“‘My interests are in no way separate from my husband’s, sir,’ said she. ‘There is nothing to prevent your addressing yourself to me – ’
“‘The business which brings me here concerns no one but M. le Comte,’ I said firmly.
“‘I will let him know of your wish to see him.’
“The civil tone and expression assumed for the occasion did not impose upon me; I divined that she would never allow me to see her husband. I chatted on about indifferent matters for a little while, so as to study her; but, like all women who have once begun to plot for themselves, she could dissimulate with the rare perfection which, in your sex, means the last degree of perfidy. If I may dare to say it, I looked for anything from her, even a crime. She produced this feeling in me, because it was so evident from her manner and in all that she did or said, down to the very inflections of her voice, that she had an eye to the future. I went.
“Now, I will pass on to the final scenes of this adventure, throwing in a few circumstances brought to light by time, and some details guessed by Gobseck’s perspicacity or by my own.
“When the Comte de Restaud apparently plunged into the vortex of dissipation, something passed between the husband and wife, something which remains an impenetrable secret, but the wife sank even lower in the husband’s eyes. As soon as he became so ill that he was obliged to take to his bed, he manifested his aversion for the Countess and the two youngest children. He forbade them to enter his room, and any attempt to disobey his wishes brought on such dangerous attacks that the doctor implored the Countess to submit to her husband’s wish.
“Mme. de Restaud had seen the family estates and property, nay, the very mansion in which she lived, pass into the hands of Gobseck, who appeared to play the fantastic ogre so far as their wealth was concerned. She partially understood what her husband was doing, no doubt. M. de Trailles was traveling in England (his creditors had been a little too pressing of late), and no one else was in a position to enlighten the lady, and explain that her husband was taking precautions against her at Gobseck’s suggestion. It is said that she held out for a long while before she gave the signature required by French law for the sale of the property; nevertheless the Count gained his point. The Countess was convinced that her husband was realizing his fortune, and that somewhere or other there would be a little bunch of notes representing the amount; they had been deposited with a notary, or perhaps at the bank, or in some safe hiding-place. Following out her train of thought, it was evident that M. de Restaud must of necessity have some kind of document in his possession by which any remaining property could be recovered and handed over to his son.
“So she made up her mind to keep the strictest possible watch over the sick-room. She ruled despotically in the house, and everything in it was submitted to this feminine espionage. All day she sat in the salon adjoining her husband’s room, so that she could hear every syllable that he uttered, every least movement that he made. She had a bed put there for her of a night, but she did not sleep very much. The doctor was entirely in her interests. Such wifely devotion seemed praiseworthy enough. With the natural subtlety of perfidy, she took care to disguise M. de Restaud’s repugnance for her, and feigned distress so perfectly that she gained a sort of celebrity. Strait-laced women were even found to say that she had expiated her sins. Always before her eyes she beheld a vision of the destitution to follow on the Count’s death if her presence of mind should fail her; and in these ways the wife, repulsed from the bed of pain on which her husband lay and groaned, had drawn a charmed circle round about it. So near, yet kept at a distance; all-powerful, but in disgrace, the apparently devoted wife was lying in wait for death and opportunity; crouching like the ant-lion at the bottom of his spiral pit, ever on the watch for the prey that cannot escape, listening to the fall of every grain of sand.
“The strictest censor could not but recognize that the Countess pushed maternal sentiment to the last degree. Her father’s death had been a lesson to her, people said. She worshiped her children. They were so young that she could hide the disorders of her life from their eyes, and could win their love; she had given them the best and most brilliant education. I confess that I cannot help admiring her and feeling sorry for her. Gobseck used to joke me about it. Just about that time she had discovered Maxime’s baseness, and was expiating the sins of the past in tears of blood. I was sure of it. Hateful as were the measures which she took for regaining control of her husband’s money, were they not the result of a mother’s love, and a desire to repair the wrongs she had done her children? And again, it may be, like many a woman who has experienced the storm of lawless love, she felt a longing to lead a virtuous life again. Perhaps she only learned the worth of that life when she came to reap the woeful harvest sown by her errors.
“Every time that little Ernest came out of his father’s room, she put him through a searching examination as to all that his father had done or said. The boy willingly complied with his mother’s wishes, and told her even more than she asked in her anxious affection, as he thought.
“My visit was a ray of light for the Countess. She was determined to see in me the instrument of the Count’s vengeance, and resolved that I should not be allowed to go near the dying man. I augured ill of all this, and earnestly wished for an interview, for I was not easy in my mind about the fate of the counter-deed. If it should fall into the Countess’ hands, she might turn it to her own account, and that would be the beginning of a series of interminable lawsuits between her and Gobseck. I knew the usurer well enough to feel convinced that he would never give up the property to her; there was room for plenty of legal quibbling over a series of transfers, and I alone knew all the ins and outs of the matter. I was minded to prevent such a tissue of misfortune, so I went to the Countess a second time.
“I have noticed, madame,” said Derville, turning to the Vicomtesse, and speaking in a confidential tone, “certain moral phenomena to which we do not pay enough attention. I am naturally an observer of human nature, and instinctively I bring a spirit of analysis to the business that I transact in the interest of others, when human passions are called into lively play. Now, I have often noticed, and always with new wonder, that two antagonists almost always divine each other’s inmost thoughts and ideas. Two enemies sometimes possess a power of clear insight into mental processes, and read each other’s minds as two lovers read in either soul. So when we came together, the Countess and I, I understood at once the reason of her antipathy for me, disguised though it was by the most gracious forms of politeness and civility. I had been forced to be her confidant, and a woman cannot but hate the man before whom she is compelled to blush. And she on her side knew that if I was the man in whom her husband placed confidence, that husband had not as yet given up his fortune.
“I will spare you the conversation, but it abides in my memory as one of the most dangerous encounters in my career. Nature had bestowed on her all the qualities which, combined, are irresistibly fascinating; she could be pliant and proud by turns, and confiding and coaxing in her manner; she even went so far as to try to subjugate me. It was a failure. As I took my leave of her, I caught a gleam of hate and rage in her eyes that made me shudder. We parted enemies. She would fain have crushed me out of existence; and for my own part, I felt pity for her, and for some natures pity is the deadliest of insults. This feeling pervaded the last representations I put before her; and when I left her, I left, I think, dread in the depths of her soul, by declaring that, turn which way she would, ruin lay inevitably before her.
“‘If I were to see M. le Comte, your children’s property at any rate would – ’
“‘I should be at your mercy,’ she said, breaking in upon me, disgust in her gesture.
“Now that we had spoken frankly, I made up my mind to save the family from impending destitution. I resolved to strain the law at need to gain my ends, and this was what I did. I sued the Comte de Restaud for a sum of money, ostensibly due to Gobseck, and gained judgment. The Countess, of course, did not allow him to know of this, but I had gained on my point, I had a right to affix seals to everything on the death of the Count. I bribed one of the servants in the house – the man undertook to let me know at any hour of the day or night if his master should be at the point of death, so that I could intervene at once, scare the Countess with a threat of affixing seals, and so secure the counter-deed.
“I learned later on that the woman was studying the Code, with her husband’s dying moans in her ears. If we could picture the thoughts of those who stand about a deathbed, what fearful sights should we not see? Money is always the motive-spring of the schemes elaborated, of all the plans that are made and the plots that are woven about it! Let us leave these details, nauseating in the nature of them; but perhaps they may have given you some insight into all that this husband and wife endured; perhaps too they may unveil much that is passing in secret in other houses.
“For two months the Comte de Restaud lay on his bed, alone, and resigned to his fate. Mortal disease was slowly sapping the strength of mind and body. Unaccountable and grotesque sick fancies preyed upon him; he would not suffer them to set his room in order, no one could nurse him, he would not even allow them to make his bed. All his surroundings bore the marks of this last degree of apathy, the furniture was out of place, the daintiest trifles were covered with dust and cobwebs. In health he had been a man of refined and expensive tastes, now he positively delighted in the comfortless look of the room. A host of objects required in illness – rows of medicine bottles, empty and full, most of them dirty, crumpled linen, and broken plates, littered the writing-table, chairs, and chimney-piece. An open warming-pan lay on the floor before the grate; a bath, still full of mineral water had not been taken away. The sense of coming dissolution pervaded all the details of an unsightly chaos. Signs of death appeared in things inanimate before the Destroyer came to the body on the bed. The Comte de Restaud could not bear the daylight, the Venetian shutters were closed, darkness deepened the gloom in the dismal chamber. The sick man himself had wasted greatly. All the life in him seemed to have taken refuge in the still brilliant eyes. The livid whiteness of his face was something horrible to see, enhanced as it was by the long dank locks of hair that straggled along his cheeks, for he would never suffer them to cut it. He looked like some religious fanatic in the desert. Mental suffering was extinguishing all human instincts in this man of scarce fifty years of age, whom all Paris had known as so brilliant and so successful.
“One morning at the beginning of December 1824, he looked up at Ernest, who sat at the foot of his bed gazing at his father with wistful eyes.
“‘Are you in pain?’ the little Vicomte asked.
“‘No,’ said the Count, with a ghastly smile, ‘it all lies here and about my heart!’
“He pointed to his forehead, and then laid his wasted fingers on his hollow chest. Ernest began to cry at the sight.
“‘How is it that M. Derville does not come to me?’ the Count asked his servant (he thought that Maurice was really attached to him, but the man was entirely in the Countess’ interest) – ‘What! Maurice!’ and the dying man suddenly sat upright in his bed, and seemed to recover all his presence of mind, ‘I have sent for my attorney seven or eight times during the last fortnight, and he does not come!’ he cried. ‘Do you imagine that I am to be trifled with? Go for him, at once, this very instant, and bring him back with you. If you do not carry out my orders, I shall get up and go myself.’
“‘Madame,’ said the man as he came into the salon, ‘you heard M. le Comte; what ought I to do?’
“‘Pretend to go to the attorney, and when you come back tell your master that his man of business is forty leagues away from Paris on an important lawsuit. Say that he is expected back at the end of the week. – Sick people never know how ill they are,’ thought the Countess; ‘he will wait till the man comes home.’
“The doctor had said on the previous evening that the Count could scarcely live through the day. When the servant came back two hours later to give that hopeless answer, the dying man seemed to be greatly agitated.
“‘Oh God!’ he cried again and again, ‘I put my trust in none but Thee.’
“For a long while he lay and gazed at his son, and spoke in a feeble voice at last.
“‘Ernest, my boy, you are very young; but you have a good heart; you can understand, no doubt, that a promise given to a dying man is sacred; a promise to a father… Do you feel that you can be trusted with a secret, and keep it so well and so closely that even your mother herself shall not know that you have a secret to keep? There is no one else in this house whom I can trust to-day. You will not betray my trust, will you?’
“‘No, father.’
“‘Very well, then, Ernest, in a minute or two I will give you a sealed packet that belongs to M. Derville; you must take such care of it that no one can know that you have it; then you must slip out of the house and put the letter into the post-box at the corner.’
“‘Yes, father.’
“‘Can I depend upon you?’
“‘Yes, father.’
“‘Come and kiss me. You have made death less bitter to me, dear boy. In six or seven years’ time you will understand the importance of this secret, and you will be well rewarded then for your quickness and obedience, you will know then how much I love you. Leave me alone for a minute, and let no one – no matter whom – come in meanwhile.’
“Ernest went out and saw his mother standing in the next room.
“‘Ernest,’ said she, ‘come here.’
“She sat down, drew her son to her knees, and clasped him in her arms, and held him tightly to her heart.
“‘Ernest, your father said something to you just now.’
“‘Yes, mamma.’
“‘What did he say?’
“‘I cannot repeat it, mamma.’
“‘Oh, my dear child!’ cried the Countess, kissing him in rapture. ‘You have kept your secret; how glad that makes me! Never tell a lie; never fail to keep your word – those are two principles which should never be forgotten.’
“‘Oh! mamma, how beautiful you are! You have never told a lie, I am quite sure.’
“‘Once or twice, Ernest dear, I have lied. Yes, and I have not kept my word under circumstances which speak louder than all precepts. Listen, my Ernest, you are big enough and intelligent enough to see that your father drives me away, and will not allow me to nurse him, and this is not natural, for you know how much I love him.’
“‘Yes, mamma.’
“The Countess began to cry. ‘Poor child!’ she said, ‘this misfortune is the result of treacherous insinuations. Wicked people have tried to separate me from your father to satisfy their greed. They mean to take all our money from us and to keep it for themselves. If your father were well, the division between us would soon be over; he would listen to me; he is loving and kind; he would see his mistake. But now his mind is affected, and his prejudices against me have become a fixed idea, a sort of mania with him. It is one result of his illness. Your father’s fondness for you is another proof that his mind is deranged. Until he fell ill you never noticed that he loved you more than Pauline and Georges. It is all caprice with him now. In his affection for you he might take it into his head to tell you to do things for him. If you do not want to ruin us all, my darling, and to see your mother begging her bread like a pauper woman, you must tell her everything – ’
“‘Ah!’ cried the Count. He had opened the door and stood there, a sudden, half-naked apparition, almost as thin and fleshless as a skeleton.
“His smothered cry produced a terrible effect upon the Countess; she sat motionless, as if a sudden stupor had seized her. Her husband was as white and wasted as if he had risen out of his grave.
“‘You have filled my life to the full with trouble, and now you are trying to vex my deathbed, to warp my boy’s mind, and make a depraved man of him!’ he cried, hoarsely.
“The Countess flung herself at his feet. His face, working with the last emotions of life, was almost hideous to see.
“‘Mercy! mercy!’ she cried aloud, shedding a torrent of tears.
“‘Have you shown me any pity?’ he asked. ‘I allowed you to squander your own money, and now do you mean to squander my fortune, too, and ruin my son?’
“‘Ah! well, yes, have no pity for me, be merciless to me!’ she cried. ‘But the children? Condemn your widow to live in a convent; I will obey you; I will do anything, anything that you bid me, to expiate the wrong I have done you, if that so the children may be happy! The children! Oh, the children!’
“‘I have only one child,’ said the Count, stretching out a wasted arm, in his despair, towards his son.
“‘Pardon a penitent woman, a penitent woman!..’ wailed the Countess, her arms about her husband’s damp feet. She could not speak for sobbing; vague, incoherent sounds broke from her parched throat.
“‘You dare to talk of penitence after all that you said to Ernest!’ exclaimed the dying man, shaking off the Countess, who lay groveling over his feet. – ‘You turn me to ice!’ he added, and there was something appalling in the indifference with which he uttered the words. ‘You have been a bad daughter; you have been a bad wife; you will be a bad mother.’
“The wretched woman fainted away. The dying man reached his bed and lay down again, and a few hours later sank into unconsciousness. The priests came and administered the sacraments.
“At midnight he died; the scene that morning had exhausted his remaining strength, and on the stroke of midnight I arrived with Daddy Gobseck. The house was in confusion, and under cover of it we walked up into the little salon adjoining the death-chamber. The three children were there in tears, with two priests, who had come to watch with the dead. Ernest came over to me, and said that his mother desired to be alone in the Count’s room.
“‘Do not go in,’ he said; and I admired the child for his tone and gesture; ‘she is praying there.’
“Gobseck began to laugh that soundless laugh of his, but I felt too much touched by the feeling in Ernest’s little face to join in the miser’s sardonic amusement. When Ernest saw that we moved towards the door, he planted himself in front of it, crying out, ‘Mamma, here are some gentlemen in black who want to see you!’
“Gobseck lifted Ernest out of the way as if the child had been a feather, and opened the door.
“What a scene it was that met our eyes! The room was in frightful disorder; clothes and papers and rags lay tossed about in a confusion horrible to see in the presence of Death; and there, in the midst, stood the Countess in disheveled despair, unable to utter a word, her eyes glittering. The Count had scarcely breathed his last before his wife came in and forced open the drawers and the desk; the carpet was strewn with litter, some of the furniture and boxes were broken, the signs of violence could be seen everywhere. But if her search had at first proved fruitless, there was that in her excitement and attitude which led me to believe that she had found the mysterious documents at last. I glanced at the bed, and professional instinct told me all that had happened. The mattress had been flung contemptuously down by the bedside, and across it, face downwards, lay the body of the Count, like one of the paper envelopes that strewed the carpet – he too was nothing now but an envelope. There was something grotesquely horrible in the attitude of the stiffening rigid limbs.
“The dying man must have hidden the counter-deed under his pillow to keep it safe so long as life should last; and his wife must have guessed his thought; indeed, it might be read plainly in his last dying gesture, in the convulsive clutch of his claw-like hands. The pillow had been flung to the floor at the foot of the bed; I could see the print of her heel upon it. At her feet lay a paper with the Count’s arms on the seals; I snatched it up, and saw that it was addressed to me. I looked steadily at the Countess with the pitiless clear-sightedness of an examining magistrate confronting a guilty creature. The contents were blazing in the grate; she had flung them on the fire at the sound of our approach, imagining, from a first hasty glance at the provisions which I had suggested for her children, that she was destroying a will which disinherited them. A tormented conscience and involuntary horror of the deed which she had done had taken away all power of reflection. She had been caught in the act, and possibly the scaffold was rising before her eyes, and she already felt the felon’s branding iron.
“There she stood gasping for breath, waiting for us to speak, staring at us with haggard eyes.
“I went across to the grate and pulled out an unburned fragment. ‘Ah, madame!’ I exclaimed, ‘you have ruined your children! Those papers were their titles to their property.’
“Her mouth twitched, she looked as if she were threatened by a paralytic seizure.
“‘Eh! eh!’ cried Gobseck; the harsh, shrill tone grated upon our ears like the sound of a brass candlestick scratching a marble surface.
“There was a pause, then the old man turned to me and said quietly:
“‘Do you intend Mme. la Comtesse to suppose that I am not the rightful owner of the property sold to me by her late husband? This house belongs to me now.’
“A sudden blow on the head from a bludgeon would have given me less pain and astonishment. The Countess saw the look of hesitation in my face.
“‘Monsieur,’ she cried, ‘Monsieur!’ She could find no other words.
“‘You are a trustee, are you not?’ I asked.
“‘That is possible.’
“‘Then do you mean to take advantage of this crime of hers?’