It was not without deep emotion that I burned the letter of which Iwas the bearer.You will perhaps smile at my German imagination, but Isee a drama of sad sublimity in the eternal secrecy which engulfed those parting words cast between two graves, unknown to all creation, like the cry uttered in a desert by some lonely traveller whom a lion seizes.""And if," I said, interrupting him, "you were brought face to face with a man now in this room, and were told, 'This is the murderer!'
would not that be another drama? And what would you do?"Monsieur Hermann looked for his hat and went away.
"You are behaving like a young man, and very heedlessly," said my neighbor."Look at Taillefer!--there, seated on that sofa at the corner of the fireplace.Mademoiselle Fanny is offering him a cup of coffee.He smiles.Would a murderer to whom that tale must have been torture, present so calm a face? Isn't his whole air patriarchal?""Yes; but go and ask him if he went to the war in Germany," I said.
"Why not?"
And with that audacity which is seldom lacking to women when some action attracts them, or their minds are impelled by curiosity, my neighbor went up to the purveyor.
"Were you ever in Germany?" she asked.
Taillefer came near dropping his cup and saucer.
"I, madame? No, never."
"What are you talking about, Taillefer"; said our host, interrupting him."Were you not in the commissariat during the campaign of Wagram?""Ah, true!" replied Taillefer, "I was there at that time.""You are mistaken," said my neighbor, returning to my side; "that's a good man.""Well," I cried, "before the end of this evening, I will hunt that murderer out of the slough in which he is hiding."Every day, before our eyes, a moral phenomenon of amazing profundity takes place which is, nevertheless, so simple as never to be noticed.
If two men meet in a salon, one of whom has the right to hate or despise the other, whether from a knowledge of some private and latent fact which degrades him, or of a secret condition, or even of a coming revenge, those two men divine each other's souls, and are able to measure the gulf which separates or ought to separate them.They observe each other unconsciously; their minds are preoccupied by themselves; through their looks, their gestures, an indefinable emanation of their thought transpires; there's a magnet between them.
I don't know which has the strongest power of attraction, vengeance or crime, hatred or insult.Like a priest who cannot consecrate the host in presence of an evil spirit, each is ill at ease and distrustful;one is polite, the other surly, but I know not which; one colors or turns pale, the other trembles.Often the avenger is as cowardly as the victim.Few men have the courage to invoke an evil, even when just or necessary, and men are silent or forgive a wrong from hatred of uproar or fear of some tragic ending.
This introsusception of our souls and our sentiments created a mysterious struggle between Taillefer and myself.Since the first inquiry I had put to him during Monsieur Hermann's narrative, he had steadily avoided my eye.Possibly he avoided those of all the other guests.He talked with the youthful, inexperienced daughter of the banker, feeling, no doubt, like many other criminals, a need of drawing near to innocence, hoping to find rest there.But, though Iwas a long distance from him, I heard him, and my piercing eye fascinated his.When he thought he could watch me unobserved our eyes met, and his eyelids dropped immediately.
Weary of this torture, Taillefer seemed determined to put an end to it by sitting down at a card-table.I at once went to bet on his adversary; hoping to lose my money.The wish was granted; the player left the table and I took his place, face to face with the murderer.
"Monsieur," I said, while he dealt the cards, "may I ask if you are Monsieur Frederic Taillefer, whose family I know very well at Beauvais?""Yes, monsieur," he answered.
He dropped the cards, turned pale, put his hands to his head and rose, asking one of the bettors to take his hand.
"It is too hot here," he cried; "I fear--"He did not end the sentence.His face expressed intolerable suffering, and he went out hastily.The master of the house followed him and seemed to take an anxious interest in his condition.My neighbor and Ilooked at each other, but I saw a tinge of bitter sadness or reproach upon her countenance.
"Do you think your conduct is merciful?" she asked, drawing me to the embrasure of a window just as I was leaving the card-table, having lost all my money."Would you accept the power of reading hearts? Why not leave things to human justice or divine justice? We may escape one but we cannot escape the other.Do you think the privilege of a judge of the court of assizes so much to be envied? You have almost done the work of an executioner.""After sharing and stimulating my curiosity, why are you now lecturing me on morality?""You have made me reflect," she answered.
"So, then, peace to villains, war to the sorrowful, and let's deify gold! However, we will drop the subject," I added, laughing."Do you see that young girl who is just entering the salon?""Yes, what of her?"
"I met her, three days ago, at the ball of the Neapolitan ambassador, and I am passionately in love with her.For pity's sake tell me her name.No one was able--""That is Mademoiselle Victorine Taillefer."I grew dizzy.
"Her step-mother," continued my neighbor, "has lately taken her from a convent, where she was finishing, rather late in the day, her education.For a long time her father refused to recognize her.She comes here for the first time.She is very beautiful and very rich."These words were accompanied by a sardonic smile.
At this moment we heard violent, but smothered outcries; they seemed to come from a neighboring apartment and to be echoed faintly back through the garden.
"Isn't that the voice of Monsieur Taillefer?" I said.
