Within an Inch of His Life

E >> Emile Gaboriau >> Within an Inch of His Life


"Perhaps you have only ordered it to be committed."

With a wild gesture she raised her arms to heaven, and cried in a
heart-rending voice,--

"O God, O God! He believes it! he really believes it!"

There followed great silence, dismal, formidable silence, such as in
nature follows the crash of the thunderbolt.

Standing face to face, Jacques and the Countess Claudieuse looked at
each other madly, feeling that the fatal hour in their lives had come at
last.

Each felt a growing, a sure conviction of the other. There was no need
of explanations. They had been misled by appearances: they acknowledged
it; they were sure of it.

And this discovery was so fearful, so overwhelming, that neither thought
of who the real guilty one might be.

"What is to be done?" asked the countess.

"The truth must be told," replied Jacques.

"Which?"

"That I have been your lover; that I went to Valpinson by appointment
with you; that the cartridge-case which was found there was used by
me to get fire; that my blackened hands were soiled by the half-burnt
fragment of our letters, which I had tried to scatter."

"Never!" cried the countess.

Jacques's face turned crimson, as he said with an accent of merciless
severity,--

"It shall be told! I will have it so, and it must be done!"

The countess seemed to be furious.

"Never!" she cried again, "never!"

And with convulsive haste she added,--

"Do you not see that the truth cannot possibly be told. They would never
believe in our innocence. They would only look upon us as accomplices."

"Never mind. I am not willing to die."

"Say that you will not die alone."

"Be it so."

"To confess every thing would never save you, but would most assuredly
ruin me. Is that what you want? Would your fate appear less cruel to
you, if there were two victims instead of one?"

He stopped her by a threatening gesture, and cried,--

"Are you always the same? I am sinking, I am drowning; and she
calculates, she bargains! And she said she loved me!"

"Jacques!" broke in the countess.

And drawing close up to him, she said,--

"Ah! I calculate, I bargain? Well, listen. Yes, it is true. I did value
my reputation as an honest woman more highly, a thousand times more,
than my life; but, above my life and my reputation, I valued you. You
are drowning, you say. Well, then, let us flee. One word from you, and I
leave all,--honor, country, family, husband, children. Say one word,
and I follow you without turning my head, without a regret, without a
remorse."

Her whole body was shivering from head to foot; her bosom rose and fell;
her eyes shone with unbearable brilliancy.

Thanks to the violence of her action, her dress, put on in great haste,
had opened, and her dishevelled hair flowed in golden masses over
her bosom and her shoulders, which matched the purest marble in their
dazzling whiteness.

And in a voice trembling with pent-up passion, now sweet and soft like a
tender caress, and now deep and sonorous like a bell, she went on,--

"What keeps us? Since you have escaped from prison, the greatest
difficulty is overcome. I thought at first of taking our girl, your
girl, Jacques; but she is very ill; and besides a child might betray us.
If we go alone, they will never overtake us. We will have money enough,
I am sure, Jacques. We will flee to those distant countries which
appear in books of travels in such fairy-like beauty. There, unknown,
forgotten, unnoticed, our life will be one unbroken enjoyment. You will
never again say that I bargain. I will be yours, entirely, and solely
yours, body and soul, your wife, your slave."

She threw her head back, and with half-closed eyes, bending with her
whole person toward him, she said in melting tones,--

"Say, Jacques, will you? Jacques!"

He pushed her aside with a fierce gesture. It seemed to him almost a
sacrilege that she also, like Dionysia, should propose to him to flee.

"Rather the galleys!" he cried.

She turned deadly pale; a spasm of rage convulsed her features; and
drawing back, stiff and stern, she said,--

"What else do you want?"

"Your help to save me," he replied.

"At the risk of ruining myself?"

He made no reply.

Then she, who had just now been all humility, raised herself to her full
height, and in a tone of bitterest sarcasm said slowly,--

"In other words, you want me to sacrifice myself, and at the same time
all my family. For your sake? Yes, but even more for Miss Chandore's
sake. And you think that it is quite a simple thing. I am the past to
you, satiety, disgust: she is the future to you, desire, happiness. And
you think it quite natural that the old love should make a footstool of
her love and her honor for the new love? You think little of my being
disgraced, provided she be honored; of my weeping bitterly, if she but
smile? Well, no, no! it is madness in you to come and ask me to save
you, so that you may throw yourself into the arms of another. It is
madness, when in order to tear you from Dionysia, I am ready to ruin
myself, provided only that you be lost to her forever."

"Wretch!" cried Jacques.

She looked at him with a mocking air, and her eyes beamed with infernal
audacity.

"You do not know me yet," she cried. "Go, speak, denounce me! M. Folgat
no doubt has told you how I can deny and defend myself."

Maddened by indignation, and excited to a point where reason loses its
power over us, Jacques de Boiscoran moved with uplifted hand towards the
countess, when suddenly a voice said,--

"Do not strike that woman!"

Jacques and the countess turned round, and uttered, both at the same
instant, the same kind of sharp, terrible cry, which must have been
heard a great distance.

In the frame of the door stood Count Claudieuse, a revolver in his hand,
and ready to fire.

He looked as pale as a ghost; and the white flannel dressing-gown which
he had hastily thrown around him hung like a pall around his lean limbs.
The first cry uttered by the countess had been heard by him on the bed
on which he lay apparently dying. A terrible presentiment had seized
him. He had risen from his bed, and, dragging himself slowly along,
holding painfully to the balusters, he had come down.

"I have heard all," he said, casting crushing looks at both the guilty
ones.

The countess uttered a deep, hoarse sigh, and sank into a chair. But
Jacques drew himself up, and said,--

"I have insulted you terribly, sir. Avenge yourself."

The count shrugged his shoulders.

"Great God! You would allow me to be condemned for a crime which I have
not committed. Ah, that would be the meanest cowardice."

The count was so feeble that he had to lean against the door-post.

"Would it be cowardly?" he asked. "Then, what do you call the act of
that miserable man who meanly, disgracefully robs another man of his
wife, and palms off his own children upon him? It is true you are
neither an incendiary nor an assassin. But what is fire in my house in
comparison with the ruin of all my faith? What are the wounds in my body
in comparison with that wound in my heart, which never can heal? I leave
you to the court, sir."

Jacques was terrified; he saw the abyss opening before him that was to
swallow him up.

"Rather death," he cried,--"death."

And, baring his breast, he said,--

"But why do you not fire, sir? Why do you not fire? Are you afraid of
blood? Shoot! I have been the lover of your wife: your youngest daughter
is my child."

The count lowered his weapon.

"The courts of justice are more certain," he said. "You have robbed me
of my honor: now I want yours. And, if you cannot be condemned without
it, I shall say, I shall swear, that I recognized you. You shall go to
the galleys, M. de Boiscoran."

He was on the point of coming forward; but his strength was exhausted,
and he fell forward, face downward, and arms outstretched.

Overcome with horror, half mad, Jacques fled.



XXIX.

M. Folgat had just risen. Standing before his mirror, hung up to one of
the windows in his room, he had just finished shaving himself, when the
door was thrown open violently, and old Anthony appeared quite beside
himself.

"Ah, sir, what a terrible thing!"

"What?"

"Run away, disappeared!"

"Who?"

"Master Jacques!"

The surprise was so great, that M. Folgat nearly let his razor drop: he
said, however, peremptorily,--

"That is false!"

"Alas, sir," replied the old servant, "everybody is full of it in town.
All the details are known. I have just seen a man who says he met master
last night, about eleven o'clock, running like a madman down National
Street."

"That is absurd."

"I have only told Miss Dionysia so far, and she sent me to you. You
ought to go and make inquiry."

The advice was not needed. Wiping his face hastily, the young advocate
went to dress at once. He was ready in a moment; and, having run down
the stairs, he was crossing the passage when he heard somebody call his
name. He turned round, and saw Dionysia making him a sign to come into
the boudoir in which she was usually sitting. He did so.

Dionysia and the young advocate alone knew what a desperate venture
Jacques had undertaken the night before. They had not said a word about
it to each other; but each had noticed the preoccupation of the other.
All the evening M. Folgat had not spoken ten words, and Dionysia had,
immediately after dinner, gone up to her own room.

"Well?" she asked.

"The report, madam, must be false," replied the advocate.

"Who knows?"

"His evasion would be a confession of his crime. It is only the guilty
who try to escape; and M. de Boiscoran is innocent. You can rest quite
assured, madam, it is not so. I pray you be quiet."

Who would not have pitied the poor girl at that moment? She was as white
as her collar, and trembled violently. Big tears ran over her eyes; and
at each word a violent sob rose in her throat.

"You know where Jacques went last night?" she asked again.

"Yes."

She turned her head a little aside, and went on, in a hardly audible
voice,--

"He went to see once more a person whose influence over him is,
probably, all powerful. It may be that she has upset him, stunned him.
Might she not have prevailed upon him to escape from the disgrace of
appearing in court, charged with such a crime?"

"No, madam, no!"

"This person has always been Jacques's evil genius. She loves him, I
am sure. She must have been incensed at the idea of his becoming my
husband. Perhaps, in order to induce him to flee, she has fled with
him."

"Ah! do not be afraid, madam: the Countess Claudieuse is incapable of
such devotion."

Dionysia threw herself back in utter amazement; and, raising her
wide-open eyes to the young advocate, she said with an air of
stupefaction,--

"The Countess Claudieuse?"

M. Folgat saw his indiscretion. He had been under the impression that
Jacques had told his betrothed every thing; and her very manner of
speaking had confirmed him in his conviction.

"Ah, it is the Countess Claudieuse," she went on,--"that lady whom all
revere as if she were a saint. And I, who only the other day marvelled
at her fervor in praying,--I who pitied her with all my heart,--I--Ah! I
now see what they were hiding from me."

Distressed by the blunder which he had committed, the young advocate
said,--

"I shall never forgive myself, madam, for having mentioned that name in
your presence."

She smiled sadly.

"Perhaps you have rendered me a great service, sir. But, I pray, go and
see what the truth is about this report."

M. Folgat had not walked down half the street, when he became aware that
something extraordinary must really have happened. The whole town was in
uproar. People stood at their doors, talking. Groups here and there were
engaged in lively discussions.

Hastening his steps, he was just turning into National Street, when he
was stopped by three or four gentlemen, whose acquaintance he had, in
some way or other, been forced to make since he was at Sauveterre.

"Well, sir?" said one of these amiable friends, "your client, it seems,
is running about nicely."

"I do not understand," replied M. Folgat in a tone of ice.

"Why? Don't you know your client has run off?"

"Are you quite sure of that?"

"Certainly. The wife of a workman whom I employ was the person through
whom the escape became known. She had gone on the old ramparts to cut
grass there for her goat; and, when she came to the prison wall, she saw
a big hole had been made there. She gave at once the alarm; the guard
came up; and they reported the matter immediately to the commonwealth
attorney."

For M. Folgat the evidence was not satisfactory yet. He asked,--

"Well? And M. de Boiscoran?"

"Cannot be found. Ah, I tell you, it is just as I say. I know it from
a friend who heard it from a clerk at the mayor's office. Blangin the
jailer, they say, is seriously implicated."

"I hope soon to see you again," said the young advocate, and left him
abruptly.

The gentleman seemed to be very grievously offended at such treatment;
but the young advocate paid no attention to him, and rapidly crossed the
New-Market Square.

He was become apprehensive. He did not fear an evasion, but thought
there might have occurred some fearful catastrophe. A hundred persons,
at least, were assembled around the prison-doors, standing there with
open mouths and eager eyes; and the sentinels had much trouble in
keeping them back.

M. Folgat made his way through the crowd, and went in.

In the court-yard he found the commonwealth attorney, the chief of
police, the captain of the gendarmes, M. Seneschal, and, finally, M.
Galpin, all standing before the janitor's lodge in animated discussion.
The magistrate looked paler than ever, and was, as they called it in
Sauveterre, in bull-dog humor. There was reason for it.

He had been informed as promptly as M. Folgat, and had, with equal
promptness, dressed, and hastened to the prison. And all along his way,
unmistakable evidence had proved to him that public opinion was fiercely
roused against the accused, but that it was as deeply excited against
himself.

On all sides he had been greeted by ironical salutations, mocking
smiles, and even expressions of condolence at the loss of his prisoner.
Two men, whom he suspected of being in close relations with Dr.
Seignebos, had even murmured, as he passed by them,--

"Cheated, Mr. Bloodhound."

He was the first to notice the young advocate, and at once said to
him,--

"Well, sir, do you come for news?"

But M. Folgat was not the man to be taken in twice the same day.
Concealing his apprehensions under the most punctilious politeness, he
replied,--

"I have heard all kinds of reports; but they do not affect me. M. de
Boiscoran has too much confidence in the excellency of his cause and the
justice of his country to think of escaping. I only came to confer with
him."

"And you are right!" exclaimed M. Daubigeon. "M. de Boiscoran is in his
cell, utterly unaware of all the rumors that are afloat. It was Trumence
who has run off,--Trumence, the light-footed. He was kept in prison for
form's sake only, and helped the keeper as a kind of assistant jailer.
He it is who has made a hole in the wall, and escaped, thinking, no
doubt, that the heavens are a better roof than the finest jail."

A little distance behind the group stood Blangin, the jailer, affecting
a contrite and distressed air.

"Take the counsel to the prisoner Boiscoran," said M. Galpin dryly,
fearing, perhaps, that M. Daubigeon might regale the public with all the
bitter epigrams with which he persecuted him privately. The jailer bowed
to the ground, and obeyed the order; but, as soon as he was alone with
M. Folgat in the porch of the building, he blew up his cheek, and then
tapped it, saying,--

"Cheated all around."

Then he burst out laughing. The young advocate pretended not to
understand him. It was but prudent that he should appear ignorant of
what had happened the night before, and thus avoid all suspicion of a
complicity which substantially did not exist.

"And still," Blangin went on, "this is not the end of it yet. The
gendarmes are all out. If they should catch my poor Trumence! That man
is such a fool, the most stupid judge would worm his secret out of him
in five minutes. And then, who would be in a bad box?"

M. Folgat still made no reply; but the other did not seem to mind that
much. He continued,--

"I only want to do one thing, and that is to give up my keys as soon as
possible. I am tired of this profession of jailer. Besides, I shall not
be able to stay here much longer. This escape has put a flea into the
ear of the authorities, and they are going to give me an assistant, a
former police sergeant, who is as bad as a watchdog. Ah! the good days
of M. de Boiscoran are over: no more stolen visits, no more promenades.
He is to be watched day and night."

Blangin had stopped at the foot of the staircase to give all these
explanations.

"Let us go up," he said now, as M. Folgat showed signs of growing
impatience.

He found Jacques lying on his bed, all dressed; and at the first glance
he saw that a great misfortune had happened.

"One more hope gone?" he asked.

The prisoner raised himself up with difficulty, and sat up on the side
of his bed; then he replied in a voice of utter despair,--

"I am lost, and this time hopelessly."

"Oh!"

"Just listen!"

The young advocate could not help shuddering as he heard the account
given by Jacques of what had happened the night before. And when it was
finished, he said,--

"You are right. If Count Claudieuse carries out his threat, it may be a
condemnation."

"It must be a condemnation, you mean. Well, you need not doubt. He will
carry out his threat."

And shaking his head with an air of desolation, he added,--

"And the most formidable part of it is this: I cannot blame him for
doing it. The jealousy of husbands is often nothing more than self-love.
When they find they have been deceived, their vanity is offended; but
their heart remains whole. But in this case it is very different. He
not only loved his wife, he worshipped her. She was his happiness, life
itself. When I took her from him, I robbed him of all he had,--yes, of
all! I never knew what adultery meant till I saw him overcome with shame
and rage. He was left without any thing in a moment. His wife had a
lover: his favorite daughter was not his own! I suffer terribly; but
it is nothing, I am sure, in comparison with what he suffers. And you
expect, that, holding a weapon in his hand, he should not use it? It is
a treacherous, dishonest weapon, to be sure; but have I been frank and
honest? It would be a mean, ignoble vengeance, you will say; but what
was the offence? In his place, I dare say, I should do as he does."

M. Folgat was thunderstruck.

"But after that," he asked, "when you left the house?"

Jacques passed his hand mechanically over his forehead, as if to gather
his thoughts, and then went on,--

"After that I fled precipitately, like a man who has committed a crime.
The garden-door was open, and I rushed out. I could not tell you with
certainty in what direction I ran, through what streets I passed. I had
but one fixed idea,--to get away from that house as quickly and as far
as possible. I did not know what I was doing. I went, I went. When I
came to myself, I was many miles away from Sauveterre, on the road to
Boiscoran. The instinct of the animal within me had guided me on the
familiar way to my house. At the first moment I could not comprehend how
I had gotten there. I felt like a drunkard whose head is filled with the
vapors of alcohol, and who, when he is roused, tries to remember what
has happened during his intoxication. Alas! I recalled the fearful
reality but too soon. I knew that I ought to go back to prison, that
it was an absolute necessity; and yet I felt at times so weary, so
exhausted, that I was afraid I should not be able to get back. Still I
did reach the prison. Blangin was waiting for me, all anxiety; for it
was nearly two o'clock. He helped me to get up here. I threw myself, all
dressed as I was, on my bed, and I fell fast asleep in an instant. But
my sleep was a miserable sleep, broken by terrible dreams, in which
I saw myself chained to the galleys, or mounting the scaffold with a
priest by my side; and even at this moment I hardly know whether I am
awake or asleep, and whether I am not still suffering under a fearful
nightmare."

M. Folgat could hardly conceal a tear. He murmured,--

"Poor man!"

"Oh, yes, poor man indeed!" repeated Jacques. "Why did I not follow my
first inspiration last night when I found myself on the high-road. I
should have gone on to Boiscoran, I should have gone up stairs to my
room, and there I should have blown out my brains. I should then suffer
no more."

Was he once more giving himself up to that fatal idea of suicide?

"And your parents," said M. Folgat.

"My parents! And do you think they will survive my condemnation?"

"And Miss Chandore?"

He shuddered, and said fiercely,--

"Ah! it is for her sake first of all that I ought to make an end of it.
Poor Dionysia! Certainly she would grieve terribly when she heard of
my suicide. But she is not twenty yet. My memory would soon fade in her
heart; and weeks growing into months, and months into years, she would
find comfort. To live means to forget."

"No! You cannot really think what you are saying!" broke in M. Folgat.
"You know very well that she--she would never forget you!"

A tear appeared in the eyes of the unfortunate man, and he said in a
half-smothered voice,--

"You are right. I believe to strike me down means to strike her down
also. But do you think what life would be after a condemnation? Can you
imagine what her sensations would be, if day after day she had to say
to herself, 'He whom alone I love upon earth is at the galleys, mixed up
with the lowest of criminals, disgraced for life, dishonored.' Ah! death
is a thousand times preferable."

"Jacques, M. de Boiscoran, do you forget that you have given me your
word of honor?"

"The proof that I have not forgotten it is that you see me here. But,
never mind, the day is not very far off when you will see me so wretched
that you yourself will be the first to put a weapon into my hands."

But the young advocate was one of those men whom difficulties only
excite and stimulate, instead of discouraging. He had already recovered
somewhat from the first great shock, and he said,--

"Before you throw down your hand, wait, at least, till the game is lost.
You are not sentenced yet. Far from it! You are innocent, and there
is divine justice. Who tells us that Count Claudieuse will really give
evidence? We do not even know whether he has not, at this moment, drawn
his last breath upon earth!"

Jacques leaped up as if in a spasm, and turning deadly pale,
exclaimed,--

"Ah, don't say that! That fatal thought has already occurred to me, that
perhaps he did not rise again last night. Would to God that that be not
so! for then I should but too surely be an assassin. He was my first
thought when I awoke. I thought of sending out to make inquiries. But I
did not dare do it."

M. Folgat felt his heart oppressed with most painful anxiety, like the
prisoner himself. Hence he said at once,--

"We cannot remain in this uncertainty. We can do nothing as long as the
count's fate is unknown to us; for on his fate depends ours. Allow me to
leave you now. I will let you know as soon as I hear any thing positive.
And, above all, keep up your courage, whatever may happen."

The young advocate was sure of finding reliable information at Dr.
Seignebos's house. He hastened there; and, as soon as he entered, the
physician cried,--

"Ah, there you are coming at last! I give up twenty of my worst patients
to see you, and you keep me waiting forever. I was sure you would come.
What happened last night at Count Claudieuse's house?"

"Then you know"--

"I know nothing. I have seen the results; but I do not know the cause.
The result was this: last night, about eleven o'clock, I had just gone
to bed, tired to death, when, all of a sudden, somebody rings my bell
as if he were determined to break it. I do not like people to perform so
violently at my door; and I was getting up to let the man know my
mind, when Count Claudieuse's servant rushed in, pushing my own servant
unceremoniously aside, and cried out to me to come instantly, as his
master had just died."

"Great God!"

"That is what I said, because, although I knew the count was very ill, I
did not think he was so near death."

"Then, he is really dead?"

"Not at all. But, if you interrupt me continually, I shall never be able
to tell you."

And taking off his spectacles, wiping them, and putting them on again,
he went on,--

"I was dressed in an instant, and in a few minutes I was at the house.
They asked me to go into the sitting-room down stairs. There I found, to
my great amazement, Count Claudieuse, lying on a sofa. He was pale and
stiff, his features fearfully distorted, and on his forehead a slight
wound, from which a slender thread of blood was trickling down. Upon my
word I thought it was all over."