I could kill you by a look if I had any mind to do it.I will tell you what it is, youngster; why should I kill you? I can see a red line round your neck--the guillotine is waiting for you.Yes, you will end in the Place de Greve.You are the headsman's property! there is no escape for you.You belong to a vendita, of the Carbonari.You are plotting against the Government.""You did not tell me that," cried the Piedmontese, turning to Leon.
"So you do not know that the Minister decided this morning to put down your Society?" the cashier continued."The Procureur-General has a list of your names.You have been betrayed.They are busy drawing up the indictment at this moment.""Then was it you who betrayed him?" cried Aquilina, and with a hoarse sound in her throat like the growl of a tigress she rose to her feet;she seemed as if she would tear Castanier in pieces.
"You know me too well to believe it," Castanier retorted.Aquilina was benumbed by his coolness.
"Then how do you know it?" she murmured.
"I did not know it until I went into the drawing-room; now I know it--now I see and know all things, and can do all things."The sergeant was overcome with amazement.
"Very well then, save him, save him, dear!" cried the girl, flinging herself at Castanier's feet."If nothing is impossible to you, save him! I will love you, I will adore you, I will be your slave and not your mistress.I will obey your wildest whims; you shall do as you will with me.Yes, yes, I will give you more than love; you shall have a daughter's devotion as well as...Rodolphe! why will you not understand! After all, however violent my passions may be, I shall be yours for ever! What should I say to persuade you? I will invent pleasures...I...Great heavens! one moment! whatever you shall ask of me--to fling myself from the window for instance--you will need to say but one word, 'Leon!' and I will plunge down into hell.I would bear any torture, any pain of body or soul, anything you might inflict upon me!"Castanier heard her with indifference.For an answer, he indicated Leon to her with a fiendish laugh.
"The guillotine is waiting for him," he repeated.
"No, no, no! He shall not leave this house.I will save him!" she cried."Yes; I will kill any one who lays a finger upon him! Why will you not save him?" she shrieked aloud; her eyes were blazing, her hair unbound."Can you save him?""I can do everything."
"Why do you not save him?"
"Why?" shouted Castanier, and his voice made the ceiling ring.--"Eh!
it is my revenge! Doing evil is my trade!"
"Die?" said Aquilina; "must he die, my lover? Is it possible?"She sprang up and snatched a stiletto from a basket that stood on the chest of drawers and went to Castanier, who now began to laugh.
"You know very well that steel cannot hurt me now----"Aquilina's arm suddenly dropped like a snapped harp string.
"Out with you, my good friend," said the cashier, turning to the sergeant, "and go about your business."He held out his hand; the other felt Castanier's superior power, and could not choose but to obey.
"This house is mine; I could send for the commissary of police if Ichose, and give you up as a man who has hidden himself on my premises, but I would rather let you go; I am a fiend, I am not a spy.""I shall follow him!" said Aquilina.
"Then follow him," returned Castanier.--"Here, Jenny----"Jenny appeared.
"Tell the porter to hail a cab for them.--Here Naqui," said Castanier, drawing a bundle of bank-notes from his pocket; "you shall not go away like a pauper from a man who loves you still."He held out three hundred thousand francs.Aquilina took the notes, flung them on the floor, spat on them, and trampled upon them in a frenzy of despair.
"We will leave this house on foot," she cried, "without a farthing of your money.--Jenny, stay where you are.""Good-evening!" answered the cashier, as he gathered up the notes again."I have come back from my journey.--Jenny," he added, looking at the bewildered waiting-maid, "you seem to me to be a good sort of girl.You have no mistress now.Come here.This evening you shall have a master."Aquilina, who felt safe nowhere, went at once with the sergeant to the house of one of her friends.But all Leon's movements were suspiciously watched by the police, and after a time he and three of his friends were arrested.The whole story may be found in the newspapers of that day.
Castanier felt that he had undergone a mental as well as a physical transformation.The Castanier of old no longer existed--the boy, the young Lothario, the soldier who had proved his courage, who had been tricked into a marriage and disillusioned, the cashier, the passionate lover who had committed a crime for Aquilina's sake.His inmost nature had suddenly asserted itself.His brain had expanded, his senses had developed.His thoughts comprehended the whole world; he saw all the things of earth as if he had been raised to some high pinnacle above the world.
Until that evening at the play he had loved Aquilina to distraction.
Rather than give her up he would have shut his eyes to her infidelities; and now all that blind passion had passed away as a cloud vanishes in the sunlight.
Jenny was delighted to succeed to her mistress' position and fortune, and did the cashier's will in all things; but Castanier, who could read the inmost thoughts of the soul, discovered the real motive underlying this purely physical devotion.He amused himself with her, however, like a mischievous child who greedily sucks the juice of the cherry and flings away the stone.The next morning at breakfast time, when she was fully convinced that she was a lady and the mistress of the house, Castanier uttered one by one the thoughts that filled her mind as she drank her coffee.
