第93章

"Jack Wilkes said the handsomest man in London had but half an hour's start of him.And, without vanity, I am scarcely uglier than Jack Wilkes.We were members of the same club at Medenham Abbey, Jack and I, and had many a merry night together.Well, sir, I--Mary of Scotland knew me but as a little hunchbacked music master; and yet, and yet, I think she was not indifferent to her David Riz--and SHE came to misfortune.They all do--they all do!""Sir, you are wandering from your point!" I said, with some severity.For, really, for this old humbug to hint that he had been the baboon who frightened the club at Medenham, that he had been in the Inquisition at Valladolid--that under the name of D.

Riz, as he called it, he had known the lovely Queen of Scots--was a LITTLE too much."Sir," then I said, "you were speaking about a Miss Bechamel.I really have not time to hear all of your biography.""Faith, the good wine gets into my head." (I should think so, the old toper! Four bottles all but two glasses.) "To return to poor Blanche.As I sat laughing, joking with her, she let slip a word, a little word, which filled me with dismay.Some one had told her a part of the Secret--the secret which has been divulged scarce thrice in three thousand years--the Secret of the Freemasons.Do you know what happens to those uninitiate who learn that secret? to those wretched men, the initiate who reveal it?"As Pinto spoke to me, he looked through and through me with his horrible piercing glance, so that I sat quite uneasily on my bench.

He continued: "Did I question her awake? I knew she would lie to me.Poor child! I loved her no less because I did not believe a word she said.I loved her blue eye, her golden hair, her delicious voice, that was true in song, though when she spoke, false as Eblis! You are aware that I possess in rather a remarkable degree what we have agreed to call the mesmeric power.

I set the unhappy girl to sleep.THEN she was obliged to tell me all.It was as I had surmised.Goby de Mouchy, my wretched, besotted miserable secretary, in his visits to the chateau of the Marquis de Bechamel, who was one of our society, had seen Blanche.

I suppose it was because she had been warned that he was worthless, and poor, artful and a coward, she loved him.She wormed out of the besotted wretch the secrets of our Order.'Did he tell you the NUMBER ONE?' I asked.

"She said, 'Yes.'

"'Did he,' I further inquired, 'tell you the--'

"'Oh, don't ask me, don't ask me!' she said, writhing on the sofa, where she lay in the presence of the Marquis de Bechamel, her most unhappy father.Poor Bechamel, poor Bechamel! How pale he looked as I spoke! 'Did he tell you,' I repeated with a dreadful calm, 'the NUMBER TWO?' She said, 'Yes.'

"The poor old marquis rose up, and clasping his hands, fell on his knees before Count Cagl---- Bah! I went by a different name then.

Vat's in a name? Dat vich ye call a Rosicrucian by any other name vil smell as sveet.'Monsieur,' he said, 'I am old--I am rich.Ihave five hundred thousand livres of rentes in Picardy.I have half as much in Artois.I have two hundred and eighty thousand on the Grand Livre.I am promised by my Sovereign a dukedom and his orders with a reversion to my heir.I am a Grandee of Spain of the First Class, and Duke of Volovento.Take my titles, my ready money, my life, my honor, everything I have in the world, but don't ask the THIRD QUESTION.'

"'Godfroid de Bouillon, Comte de Bechamel, Grandee of Spain and Prince of Volovento, in our Assembly what was the oath you swore?'

The old man writhed as he remembered its terrific purport.

"Though my heart was racked with agony, and I would have died, aye, cheerfully" (died, indeed, as if THAT were a penalty!) "to spare yonder lovely child a pang, I said to her calmly, 'Blanche de Bechamel, did Goby de Mouchy tell you secret NUMBER THREE?'

"She whispered a oui that was quite faint, faint and small.But her poor father fell in convulsions at her feet.

"She died suddenly that night.Did I not tell you those I love come to no good? When General Bonaparte crossed the Saint Bernard, he saw in the convent an old monk with a white beard, wandering about the corridors, cheerful and rather stout, but mad--mad as a March hare.'General,' I said to him, 'did you ever see that face before?' He had not.He had not mingled much with the higher classes of our society before the Revolution.I knew the poor old man well enough; he was the last of a noble race, and I loved his child.""And did she die by--?"

"Man! did I say so? Do I whisper the secrets of the Vehmgericht?

I say she died that night: and he--he, the heartless, the villain, the betrayer,--you saw him seated in yonder curiosity shop, by yonder guillotine, with his scoundrelly head in his lap.

"You saw how slight that instrument was? It was one of the first which Guillotin made, and which he showed to private friends in a hangar in the Rue Picpus, where he lived.The invention created some little conversation among scientific men at the time, though Iremember a machine in Edinburgh of a very similar construction, two hundred--well, many, many years ago--and at a breakfast which Guillotin gave he showed us the instrument, and much talk arose among us as to whether people suffered under it.

"And now I must tell you what befell the traitor who had caused all this suffering.Did he know that the poor child's death was a SENTENCE? He felt a cowardly satisfaction that with her was gone the secret of his treason.Then he began to doubt.I had MEANS to penetrate all his thoughts, as well as to know his acts.Then he became a slave to a horrible fear.He fled in abject terror to a convent.They still existed in Paris; and behind the walls of Jacobins the wretch thought himself secure.Poor fool! I had but to set one of my somnambulists to sleep.Her spirit went forth and spied the shuddering wretch in his cell.She described the street, the gate, the convent, the very dress which he wore, and which you saw to-day.

"And now THIS is what happened.In his chamber in the Rue St.