varying with women's ingenuity the pleasures with which she filled his life, that all unwittingly she was the cause of the cashier's downfall. Like many women who seemed by nature destined to sound all the depths of love, Madame de la Garde was disinterested. She asked neither for gold nor for jewelry, gave no thought to the future, lived entirely for the present and for the pleasures of the present. She accepted expensive ornaments and dresses, the carriage so easily coveted by women of her class, as one harmony the more in the picture of life. There was absolutely no vanity in her desire not to appear at a better advantage, but to look the fairer, and moreover no woman could live without luxuries more cheerfully. When a man of generous nature, and military men are mostly of this samp, meets with such a woman he feels a sort of exasperation, at finding himself her jeter in generosity. He feels that he could stop a male coach to obtain money for her if he has not sufficient for her whims. He will commit a crime, if so he may be great and noble in the eyes of some woman or of his special public. Such is the nature of the man. Such a lover is like a gambler who would be dishonored in his own eyes if he did not repay the sum he borrowed from a waiter in a gaming-house, but will shrink from no crime, will leave his wife and children without a penny, and rob and murder, if so he may come to the gaming-table with a full purse, and his honour remain untarnished among the frequenters of that fatal abode. So it was with Castaner. He had begun by installing Aquilina in a modest fourth-floor dwelling, the furniture being of the simplest kinds, but when he saw the girl's beauty and great qualities, when he had known inexpressible and unlooked-for happiness with her, he began to dot upon her and long to adorn his idol. Then Aquilina's toilet was so comically out of keeping with her poor abode that for both her sakes it was clearly incumbent on him to move. The change swallowed up almost all Castaner's savings, for he furnished her domestic paradise with all the prodigality that is lavished on a kept mistress. A pretty woman must have everything pretty about her. The unity of charm in the woman and her surroundings singles her out from among her sex. This sentiment of homogeneity, indeed, though it has frequently escaped the attention of observers, is instinctive in human nature, and the same prompting leads elderly spinsters to surround themselves with dreary relics of the past. But the lovely Piedmontese must have the newest and latest fashions, and all that was daintiest and prettiest in-stuffs for hangings, in silks or jewelry, in fine china, and other brittle and fragile wares. She asked for nothing, but when she was called upon to make a choice, when Castaner asked her, which do you like? She would answer, why, this is the nicest. Love never counts the cost, and Castaner therefore always took the nicest. When once the standard had been set up, there was nothing for it, but everything in the household must be in conformity, from the linen, plates, and crystal through a thousand and one items of expenditure down to the pots and pans in the kitchen. Castaner had meant to do things simply, as the saying goes, but he gradually found himself more and more in debt. One expense entailed another. The clock called for candle sconces. Fires must be lighted in the ornamental grates, but the curtains and hangings were too fresh and delicate to be soiled by smuts, so they must be replaced by patents and elaborate fireplaces warranted to give out no smoke, recent inventions of the people who were clever at drawing up a prospectus. Then Aquilina found it so nice to run about barefooted on the carpet in her room that Castaner must have solved carpets late everywhere for the pleasure of playing with naqui. A bathroom, too, was built for her. Everything to the end that she might be more comfortable. Section 15 of Library of World's Best Mystery and Detective Stories, Volume 4. This is a LibriBox recording. All LibriBox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriBox.org. Recording by David Pitterd. Library of the World's Best Mystery and Detective Stories, Volume 4 by Julian Hawthorne, Editor. Section 15, Melmouth Recounseld. Henri de Balzac, Part 2. Shopkeepers, workmen, and manufacturers in Paris have a mysterious knack of enlarging a hole in a man's purse. They cannot give the price of anything upon inquiry, and as the paroxysm of longing cannot abide delay, orders are given by the feeble light of an approximate estimate of cost. The same people never send in the bills at once, but ply the purchaser with furniture till his head spins. Everything is so pretty, so charming, and everyone is satisfied. A few months later, the obliging furniture dealers are metamorphosed and reappear in the shape of alarming totals on invoices that fill the soul with their horrid clamor. They are an urgent one of the money. They are, as you may say, on the brink of bankruptcy. Their tears flow. It is heart-rending to hear them. And then the gulf yawns and gives up serried columns of figures marching four deep, when, as a matter of fact, they should have issued innocently three by three. Before Castagnere had any idea of how much he had spent, he had arranged for Aquilinia to have a carriage from a livery stable when she went out, instead of a cab. Castagnere was a gourmand. He engaged an excellent cook, and Aquilinia, to please him, had herself made the purchase of early fruit and vegetables, rare delicacies, and exquisite wines. But as Aquilinia had nothing of her own, these gifts of hers, so precious by reason of the thought and tact and graciousness that prompted them, were no less a drain upon Castagnere's purse. He did not like his naquí to be without money, and naquí could not keep money in her pocket. So the table was a heavy item of expenditure for a man with Castagnere's income. The extragoon was compelled to resort to various shifts for obtaining money, for he could not bring himself to renounce his delightful life. He loved the woman too well to cross the freaks of the mistress. He was one of those men who, through self-love or through weakness of character, can refuse nothing to a woman. False shame overpowers them, and they rather face ruin than make the admissions, I cannot. My means will not permit. I cannot afford. When, therefore, Castagnere saw that if he meant to emerge from the abyss of debt into which he had plunged, he must part with Aquilinia and live upon bread and water. He was so unable to do without her are the changes habits of life that daily he put off plans of reform until the morrow. The debts were pressing, and he began by borrowing money. His position and previous character inspired confidence, and of this he took advantage to devise a system of borrowing money as he required it. Then as the total amount of debt rapidly increased, he had recourse to those commercial inventions known as accommodation bills. This form of bill does not represent goods or other values received, and the first endorser pays the amount named for the obliging person who accepts it. This species of fraud is tolerated because it is impossible to detect it, and, moreover, it is an imaginary fraud which only becomes real if payment is ultimately refused. When it linked, it was evidently impossible to borrow any longer, whether because the amount of the debt was now so greatly increased, or because Castagnere was unable to pay the large amount of interest in the aforesaid sums of money, the cashier saw bankruptcy before him. On making this discovery, he decided for fraudulent bankruptcy rather than an ordinary failure, and preferred a crime to a misdemeanor. He determined, after a fashion of the celebrated cashier of the royal treasury, to abuse the trust deservedly won, and to increase the number of his creditors by making a final loan of the sum sufficient to keep him in comfort in a foreign country for the rest of his days. All this, as has been seen, he had prepared to do. Aquilinia knew nothing of the irksome cares of his life. She enjoyed her existence, as many a woman does, making no inquiry as to where the money came from, even as sundry other folk will eat their buttered rolls untroubled by any restless spirit of curiosity as to the culture and growth of wheat. But as the labor and miscalculation of agriculture lie on the other side of the baker's oven, so beneath the unappreciated luxury of many a Parisian household lie intolerable anxieties and exorbitant toil. While Castaner was enduring the torture of the strain and his thoughts were full of the deed that should change his whole life, Aquilinia was lying luxuriously back in a great armchair by the fireside, beguiling the time by chatting with her waiting maid. As frequently happens in such cases, the maid had become the mistress's confidant. Jenny, having first assured herself that her mistress's ascendancy over Castaner was complete. What are we to do this evening? Leon seems determined to come, Mademoiselle Delegarde was saying, as she read a passionate epistle indicted upon a faint gray note paper. Here's the master, said Jenny. Castaner came in. Aquilinia, no wise disconcerted, crumbled up the letter, took it with the tongs and held it in the flames. So that is what you do with your love letters, is it? Asked Castaner. Oh goodness, yes, said Aquilinia. It is not the best way of keeping them safe. Besides, fire should go to the fire, as water makes for the river. You were talking as if it were a real love letter, Naki. Well, am I not handsome enough to receive them? She said, holding up her forehead for a kiss. There was a carelessness in her manner that would have told any man less blind than Castaner that it was only a piece of conjugal duty, as it were, to give this joy to the cashier. But use and want had brought Castaner to the point where clear-sightedness is no longer possible for love. I have taken a box at the gymnas this evening, he said. Let us have dinner early, and then we need not dine in a hurry. Go and take Jenny. I'm tired of plays. I do not know what is the matter with me this evening.  Come, all the same, though, Naki. I shall not be here to bore you much longer. Yes, we, we. I am going to start tonight, and it will be some time before I come back again. I am leaving everything in your charge. Will you keep your heart for me, too? Neither my heart nor anything else, she said. But when you come back again, Naki will still be Naki for you. Well, this is frankness. So you would not follow me? No. Why not? Eh, why? How can I leave the lover who writes me such sweet little notes, she asked, pointing to the blackened scrap paper with a mocking smile. Is there any truth in it? asked Costinier. Have you really a lover? Really? cried Aquilinia. And have you never given it a serious thought, dear? To begin with, you are 50 years old. Then you have just the sort of face to put on a fruit stall. If the woman tried to sell you for a pumpkin, no one would contradict her.  Your punch rises and falls like the diamond on a woman's forehead. It is a pretty plain that you've served in the dragoons.  If you have any mind to keep my respect, I recommend you do not add imbecility to those qualities by imagining that such a girl as I will be content with your asthmatic love and not look for youth and good looks and pleasure by way of variety. Aquilinia, you were laughing, of course. Ah, very well. And you were not laughing, too.  I'm going to start tonight, she said, mimicking his tones, stuff and nonsense. Would you talk like that if you were really going away from your nucky? You would cry, like the booby that you are. After all, if I go, will you follow, he asked? Tell me first whether this journey of yours is a bad joke or not. Yes, seriously, I am going. Well then, seriously, I shall stay.  I will wait till you come back. I would sooner take leave of life than take leave of my dear, cozy Paris. Will you not come to Italy, to Naples, to lead a pleasant life there, a delicious, luxurious life with astowed old foe-givers who puffs and blows like a seal? No. Ungrateful girl. Ungrateful, she cried, rising to her feet.  I shall have given you all the treasure a young girl can give and something that not every drop in your veins and mine can ever give me back. If, by any means whatever, by selling my hopes of eternity, for instance, I could recover my past self, body as soul, for I have perhaps redeemed my soul, and be pure as illily for my lover, I would not hesitate a moment. What sort of devotion has rewarded mine? You have housed and fed me, just as you give a dog food and a kennel because he is a protection to the house, and he may take kicks when we are out of humor and lick our hands as soon as we are pleased to call to him. And which of us, too, will have been the more generous? Oh, dear child, do you not see that I am joking? Return, Castineer. I'm going on a short journey. I shall not be away for very long. But come with me to the gymnas. I shall start just before midnight, after I've had time to say goodbye to you. Poor Pet, so you are really going, are you?   That dance will turn to, say, in Jenny's ear. Go to Leon and tell him not to come till one o'clock. If you do not find him, and he comes here during the leave-taking, keep him in your room. Well, she went on, setting free Castineer, and giving him a tweak to the tip of his nose. Never mind, hamsomest of seals that you are. I will go to the theater with you this evening. But all in good time. Let us have dinner. There's a nice little dinner for you, just what you like. It is very hard to part from such a woman as you, exclaimed Castineer. Very well then. Why do you go, asks she. Ah, why, why? If I were to begin to explain the reasons why, I must tell you things that would prove to you that I love you almost to madness. If you have sacrificed your honor for me, I have sold mine for you. We are quits, is that love? What is all this about, said she. Come now, promise me that if I had a lover, you would still love me as a father. That would be love. Come now, promise it at once, and give us your fist upon it.  They sat down to the dinner table, and went thence to the gymnas. When the first part of the performance was over, it occurred to Castineer to show himself to some of his acquaintances in the house, so as to turn away any suspicion of his departure. He left Mademoiselle de la Garde in the corner box where she was seated, according to her modest want, and went to walk up and down in the lobby. He had not gone many paces before he saw the Englishman, and with a sudden return of the sickening sensation of heat that once before had vibrated through him, and of the terror that he had felt already, he stood face to face with Mademoiselle. Forger, at the word Castineer, glanced around at the people who were moving about them. He fancied that he could see astonishment and curiosity in their eyes, and wishing to be rid of this Englishman at once, he raised his hand to strike him, and felt his arm paralyzed by some invisible power that sapped his strength and nailed him to the spot. He allowed the stranger to take him by the arm, and they walked together to the green room like two friends. Who is strong enough to resist me? said the Englishman, addressing him. Do you not know that everything here on earth must obey me? That it is in my power to do everything. I read men's thoughts, I see the future, and I know the past. I am here, and I can be elsewhere also. Time and space and distance are nothing to me. The whole world is at my beck and call. I have the power of continual enjoyment and of giving joy. I can see through walls, discover hidden treasures, and fill my hands with them. Palaces arise at my nod, and my architect makes no mistakes. I can make all lands break forth into blossom, heap up their gold and precious stone, and surround myself with fair women and ever-new faces. Everything is yielded up to my will. I could gamble on the stock exchange, and my speculations would be infallible. But a man who can find the hordes that miseries have hidden in the earth need not trouble himself about stocks.  Try to bend the arm of iron. Try to soften the adamantine heart. Fly from me if you dare. You would hear my voice in the depths of the caves that lie under the same. You might hide in the catacombs, but would you not see me there? My voice would be heard through the sound of the thunder. My eyes shine as brightly as the sun, for I am the peer of Lucifer. Costinier heard the terrible words and felt no protest nor contradiction within himself. He walked side by side with the Englishman and had no power to leave him. You are mine. You have just committed a crime. I have found at last the mate whom I have solved. Have you a mind to learn your destiny? Aha! You came here to see a play, and you shall see a play. Nay, too. Come. Present me to Mademoiselle Delagarde as one of your best friends. Am I not your last hope of escape? Costinier, followed by the stranger, returned to his box. And in accordance with the order he had just received, he hastened to introduce Melmouth to Mademoiselle Delagarde. Aquilinia seemed to be not in the least surprised. The Englishman declined to take a seat in front, and Costinier was once more beside his mistress. The man's slightest wish must be obeyed. The last piece was about to begin, for, at that time, small theaters only gave three pieces. One of the actors had made the gymnase the fashion, and that evening, perlou, the actor in question was to play in a vaudeville called La Comedienne de Tomes, in which he filled four different parts. When the curtain rose, the stranger stretched out his hand over the crowded house. Costinier's cry of terror died away for the walls of his throat seemed glued together as Melmouth pointed to the stage, and the cashier knew that the play had been changed at the Englishman's desire. He saw the strong room at the bank. He saw the Baron de Nussingen in conference with a police officer from the prefecture, who was informing him of Costinier's conduct, explaining that the cashier had absconded with money taken from the safe, giving the history of the Ford's signature. The information was put in writing, the document signed and duly dispatched to the public prosecutor. Are we in time, do you think? Ask Nussingen. Yes, said the agent of police, he is at the gymnase, and has no suspicion of anything. Costinier fidgeted on his chair and made as if he would leave the theater, but Melmouth's hand lay on his shoulder, and he was obliged to sit and watch. The hideous power of the man produced in effect, like that of Nightmare, and he could not move a limb. Nay, the man himself was the Nightmare, his present weight heavily on his victim like a poisoned atmosphere. When the wretched cashier turned to implore the Englishman's mercy, he meant those blazing eyes that discharged electric currents, which pierced through him and transfixed him like darts of steel. What have I done to you? He said in his prostrate helplessness, and he breathed hard like a stag at the water's edge. What do you want of me? Look, cried Melmouth. Costinier looked at the stage. The scene had been changed, the play seemed to be over, and Costinier held himself stepping from the carriage with aquilonia. But as he entered the courtyard of the house of the blue reshare, the scene again was suddenly changed, and he saw his own house. Jenny was chatting by the fire in her mistress's room with a subaltern officer of a line regiment then stationed at Paris. He was going, Izzy, said the sergeant who seemed to belong to a family in easy circumstances. I can be happy at my ease. I love aquilonia too well to allow her to belong to that old toad. I myself am going to marry Mademoiselle Delagarde, cried the sergeant. Old toad, Costinier murmured piteously. Here come the master and the mistress. Hide yourself, stay, get in here. Monsieur Leon, said Jenny. The master won't stay here for very long. Castinier watched the sergeant hide himself among aquilonia's gowns in her dressing room. Almost immediately, he himself appeared upon the scene and took leave of his mistress, who made fun of him in assigns to Jenny, while she uttered the sweetest and tenderest words in his ears. She wept with one side of her face and laughed with the other, the audience called for an encore. A cursed creature cried Costinier from his box. Aquilonia was laughing till the tears came into her eyes. Goodness, she cried. How funny Perlet is as the Englishwoman. Why don't you laugh? Everyone else in the house is laughing. Laugh, dear, she said to Costinier. Melmouth burst out laughing and the unhappy cashier shuddered. The Englishman's laughter rung his heart and tortured his brain. Melmouth burst out laughing and the unhappy cashier shuddered. The Englishman's laughter rung his heart and tortured his brain. It was if a surgeon had bored his skull with a red-hot iron. Laughing, are you laughing, stammered Costinier? He did not see the print English lady whom Perlet was acting with such ludicrous effect, nor hear the English French that had filled the house with roars of laughter. Instead of all this, he beheld himself hurrying from the rue Richere, hailing a cab on the boulevard, bargaining with the man to take him to Versailles. Then once more, the scene changed. He recognized the sorry end at the corner of the rue de l'orange and the rue des recollets, which was kept by his old quartermaster. It was two o'clock in the morning. The most perfect stillness prevailed. No one was there to watch his movements. The post horses were put into the carriage. It came from a house in the avenue de Paris in which an Englishman lived and had been ordered in the farmer's name to avoid raising suspicion. Costinier saw that he had his bills and his passports stepped into the carriage and set out. But at the barrier, he saw two jardins lying in wait for the carriage. A cry of horror burst from him, but Melmouth gave him a glance and again the sound died in his throat. Keep your eyes on the stage and be quiet, said the Englishman. In another moment, Costinier saw himself flung into prison at the Concierge and in the fifth act of the drama entitled The Cacheer, he saw himself in three months time condemned to 20 years of penal servitude. Again a cry broke from him. He was exposed upon the place de Palais de Justice and the executioner branded him with a red hot iron. Then came the last scene of all among some 60 convicts in the prison yard of the Bixerte. He was awaiting his turn to have the irons riveted on his limbs. Dear me, I cannot laugh anymore, said Aquilinia. You are very solemn, dear boy. What can be the matter? The gentleman is gone. A word with you, Costinier, said Melmouth. When the peace was at an end and the attendant was fastening Mademoiselle's Delegate's cloak, the corridor was crowded and escaped impossible. Very well, what is it? No human power can hinder you from taking Aquilinia home and going next to Versailles, there to be arrested. How so? Because you are in a hand that will never relax its grasp, return to the Englishman. Costinier longed for the power to utter some word that should blot him out from among living men and hide him in the lowest depths of hell. Suppose that the devil were to make a bid for your soul. Would you not give it to him now in exchange for the power of God? One single word and those 500,000 francs shall be back in the barren, innocent, and safe. Then you can tear up your letter of credit and all traces of your crime will be obliterated. Moreover, you would have gold in torrents. You hardly believe in anything, perhaps. Well, if all comes to pass, you will believe at least in the devil. If it were only possible, said Costinier joyfully. The man who can do it all gives you his word that it is possible, answered the Englishman. Malmouth, Costinier, and Mademoiselle Delegate were standing out in the boulevard when Malmouth raised his arm. A drizzling rain was falling, the streets were muddy, the air was close, there was thick darkness overhead. But in a moment, as the arm was outstretched, Paris was filled with sunlight. It was high noon on a bright July day. The trees were covered with leaves. A double stream of joyous holiday makers strolled beneath them. Sellers of licorice, water, shouted their cool drinks. Splendid carriages rolled past along the streets. A cry of terror broke from the cashier. And if that cry, rain and darkness, once more, settled down upon the boulevard. Mademoiselle Delegate had stepped into the carriage. Do be quick, dear, she cried. Either come in or stay out. Really, you are as dull as ditch water this evening. What must I do, Costinier asked of Malmouth? Would you like to take my place, inquired the Englishman? Yes, very well then. I will be at your house in a few moments.  There's some mischief brewing. You are quite melancholy and thoughtful, all through the play.  Tell me. I am waiting till we are at home to know whether you love me. You need not wait till then, she said, throwing her arms around his neck. There, she said, as she embraced him passionately to all the parents and plied him with the coaxing creases that are part of the business of such a life as hers, like stage action for an actress. Where's the music, asked Costinier? What next? Only think of your hearing music now. Heavenly music he went on. The sounds seem to come from above. What? You have always refused to give me a box at the Italians because you could not abide music. And are you turning music mad at this time of day? Mad, that you are. The music is inside your own noodle, old adopate, she went on and as she took his head in her hands and rocked it to and fro on her shoulders. Tell me now, old man, isn't it the creaking of the wheels that sing in your ears? Just listen, Mackey. If the angels make music for God Almighty, it must be such music as this that I am drinking in at every pour, rather than hearing. I do not know how to tell you about it. It is as sweet as honey water. Why, of course, they have music in heaven, for the angels in all the pictures have harps in their hands. He is mad upon my words, she said to herself, as she saw Castaner's attitude. He looked like an opium eater in a blissful trance. They reached the house, Castaner absorbed by the thought of all that he had just heard and seen, knew not whether to believe it or no. He was like a drunken man and utterly unable to think connectedly. He came to himself in Aquilinia's room, whether he had been supported by the united efforts of his mistress, the porter, and Jenny, for he had fainted as he stepped from the carriage. He will be here directly. All my friends, my friends, he cried, and he flung himself despairingly into the depths of a low chair beside his fire. Jenny heard the bell as he spoke and admitted the Englishman. She announced that a gentleman had come who had made an appointment with the master. When Melmouth suddenly appeared and deep silence followed, he looked at the porter. The porter went, he looked at Jenny, and Jenny went likewise. My name, said Melmouth, turning to Aquilinia.  He took Castaner's hand and Castaner rose, and the two men went into the drawing room. There was no light in the room, but Melmouth's eyes lit up the thickest darkness. The gaze of those strange eyes had left Aquilinia like one spellbound. She was helpless, unable to take any thought for her lover. Moreover, she believed him to be safe in Jenny's room, whereas their early return had taken the waiting woman by surprise, and she had hidden the officer in the dressing room. It had all happened exactly as in the drama that Melmouth had displayed for his victim. Presently, the house door was slammed violently and Castaner reappeared. What else, you cried, the horror struck Aquilinia. There was a change in the Castaner's appearance. A strange pallor overspread his once Rubicon to continents. It wore the peculiar sinister and stony look of the mysterious visitor. A sullen glare of his eyes was intolerable. The fierce lightning seemed to scorch. The man who had looked so good-humored and good-natured had suddenly grown tyrannical and proud. The courtesan thought that Castaner had grown thinner. There was a terrible majesty in his brow. It was as if a dragon breathed forth a malignant influence that weighed upon the others like a close, heavy atmosphere. For a moment, Aquilinia knew not what to do. What passed between you and that diabolical-looking man in those few minutes, she asked at length? I have sold my soul to him. I feel it. I am no longer the same. He has taken myself and given me his soul in exchange. What? You would not understand at all. Ah, he was right, Castaner went on. The fiend was right. I see everything and know all things. You have been deceiving me. Aquilinia turned cold with terror. Castaner lighted a candle and went into the dressing room. The unhappy girl followed him in dazed bewilderment and great was her astonishment when Castaner drew the dresses that hung there aside and disclosed the sergeant. Come out, my boy, said the cashier. And taken Leon by a button. Of his overcoat, he drew the officer into his room. The meet pied Montaz, haggard and desperate, had flung herself into her easy chair.  You have been in the army, said Leon. I am ready to give you satisfaction.  I have no occasion to find. I could kill you by a look if I had any mind to do it. I will tell you what it is, youngster. Why should I kill you? I can see a red line round your neck. The guillotine is waiting for you. Yes, you will end in the place to grieve. You are the Headsman's property. There's no escape for you. You belong to the Vindita of the Cabarini. You are plotting against the government. You did not tell me that, cried the pied Montaz, turning to Leon. So you do not know that the minister decided this morning to put down your society? The cashier continued. The procurer or general has a list of your names. You have been betrayed. They are busy drawing up the indictment at this moment.  She seemed as if she would tear Castaner in pieces. You know me too well to believe it, Castaner retorted. Aquilinia was benumbed by his coolness. Then how did you know it, she murmured. I did not know it until I went into the drawing room. Now I know it. Now I see and know all things, and can do all things. The sergeant was overcome with amazement. Very well, then. Save him, save him, dear, cried the girl, flinging herself at Castaner's feet. If nothing is impossible to you, save him. I will love you. I will adore you.  I will obey your wildest whims. You shall do as you will with me. Yes, yes, I will give you more than love. You shall have a daughter's devotion as well, as Rodolphe. Why will you not understand? After all, however violent my passions may be, I shall be yours forever. What should I say to persuade you? I will invent pleasures. I—good heavens, one moment. Whatever you shall ask of me to fling myself from the window, for instance, you will need to say but one word, lay on, and I will plunge down to hell. I would bear any torture, any pain of body or soul, anything you might inflict upon me. Castaner heard her with indifference. For all answer, he indicated Leon to her with a fiendish laugh. The guillotine is waiting for him, he repeated. No, no, no, he shall not leave this house. I will save him, she cried.  Why will you not save him? He shrieked aloud, her eyes were blazing, her hair unbound. Can you save him? I can do everything. Why do you not save him? Why? shouted Castaner, and his voice made the ceiling ring.  Die, said Aquillinia, must he die, my lover, is it possible? She sprang up and snatched a stiletto from a basket that stood on the chest of drawers and went to Castaner, who began to laugh. You know very well that Steele cannot hurt me now. Aquillinia's arm suddenly dropped like a snapped heart of string. Out with you, my good friend, said the cashier, turning to the sergeant, and go about your business. He held out his hand, the other fell Castaner's superior power. It could not choose but obey. This house is mine. I could send for the commissary of police if I chose, and give you up as a man who is hidden himself on my premises. But I would rather let you go. I am a fiend. I am not a spy. I shall follow him, said Aquillinia, then follow him, returned Castaner. Here, Jenny. Jenny appeared. Tell the porter to hail a cab for them. Here, Nicky, said Castaner, drawing a bundle of banknotes from his pocket.  He held out three hundred thousand francs. Aquillinia took the notes, flung them on the floor, spat on them, and trampled upon them in a frenzy of despair. We will leave this house on foot, she cried, without a farthing of your money. Jenny, stay where you are. Good evening, answered the cashier, as he gathered up the notes again. I have come back from my journey, Jenny, he added, looking at the bewildered waiting maid. You seem to me to be a good sort of girl. You have no mistress now. Come here. This evening you shall have a master. Aquillinia, who felt safe nowhere, went at once with the sergeant to the house of one of her friends. But all Leon's movements were suspiciously watched by the police, and after a time he and three of his friends were arrested. The whole story may be found in the newspapers of that day. End of Section 15 Section 16 of Library of World's Best Mystery and Detective Stories, Volume 4. Section 16 Malmoth Reconciled by Honoré de Balzac, Part 3 Castaner felt that he had undergone a mental as well as a physical transformation. The Castaner evolved no longer existed. The boy, the young Lothario, the soldier, who had proved his courage, who had been tricked into a marriage and disillusioned, the cashier, the passionate lover who had committed a crime, for Aquillina's sake, his inmost nature had suddenly assorted itself, his brain had expanded, his senses had developed, his thoughts comprehended the whole world. He saw all the things of earth as if he had been raised to some high pinnacle above the world. Until that evening at the play he had loved Aquillina to distraction. Rather than give her up he would have shut his eyes to her infidelities, and now all that blind passion had passed away as a cloud vanishes in the sunlight. Jenny was delighted to succeed to her mistress's position and fortune, and did the cashier's will in all things. But Castaner, who could read the inmost thoughts of the soul, discovered the real motive underlying this purely physical devotion.  The next morning at breakfast time, when she was fully convinced that she was a lady and the mistress of the house, Castaner uttered, one by one, the thoughts that filled her mind as she drank her coffee. Do you know what you are thinking, child? He said, smiling. I will tell you. So all that lovely rosewood furniture that I coveted so much, and the pretty dresses that I used to try on, are mine now, all on easy terms, that my dad refused. I do not know why. My word, if I might drive about in a carriage, have jewels and pretty things, a box at the theatre, and put something by.  I never saw such a man. Was not that just what you were thinking? He went on, and something in his voice made Jenny turn pale. Well, yes, child, you could not stand it, and I am sending you away for your own good. You would perish in the attempt. Come, let us part, friends. And he coolly dismissed her with a very small sum of money. The first use that Castaner had promised himself that he would make of the terrible power bought at the price of his eternal happiness was the full and complete indulgence of all his tastes. He first put his affairs in order, readily settled his account with M. Dinesingen, who found a worthy German to succeed him, and then determined on a corral worthy of the palmiest days of the Roman empire. He plunged into dissipation as recklessly as Belchazar of old went to the last feast in Babylon. Like Belchazar, he saw clearly, through his revels, a gleaming hand that traced his doom in letters of flame, not on the narrow walls of the banqueting chamber, but over the vast spaces of heaven that the rainbow spans. His feast was not indeed an orgy confined within the limits of a banquet, for he squandered all the powers of soul and body in exhausting all the pleasures of earth. The table was in some sort earth itself, the earth that trembled beneath his feet. He was the last festival of the reckless spendthrift who had thrown all prudence to the winds. The devil had given him the key of the storehouse of human pleasures. He had filled and refilled his hands, and he was fast nearing the bottom. In a moment he had felt all that that enormous power could accomplish. In a moment he had exercised it, proved it, worried of it. What had hitherto been the sum of human desires became as nothing. So often it happens that with possession the vast poetry of desire must end, and the thing possessed is seldom the thing that we dreamed of. Beneath Malmos omnipotence lurked this tragical anticlimax of so many a passion, and now the inanity of human nature was revealed to his successor, to whom infinite power brought nothingness as a dowry. To come to a clear understanding of Castaner's strange position, it must be borne in mind how suddenly these revolutions of thought and feeling had been wrought. How quickly they had succeeded each other, and of these things it is hard to give any idea to those who have never broken the prison bonds of time and space and distance. His relation to the world, without, had been entirely changed with the expansion of his faculties. Like Malmoth himself, Castaner could travel in a few moments over the fertile plains of India, could soar on the wings of demons above African desert spaces, or skim the service of the seas. The same insight that could read the inmost thoughts of others could apprehend at a glance the nature of any material object, just as he caught, as it were, all flavors at once upon his tongue. He took his pleasure like a despot. A blow of the ax fell the tree that he might eat its fruits. The transitions, the alterations that measure joy and pain and diversify human happiness no longer existed for him. He had so completely glutted his appetites that pleasure must overpass the limits of pleasure to tickle the palate coiled with satiety, and suddenly grown fastidious beyond all measure, so that ordinary pleasures became distasteful. Conscious that at will he was the master of all women that he could desire, knowing that his power was irresistible, he did not care to exercise it. They were pliant to his unexpressed wishes, to his most extravagant caprices, until he felt a horrible thirst for love, and would have love beyond their power to give. The world refused him nothing save faith and prayer, the soothing and consoling love that is not of this world. He was obeyed. It was a horrible position. The torrents of pain and pleasure, and thought that shook his soul and his bodily frame, would have overwhelmed the strongest human being. But in him there was a power of vitality, proportioned to the power of the sensations that assailed him. He felt within him a vague immensity of longing that earth could not satisfy. He spent his days on outspread wings, longing to traverse the luminous fields of space to other spheres that he knew afar by intuitive perception, a clear and hopeless knowledge. His soul dried up within him, for he hungered and thirsted after things that can neither be drunk nor eaten, but for which he could not choose but crave. His lips, like Melmozz, burned with desire. He panted for the unknown, for he knew all things. The mechanism and the scheme of the world was apparent to him, and its working interested him no longer. He did not long disguise the profound scorn that makes of a man extraordinary powers a sphinx, who knows everything and says nothing and sees all things with an unmoved countenance. He felt not the slightest wish to communicate his knowledge to other men. He was rich with all the wealth of the world, with one effort could he make the circle of the globe, and riches and power were meaningless for him. He felt the awful melancholy of omnipotence, a melancholy which Satan and God relieve by the exercise of infinite power in mysterious ways known to them alone. Castaner had not, like his master, the inextinguishable energy of hate and malice.  But Castaner, for his misfortune, had one hope left. If in a moment he could move from one pole to the other, as a bird springs restlessly from side to side in its cage, when, like the bird, he had crossed his prison, he saw the vast immensity of space beyond it. That vision of the infinite left him forever unable to see humanity and its affairs as other men saw them. The insensate fools who long for the power of the devil gauge its desirability from a human standpoint. They do not see that with the devil's power they will likewise assume his thoughts, and that they will be doomed to remain as men among creatures who will no longer understand them. The neuro-unknown to history, who dreams of setting Paris on fire for his private entertainment, like an exhibition of a burning house on the boards of a theater, does not suspect that if he had that power Paris would become for him, as little interesting as an ant-heap by the roadside to a hurrying passer-by. The circle of the sciences was for Castaner something like a logo-grif for a man who does not know the key to it. Humans and governments were despicable in his eyes. His great debauch had been in some sort a deplorable farewell to his life as a man. The earth had grown too narrow for him, for the infernal gifts laid bare for him the secrets of creation. He saw the cause and foresaw its end. He was shut out from all that men call heaven in all languages under the sun. He could no longer think of heaven. Then he came to understand the look on his predecessor's face and the drying up of life within. Then he knew all that was meant by the baffled hope that gleamed in Melma's eyes. He, too, knew the thirst that burned those red lips and the agony of a continual struggle between two natures grown to giant size. Even yet he might be an angel, and he knew himself to be a fiend. He was the fate of a sweet and gentle creature that a wizard's malice had imprisoned in a misshapen form, entrapping it by a pact, so that another's will must set it free from its detested envelope. As a deception only increases the ardor with which a man of really great nature explores the infinite sentiment in a woman's heart, so Castaner awoke to find that one idea lay like a weight upon his soul, an idea which was perhaps the key to loftier spheres. The very fact that he had bartered away his eternal happiness led him to dwell in thought upon the future of those who pray and believe. On the morrow of his debauch, when he entered into the sober possession of his power, this idea made him feel himself a prisoner. He knew the burden of the woe that poets and prophets and great oracles of faith have set before us in such mighty words. He felt the points of the flaming sword plunged into his side and hurried in search of malmoth, what had become of his predecessor. The Englishman was living in a mansion in the Rue Farrot near Saint-Solpice, a gloomy, dark, damp, and cold abode. The Rue Farrot itself is one of the most dismal streets in Paris. It has a north aspect like all the streets that lie at right angles to the left bank of the Seine, and the houses are in keeping with the site. As Cassaniere stood on the threshold, he found that the door itself, like the vaulted roof, was hung with black. Rows of blighted tapers shone brilliantly as though some king were lying in state, and a priest stood on either side of a catephalque that had been raised there. There is no need to ask why you have come, sir. The old hall porter said to Cassaniere, You are so like our poor dear master that is gone, but if you are his brother, you have come too late to bid him good-bye. The good gentleman died the night before last. How did he die? Cassaniere asked one of the priests. Set your mind at rest, said an old priest. He partly raised, as he spoke, the black paw that covered the catephalque. Cassaniere, looking at him, saw one of those faces that faith has made sublime. The soul seemed to shine forth from every line of it, bringing light and warmth for other men, kindled by the unfailing charity within. This was Sir John Melmos, confessor. Your brother made an end that men may envy, and that must rejoice the angels. Do you know what joy there is in heaven over a sinner that repents? His tears of penitence, excited by grace, flowed without ceasing. Death alone checked them.  If in the course of my life I have never heard a more dredful confession than from the lips of this Irish gentleman, I have likewise never heard such fervent and passionate prayers. For great the measures of his sins may have been, his repentance has filled the abyss to overflowing. The hands of God was visibly stretched out above him, for he was completely changed. There was such heavenly beauty in his face. The hard eyes were softened by tears. The resonant voice that struck terror into those who heard it took the tender and compassionate tones of those who themselves have passed through deep humiliation. He so edified those who heard his words that some who had felt drawn to see the spectacle of a Christian's death fell on their knees as he spoke of heavenly things, and of the infinite glory of God, and gave thanks and praise to him. If he is leaving no worldly wealth to his family, no family can possess a greater blessing than this that he surely gains for them, a soul among the blessed who will watch over you all and direct you in the path to heaven. These words made such a vivid impression upon Castaner that he instantly hurried from the house to the church of St. Salpe's, obeying what might be called a decree of fate. Mamos' repentance had stupefied him. At that time, on certain mornings in the week, a preacher, famed for his eloquence, was want to hold conferences in the chorus of which he demonstrated the truths of the Catholic faith for the youth of a generation proclaimed to be indifferent in matters of belief, by another voice no less eloquent than his own. The conference had been put off to a later hour on account of Mamos' funeral, so Castaner arrived just as the great preacher was epitomizing the proofs of a future existence of happiness with all the charm of eloquence and force of expression which have made him famous. The seeds of divine doctrine fell into a soil prepared for them in the Old Dragoon into whom the devil had glided. Indeed, if there is a phenomenon well attested by experience, is it not a spiritual phenomenon commonly called the faith of the peasants? The strength of belief varies inversely with the amount of use that a man has made of his reasoning faculties. Several people and soldiers belong to the unreasoning class. Those who have marched through life beneath a banner of instinct are far more ready to receive the light than minds and hearts overwearyed with the world's office trees. Castaner had the southern temperament. He had joined the army as a lad of sixteen, and had followed the French flag till he was nearly forty years old. As a common trooper he had fought day and night, and day after day, and, as in duty bound, had thought of his horse first, and of himself afterwards. While he served his military apprenticeship, therefore, he had but little leisure in which to reflect on the destiny of man, and when he became an officer he had his men to think of. He had been swept from battlefield to battlefield, but he had never thought of what comes after death. A soldier's life does not demand much thinking. Those who cannot understand the lofty political ends involved and the interests of nation and nation, who cannot grasp political schemes as well as plans of campaign and combine the science of the tactician with that of the administrator, are bound to live in a state of ignorance. The most borish peasant in the most backward district in France is scarcely in a worse case. Much men as these bear the brunt of war, yield passive obedience to the brain that directs them, and strike down the men opposed to them as the woodcutter fells timber in the forest. Violent physical exertion is succeeded by times of inertia when they repair the waste. They fight and drink, fight and eat, fight and sleep, that they may better deal hard blows. The powers of the minds are not greatly exercised in this turbulent round of existence, and the character is as simple as here to fore. When the men who have shown such energy on the battlefield return to ordinary civilization, most of those who have not risen to high rank seem to have acquired no ideas, and to have no aptitude, no capacity for grasping new ideas. To the utter amazement of a younger generation, those who made our army so glorious and so terrible are as simple as children, and as slow-witted as a clerk at his worst, and the captain of a thundering squadron is scarcely fit to keep a merchant's day-book. Old soldiers of this stamp, therefore, being innocent of any attempt to use their reasoning faculties, act upon their strongest impulses. Castaner's crime was one of those matters that raised so many questions that, in order to debate about it, a moralist might call for its discussion by clauses to make use of a parliamentary expression. Passion had counseled the crime. The cruelly irresistible power of feminine witchery had driven him to commit it. No man can save himself. I will never do that. When a siren joins in the combat and throws her spells over him, so the word of life fell upon a conscience newly awakened to the truths of religion which the French revolution and a soldier's career had forced Castaner to neglect. The solemn words, you will be happy or miserable for all eternity, made but the more terrible impression upon him, because he had exhausted earth and shaken it like a barren tree, because his desires could affect all things, so that it was enough that any spot in earth or heaven should be forbidden him, and he forthwith thought of nothing else. If it were allowable to compare such great things with social follies, Castaner's position was not unlike that of a banker who, finding that his all-powerful millions cannot obtain him in entrance into the society of the nobles, must set his heart upon entering that circle, and all the social privileges that he has already acquired are as nothing in his eyes from the moment when he discovers that a single one is lacking. Here was a man more powerful than all the kings on earth put together, a man who, like Satan, could wrestle with God himself leaning against one of the pillars in the church of St. Salpe's, weighed down by the feelings and thoughts that oppressed him, and absorbed in the thought of a future, the same thought that had engulfed Melmoth. He was very happy, was Melmoth, cried Castaner. He died in the certain knowledge that he would go to heaven. In a moment the greatest possible change had been wrought in the cashier's ideas. For several days he had been a devil, now he was nothing but a man, an image of the fallen atom, of the sacred tradition embodied in all cosmogenies. But while he had thus shrunk to manhood, he retained a germ of greatness. He had been steeped in the infinite. The power of hell had revealed the divine power. He thirsted for heaven, as he had never thirsted after the pleasures of earth, that are so soon exhausted. The enjoyments which the fiend promises are but the enjoyments of earth on a larger scale, but to the joys of heaven there is no limits. He believed in God, and the spell that gave him the treasures of the world was as nothing to him now. The treasures themselves seemed to him as contemptible as pebbles to an admirer of diamonds. They were but gugalls compared with the eternal glories of the other life. A cursed lay, he thought, on all things that came to him from this source. He sounded dark depths of painful thought as he listened to the service performed from Al Moth. The dyes of Rai filled him with awe. He felt all the grandeur of that cry of a repentant soul trembling before the throne of God.  The tears were falling from his eyes when, are you a relation of the dead? The beetle asked him. I am his heir, Castanier answered. Give something for the expenses of the services, cried the men. No, said the cashier. The devil's money should not go to the church. For the poor? No. For repairing the church? No. The Lady Chapel? No. For the schools? No. Castanier went, not caring to expose himself to the sour looks that the irritated functionaries gave him. Outside, in the street, he looked up at the Church of St. Salpiz. What made people build the giant cathedrals I have seen in every country, he asked himself. The feeling shared so widely throughout all time, must surely be based upon something. Something, do you call God something? Cried his conscience, God, God, God. The word was echoed and re-echoed by an inner voice, till it overwhelmed him. But his feeling of terror subsided, as he heard sweet distant sounds of music that he had caught faintly before. They were singing in the church, he thought, and his eyes scanned the great doorway. But as he listened more closely, the sounds poured upon him from all sides. He looked round the square, but there was no sign of any musicians. The melody brought visions of a distant heaven and far off gleams of hope. But it also quickened the remorse that had set the lost soul in a ferment. He went on his way through Paris, walking as men walk who are crushed beneath the burden of their sorrow, seeing everything with unseeing eyes, loitering like an idler, stopping without cause, muttering to himself, careless of the traffic, making no effort to avoid a blow from a plank of timber. Imperceptibly, repentance brought him under the influence of the divine grace that soothes while it bruises the heart so terribly. His face came to wear a look of malmoth, something great, with the trace of madness in the greatness. A look of dull and hopeless distress mingled with the excited eagerness of hope, and, beneath it all, a gnawing sense of loathing for all that the world can give. The humblest of prayers lurked in the eyes that saw such dreadful clearness. His power was the measure of his anguish. His body was bowed down by the fearful storm that shook his soul, as the tall pines bend before the blast. Like his predecessor, he could not refuse to bear the burden of life.  The torment grew intolerable. At last, one morning, he thought himself, how that malmoth, now among the blessed, had made the proposal of an exchange, how that he had accepted it. Others, doubtless, would follow his example, for in an age proclaimed by the inheritors of the eloquence of the fathers of the church, to be fatally indifferent to religion, it should be easy to find a man who would accept the conditions of the contract in order to prove its advantages. There is one place where you can learn what kings will fetch in the market, where nations are weighed in the balance, and systems are praised, where the value of a government is stated in terms of the five-frank peace, where ideas and beliefs have their price, and everything is discounted, where God himself, in a manner, bars on the security of his revenue of souls, for the pope has a running account there. Is it not there that I should go to traffic in souls? Cassandra went quite joyously, on change, thinking that it would be as easy to buy a soul as to invest money in the funds. Any ordinary person would have feared ridicule, but Castaner knew by experience that a desperate man takes everything seriously. A prisoner, lying under sentence of death, would listen to the madman who should tell him that by pronouncing some gibberish he could escape through the keyhole, for suffering is credulous, and clings to an idea until it fails. As the swimmer, bore along by the current, clings to the branch that snaps in his hand. Toward four o'clock that afternoon, Castaner appeared among the little knots of men who were transacting private business after change. He was personally known to some of the brokers, and while affecting to be in search of an acquaintance, he managed to pick up the current gossip and rumors of failure. Catch me negotiating bills for Clapeyron and Co., my boy. The bank collector went round to return their acceptances to them this morning. Cedaphat banker in his outspoken way. If you have any of their paper, look out. Clapeyron was in the building, in deep consultation, with a man well known for the ruinous rate at which he lent money. Castaner went forthwith, in search of the said Clapeyron, a merchant who had a reputation for taking heavy risks. That meant wealth or utter ruin. The money lender went away as Castaner came up. A gesture betrayed the speculators' despair. Well, Clapeyron, the bank wants a hundred thousand francs of you, and it is four o'clock. The thing is known, and it is too late to arrange your little failure comfortably, said Castaner. Sir. Speak lower, the cashier went on.  It would not discharge my liabilities, every business that I ever heard of, once a little time to simmer in. I know of something that will set you straight in a moment, answered Castaner, but first you would have to do what? Sell your share of paradise. It is a matter of business like anything else, isn't it? We all hold shares in the great speculation of eternity. I tell you this, said Clapeyron angrily, that I am just the man to lend you a slap in the face. When a man is in trouble, it is no time to place silly jokes on him. I am talking seriously, said Castaner, and he drew a bundle of notes from his pocket. In the first place, said Clapeyron, I am not going to sell my soul to the devil for a trifle. I want five hundred thousand francs before I strike. Who talks of stinting you? asked Castaner, cutting him short. You should have more gold than you could stow in the cellars of the Bank of France. He held out a handful of notes. That decided Clapeyron. Done, he cried, but how was the bargain to be made? Let us go over yonder. No one is standing there, said Castaner, pointing to a corner of the court.  None of the onlookers guessed the nature of this by-play, though their curiosity was keenly excited by the strange gestures of the two contracting parties. When Castaner returned, there was a sudden outburst of amazed exclamation. As in the assembly where the least event immediately attracts attention, all faces were turned to the two men who had caused the sensation, and a shiver passed through all beholders at the change that had taken place in them. The men who form the moving crowds that fills the stock exchange are soon known to each other by sight. They watch each other like players around a card table. Some shrewd observers can tell how a man will play in the condition of his exchequer from a survey of his face. And the stock exchange is simply a vast card table. Everyone, therefore, had noticed Clapeyron and Castaner. The latter, like the Irishman before him, had been muscular and powerful.  The dignity and power in his face had struck all into the mall. They wondered how old Castaner had come by it, and now they beheld Castaner divested of his power, shrunken, wrinkled, aged, and feeble. He had drawn Clapeyron out of the crowd with the energy of a sick man in a fever-fit. He had looked like an opium eater during the brief period of excitement that the drug can give. Now, on his return, he seemed to be in the condition of utter exhaustion in which the patient dies after the fever departs, or to be suffering from the horrible prostration that follows on excessive indulgence in the delights of narcotics. The infernal power that had appelled him through his debauches had left him, and the body was left unaided and alone to endure the agony of remorse and the heavy burden of sincere repentance. Clapeyron's troubles everyone could guess. But Clapeyron reappeared, on the other hand, with sparkling eyes, holding his head high with the pride of Lucifer. The crisis had passed, from the one man to the other. Now you can drop off with an easy mind, old man, said Clapeyron Ducastanier. For pity's sake, send for a cab and for a priest. Send for the curate of St. Sapa's. Answered the old dragoon, sinking down upon the curb stone. The words, a priest, reached the ears of several people, and produced uproarious jeering among the stock brokers. For faith with these gentlemen means a belief that a scrap of paper, called a mortgage, represents an estate, and the list of fund holders is their Bible. Shall I have time to repent? said Castanier to himself, in a piteous voice that impressed Clapeyron. A cab carried away the dying man. The speculator went to the bank at once to meet his bills, and the momentary sensation produced upon the throng of businessmen by the sudden change on the two faces vanished like a furrow cut by a ship's keel in the sea. News of the greatest importance kept the attention of the world of commerce on the alert, and when commercial interests are at stake Moses might appear with his two luminous horns, and his coming would scarcely receive the honors of a pun. The gentleman, whose business it is to write the market reports, would ignore his existence. When Clapeyron had made his payments, fear seized upon him. There was no mistake about his power. He went on, changed again, and offered his bargain to other men in embarrassed circumstances. The devils bond, together with the rites, easements and privileges appertaining therein too, to use the expression of the nodary who succeeded Clapeyron, changed hands for the sum of seven hundred thousand francs. The nodary, in his turn, parted with the agreement, with the devil, for five hundred thousand francs, to a building contractor in difficulties, who likewise was rid of it to an iron merchant in consideration of a hundred thousand crowns. In fact, by five o'clock people had ceased to believe in the strange contract, and purchasers were lacking for want of confidence. At half-past five the holder of the bond was a house painter, who was lounging by the door of the building in the Rue Fadiou, where at that time stockbrokers temporarily congregated. The house painter, simple fellow, could not think what was the matter with him. He felt all anyhow, so he told his wife, when he went home. The Rue Fadiou, as idlers about town are aware, is a place of pilgrimage, for use, who, for lack of a mistress, bestow their art and affection upon the whole sex. On the first floor of the most rigidly respectable domicile, they are indwelled, one of those exquisite creatures, whom it has pleased heaven to endow with the rarest and most surpassing beauty. As it is impossible that they should all be duchesses or queens, since there are many more pretty women in the world than titles and thrones, for them to adorn, they are content to make a stockbroker or a banker happy at a fixed price. To this good-natured beauty, Eufrasia by name, an unbounded ambition had led a notary's clerk to aspire. In short, the second clerk in the office of Métrie Crotat, notary, had fallen in love with her, as youth at two and twenty can fall in love. The scrivener would have murdered the pope and run amok through the whole sacred college to procure the miserable sum of a hundred Louis to pay for a shawl which had turned Eufrasia's heads, at which price her waiting-women had promised that Eufrasia should be his. The infatuated youth walked to and fro under Madame Eufrasia's windows, like the polar bears in their cage, at the jardin to plant. With his right hands thrust beneath his waistcoat, in the region of the heart, which he was fit to tear from his bosom, but as yet had only wretched at the elastic of his braces. "'What can one do to raise ten thousand francs?' he asked himself. "'Shall I make off with the money that I must pay on the registration of that conveyance?' "'Good heavens, my loan would not ruin the purchaser, a man with seven millions, and then the next day I would fling myself at his feet, and say, I have taken ten thousand francs belonging to you, sir, I am twenty-two years of age, and I am in love with Eufrasia. That is my story. My father is rich. He will pay you back. Do not ruin me. Have not you yourself been twenty-two years old and madly in love?' But these beggarly landowners have no souls. He would be quite likely to give me up to the public prosecutor, instead of taking pity upon me. God, if it were only possible to sell your soul to the devil, but there is neither a god nor a devil, it is all nonsense out of nursery tales and old wives' talk. What shall I do? If you have a mind to sell your soul to the devil, sir,' said the house painter, who had overheard something that the clerk let fall, you can have the ten thousand francs. And Eufrasia cried the clerk, as he struck a bargain with the devil that inhabited the house painter. The pact concluded the frantic clerk went to find the shawl and mounted Madame Eufrasia's staircase, and as, literally, the devil was in him, he did not come down for twelve days, drowning the thought of hell and of his privileges in the twelve days of love and riot and forgetfulness for which he had bartered away all his hopes of a paradise to come. And in this way the secret of the vast power discovered and acquired by the Irishmen. The offspring of Maturine's brain was lost to mankind, and the various Orientalists, mystics, and archaeologists who take an interest in these matters were unable to hand down to posterity the proper method of invoking the devil for the following sufficient reasons. On the thirteenth day, after these frenzied nuptials, the wretched clerk lay on a pallet bed in a garret in his master's house in the rue Saint-Honoré.  He had fallen ill. He would nurse himself, misjudged the quantity of a remedy devised by the skill of a practitioner well known on the walls of Paris, and succumbed to the effects of an overdose of mercury. His corpse was as black as a mole's back. A devil had left unmistakable traces of its passage there. Could it have been, Ashtaroth? The estimable youth, to whom you refer, has been carried away to the planet Mercury, said the head clerk to a German demonologist who came to investigate the matter first hand. I am quite prepared to believe it, answered the tootin. Oh! Yes, sir, returned the other. The opinion you advance coincides with the very words of Jacob Bohme. In the forty-eighth proposition of the threefold life of man, he says that, if God hath brought all things to pass with a let there be, the fiat is the secret matrix which comprehends and apprehends the nature which is formed by the spirit born of Mercury and of God. What do you say, sir? The German delivered his quotation afresh. We do not know it, said the clerks. Fiat, said a clerk, Fiat Lux. You can verify the citation for yourselves, said the German. You will find the passage in the treatise of the threefold life of man, page seventy-five. The edition was published by M. Mignoret in eighteen-o-nine. It was translated into French by a philosopher who had a great admiration for the famous shoemaker. Oh! He was a shoemaker, was he? said the head clerk. In Prussia, said the German. Did he work for the king of Prussia? inquired a Biotian of a second clerk. He must have vamped up his prose, said a third. That man is colossal, cried the fourth, pointing to the tootin. That man, though a demonologist of the first rank, did not know the amount of devoury to be found in a notary's clerk. He went away without the least idea that they were making game of him, and fully under the impression that the young fellows regarded Bomi as a colossal genius. Education is making strides in France, said he to himself. Ends of section sixteen. Recording by Katie Riley. August, two thousand nine.