Mysteries of Paris Volume II Part 50

We will conduct the reader to the house in the Rue du Temple, the day of the suicide of M. d'Harville, about three o'clock in the afternoon.

Pipelet, the porter, alone in the lodge, was occupied in mending a boot. The chaste porter was dejected and melancholy. As a soldier, in the humiliation of his defeat, pa.s.ses his hand sadly over his scars, Pipelet breathed a profound sigh, stopped his work, and moved his trembling finger over the transverse fracture of his huge hat, made by an insolent hand. Then all the chagrin, inquietude, and fears of Alfred Pipelet were awakened in thinking of the inconceivable and incessant pursuits of the author.

Pipelet had not a very extended or elevated mind; his imagination was not the most lively nor the most poetical, but he possessed a very solid, very logical, very common sense.

Cabrion, a painter, formerly a tenant, had seen fit to make the porter a b.u.t.t of the most audacious practical jokes, inundating him with caricatures, laughable labels, and startling appearances before his unexpectant appalled sight. Unfortunately, by a natural consequence of the rect.i.tude of his judgment, not being able to comprehend practical jokes, Pipelet endeavored to find some reasonable motive for the outrageous conduct of Cabrion, and on this subject he posed himself with a thousand insoluble questions. Thus, sometimes, a new Paschal, he felt himself seized with a vertigo in trying to sound the bottomless abyss which the infernal genius of the painter had dug under his feet. How many times, in the overflowings of his imagination, he had been forced to commune within himself thanks to the frenzied skepticism of Madame Pipelet, who, only looking at facts, and disdaining to seek after causes, grossly considered the incomprehensible conduct of Cabrion toward Alfred as simple comicality.

Pipelet, a serious man, could not admit of such an interpretation; he groaned at the blindness of his wife; his dignity as a man revolted at the thought that he could be the plaything of a combination so vulgar as a _lark!_ He was absolutely convinced that the unheard-of conduct of Cabriori concealed some mysterious plot under a frivolous appearance.

It was to solve this fatal problem that the man in the big hat exhausted his powerful logic. "I would sooner lay my head on the scaffold," said this austere man, who, as soon as he touched them, increased immensely the importance of any propositions. "I would sooner lay my head upon the scaffold than admit that, in the mere intention of a stupid pleasantry, Cabrion could be so obstinately exasperated against me; a _farce_ is only played for the gallery.

Now, in his last undertaking, this obnoxious creature had no witness; he acted alone and in obscurity, as always; he clandestinely introduced himself into the solitude of my lodge to deposit on my forehead a hideous kiss! I ask any disinterested person, for what purpose? It was not from bravado--no one saw him; it was not from pleasure--the laws of nature opposed it; it was not from friendship--I have but one enemy in the world--it is he. It must, then, be acknowledged that there is a mystery there which my reason cannot penetrate! Then to what does this diabolical plot, concerted and pursued with a persistence which alarms me, tend? That I cannot comprehend: it is this impossibility to raise the veil, which, by degrees, is undermining and consuming me."

Such were the painful reflections of Pipelet at the moment when we present him to our readers. The honest porter had just torn open his bleeding wounds, by carry--his hand mechanically to the fracture of his hat, when a piercing voice, coming from one of the upper stories of the house, made these words resound again: "Mr. Pipelet, quick!

quick! come up! make haste!"

"I do not know that voice," said Alfred, after a moment of anxious listening, and he let his arm, inclosed in the boot he was mending, fall on his knees.

"Mr. Pipelet! make haste!" repeated the voice, in a pressing tone.

"That voice is completely strange to me. It is masculine; it calls me, that I can affirm. It is not a sufficient reason that I should abandon my lodge. Leave it--desert it in the absence of my wife--never!" cried Alfred, heroically, "never!"

"Mr. Pipelet," said the voice, "come up quick, Mrs. Pipelet is off in a swoon."

"Anastasia!" cried Alfred, rising from his seat: then be fell back again, saying to himself, "child that I am--it is impossible; my wife went out an hour ago. Yes, but might she not have returned without my seeing her? This would be rather irregular; but I must declare that it is possible."

"Mr. Pipelet, come up; I have your wife in my arms!"

"Some one has my wife in their arms!" said Pipelet, rising abruptly.

"I cannot unlace Mrs. Pipelet all alone!" added the voice.

These words produced a magical effect upon Alfred: his face flushed, his chast.i.ty revolted.

"The masculine and unknown voice speaks of unlacing Anastasia!" cried he: "I oppose it, I forbid it!" and he rushed out of the lodge; but on the threshold he stopped.

Pipelet found himself in one of those horribly critical, and eminently dramatical positions, so often described by poets. On the one hand, duty retained him in his lodge: on the other, his chaste and conjugal susceptibility called him to the upper stories of the house. In the midst of these terrible perplexities, the voice said:

"You don't come, Mr. Pipelet? so much the worse--I cut the strings, and I shut my eyes!"

This threat decided Pipelet.

"Mossieur!" cried he, in a stentorian voice, "in the name of honor I conjure you to cut nothing--to leave my wife intact! I come!" and Alfred rushed upstairs, leaving, in his alarm, the door of the lodge open. Hardly had he left it, than a man entered quickly, took from the table a hammer, jumped on the bed, at the back part of the obscure alcove, and vanished. This operation was done so quickly, that the porter, remembering almost immediately that he had left the door open, returned precipitately, shut it, and carried off the key, without suspecting that any one could have entered in this interval. After this measure of precaution, Alfred started again to the a.s.sistance of Anastasia, crying, with all his strength, "Cut nothing--I am coming-- here I am--I place my wife under the safeguard of your delicacy!"

Hardly had he mounted the first flight, before he heard the voice of Anastasia, not from the upper story, but in the alley.

The voice, shriller than ever cried, "Alfred! here you leave the lodge alone! Where are you, old gadabout?"

At this moment, Pipelet was about placing his right foot on the landing-place of the first story; he remained petrified, his head turned toward the bottom of the stairs, his mouth open, his eyes fixed, his foot raised.

"Alfred!" cried Mrs. Pipelet anew.

"Anastasia is below--she is not above, occupied in being sick," said Pipelet to himself, faithful to his logical argumentation. "But then this unknown and masculine voice, who threatened to unlace her, is an impostor. He has been playing a cruel game with my emotions! What is his design? There is something extraordinary going on here! No matter: do your duty, happen what may! After having responded to my wife, I shall mount to enlighten this mystery and verify this voice."

Pipelet descended, very much troubled, and found himself face to face with his wife.

"It is you?" said he.

"Well! yes, it is me; who would you have it to be?"

"It is you--my eyes do not deceive me!"

"Ah, now! what is the matter, that makes your big eyes look like billiard b.a.l.l.s? You look at me as if you were going to eat me."

"Your presence reveals to me that something has been pa.s.sing here-- things--"

"What things? Come, give me the key of the lodge; why do you leave it?

I come from the office of the Normandy diligences, where I went in a hack, to carry the trunk of M. Bradamanti, who did not wish it to be known that he was about to leave town to-night, and who could not depend on that little scoundrel Tortillard (Hoppy)--and he is right!"

Saying these words, Mrs. Pipelet took the key, which her husband held in his hand, opened the lodge, and went in before her husband.

Hardly had they entered, when a person, descending the staircase lightly, pa.s.sed rapidly and unperceived before the lodge. It was the "masculine voice" which had so deeply excited the inquietudes of Alfred.

Pipelet rested himself heavily on his chair, and said to his wife in a trembling voice, "Anastasia, I do not feel at my accustomed ease; things occurring here--events--"

"Now you repeat that again; but things occur everywhere; what is the matter? Come, let us see--why, you are all wet--all in a perspiration!

what effort have you been making? He's all a-trickling--the old darling!"

"Yes, I perspire, as I have reason to;" Pipelet pa.s.sed his hand over his face, dripping with moisture; "for there are regular revolutionary events pa.s.sing here."

"Again I ask, what is it? You never can remain quiet. You must always be trotting about like a cat, instead of remaining in your chair to take care of the lodge."

"If I trot, it is for you."

"For me?"

"Yes; to spare you an outrage for which we both should have groaned and blushed, I have deserted a post which I consider as sacred as the sentry-box."

"Some one wished to commit an outrage on me--on me!"

"It was not on you, since the outrage of which you were threatened was to have been accomplished upstairs, and you were gone out--"

"May Old Harry run away with me, if I understand a single word of what you are singing there. Ah, ah! is it that you are decidedly losing your noddle? I shall begin to think that you are absent-minded--the fault of that beggarly Cabrion! Since his games of the other day, I don't know you; you look struck all of a heap. That being will be always your nightmare."

Hardly had Anastasia p.r.o.nounced the words than a strange thing came to pa.s.s. Alfred remained sitting, his face turned toward the bed. The lodge was lighted by the sickly light of a winter's day, and by a lamp. At the moment his wife p.r.o.nounced the name Cabrion, Pipelet thought he saw in the shade of the alcove the immovable, cunning face of the painter. It was he, his pointed hat, long hair, thin face, satanic smile, queer beard, and paralyzing gaze. For a moment, Pipelet thought himself in a dream; he pa.s.sed his hand over his eyes, believing that he was the victim of an illusion. It was not an illusion. Nothing could be more real than this apparition. Frightful thing! n.o.body could be seen, but only a head, of which the living flesh stood out in bold relief from the obscurity of the alcove. At this sight Pipelet fell over backward, without saying a word; he raised his right arm toward the bed, and pointed at this terrible vision, with a gesture so alarming, that Mrs. Pipelet turned to seek the cause of an alarm of which she soon partook, in spite of her habitual courage. She recoiled two steps, seized with force the hand of Alfred, and cried, "Cabrion!"

"Yes," murmured Pipelet, in a hollow voice, almost extinct, shutting his eyes.

The stupor of the pair paid the greatest honor to the talent of the artist who had so admirably painted on the pasteboard the features of Cabrion. Her first surprise over, Anastasia, as bold as a lion, ran to the bed, got on it, and tore the picture from the wall.

The amazon crowned this valiant enterprise by shouting, as a war-cry, her favorite exclamation, "Go ahead!"