Part 18

To change anything in the mind would be to stop life. Ah! If the mechanism could only modify its own wheels and their movement! But if the watchmaker take the watch to pieces and make it over again!

There are persons who turn from the evil to the good, who fall and rise again, who are cast down and are again built up in their morality. Yes, but there is the fallacy of repentance which presupposes the delusion of liberty and of a judge, of a Heavenly Father. Could he, Adrien Sixte, write to this young man: “Repent; cease to believe that which I have shown you to be true?”

And yet it was frightful to see a soul die without trying to do something to save it. At this point of his meditation the thinker was brought to a stand by the insoluble problem of the unexplained life of the soul, as desperate for the psychologist as is the unexplained life of the body for the physiologist.

The author of the book upon God and who had written this sentence: “There is no mystery; there are only ignorances,” refused the contemplation of the beyond, which, showing an abyss behind all reality, leads science to bow before the enigma and say: “I do not know, I shall never know,” and which permits religion to interpose.

He felt his incapacity for doing anything for this young soul in distress, and who had need of supernatural aid. But to only speak of such a formula, with his ideas, was as foolish as to talk of squaring the circle, or of giving three right angles to a triangle.

A very simple event rendered this struggle more tragic by imposing the necessity for immediate action. An anonymous hand sent him a paper which contained an article of extreme violence against himself and his influence in regard to Robert Greslon. The writer, evidently inspired by some relation or some friend of the Jussats, branded modern philosophy and its doctrines, incarnated in Adrien Sixte and in several other savants.

Then he called up an example. In a final paragraph, improvised in the modern style, with the realism of imagery which is the rhetoric of to-day, as the poesy of the metaphor was that of the past, he showed the assassin of Mlle. de Jussat mounting the scaffold, and a whole generation of young decadents cured of their pessimism by this example.

In any other circumstances the great psychologist would have smiled at this declaration. He would have thought that the _envoi_ came from his enemy Dumoulin, and resumed his work with the tranquillity of Archimedes tracing his geometrical figures on the sand during the sack of the city. But in reading this chronicle, scribbled without doubt on the corner of a table in the Tortoni _café_ by a moralist of the boulevard, he perceived one fact of which he had not thought, so much had the folly of abstraction withdrawn him from the social world: that this moral drama was becoming a real drama.

In a few weeks, perhaps in a few days, he of whose innocence he held the proof, would be judged. Now, according to the justice of men, the supposed assassin of Mlle. de Jussat was innocent; and if this memoir did not constitute a decisive proof, it offered an indisputable character of veracity which was sufficient to save a life.

Would he allow this head to fall, he, the confidant of the misery, the shame, the perfidy of the young man, but who also knew that this intellectual scoundrel was not an actual murderer?

Without doubt he was bound by the tacit engagement contracted in opening the manuscript; but was this engagement valid in the presence of death? There was, in this solitary being assailed for a month by moral torment, such a need of escaping from the ineffectual and sterile corrosion of his thoughts by a positive volition, that he felt it a relief when he had at last decided on a part.

From other journals which he anxiously consulted, he learned that the Greslon case would come before the assizes of Riom, on Friday, March 11th.

On the 10th he gave Mariette the order to prepare his valise, and the same evening he took the train after posting a letter addressed to M. the Count André de Jussat, Captain of Dragoons in garrison at Lunéville. This letter, not signed, simply contained the lines:

“Monsieur, Count de Jussat has in his hands a letter from his sister which contains the proof of the innocence of Robert Greslon. Will he permit an innocent man to be condemned?”

The nihilistic psychologist had not been able to write the words _right_ and _duty_. But his resolution was taken. He would wait until the trial was ended, and if M. de Jussat were still silent, if Greslon were condemned, he would place the memoir in the hands of the president.

“He took his ticket for Riom,” said Mlle. Trapenard to Father Carbonnet on returning from the station whither she had accompanied her master, almost in spite of himself, “but the idea of his going away off there, alone, and in this cold, when he is so comfortable here!”

“Be easy, Mlle. Mariette,” said the astute porter. “We shall know all some day. But nothing will make me think that there is not an illegitimate son in it somewhere.”

VI.

COUNT ANDRÉ.

AT the moment when the note which had been put into the box by Adrien Sixte arrived at Lunéville, Count André was himself at Riom. Chance willed that these two men should not meet, for the celebrated writer, on leaving the train, took his place at a venture in the omnibus for the Hôtel du Commerce, while the count had his apartment at the Hôtel de l’Univers.

There in a parlor furnished with old furniture, hung with a faded paper, with worn curtains and a patched carpet, and on the morning of this Friday, March 11, 1887, on which the Greslon trial opened, the brother of poor Charlotte was walking up and down. Noon was about to strike from the clock of ornamented copper, which decorated the chimney-piece.

Outside, the sky was covered with clouds, one of those Auvergne skies which brings the icy wind of the mountains.

The count’s orderly, a dragoon with a jovial physiognomy, had brought a little military order into this salon, and, after having wound the clock stirred up the fire he began to set the table for two. From time to time he watched his captain, who, stroking his mustache with one hand, biting his lips, wrinkling his brow, wore the expression of the most painful anxiety. But Joseph Pourat, this was the orderly’s name, simply thought that the count was scarcely master of himself, while they were trying the assassin of his sister. For him, as for all who were in any way connected with the Jussat-Randons and who had known Charlotte, there was no doubt of Robert Greslon’s guilt. What the faithful soldier less understood, knowing the energy of his officer, was that he had allowed the old marquis to go to the trial alone.

“That will do very well,” said the count, and Pourat, who placed the plates and forks after having wiped them, a necessary preliminary, thought in presence of the visible agony of his master:

“He has a good heart all the same, if he is a little brusque. How much he loved her!”

André de Jussat did not seem to even suspect there was any one in the room beside himself. His brown eyes close to his nose, which had astonished, almost disturbed Robert Greslon, by their resemblance to those of a bird of prey, no longer shot forth that proud look which goes straight to an object, and takes hold of it. No, there was a species of shrinking back, almost a shame, like a fear of showing his inmost suffering. They were the eyes of a man whom a fixed idea possesses and whom the sting of an intolerable pain constantly touches in the most sensitive part of his soul.

This pain dated from the day on which he had received his sister’s letter revealing her terrible project of suicide. A dispatch had arrived almost at the same moment, announcing the death of Charlotte, and he had taken the train for Auvergne precipitately, without knowing how to inform his father of the fearful truth, but decided to have a just revenge on Greslon. And the marquis had received him with these words: “You received my dispatch? We have the assassin.”

The count had said nothing, comprehending that there must be a misunderstanding; and the marquis had stated the suspicions against the preceptor, also the fact that he had just been arrested.

Immediately this idea imposed itself upon the brother, who was mad with grief, that destiny offered him this vengeance, the only object of his thought since he had read the confession of the dead and the detail of her misery, of her errors, her resistances her atrocious deception, of her fatal resolution.

He had only not to hide the letter, and the cowardly moral assassin of the young girl would be accused, imprisoned, no doubt condemned. The honor of Charlotte would be saved, for Robert Greslon could not prove his relations with the girl. The marquis and the marquise, the father and the mother, so confiding so penetrated by the truest love for the memory of their poor child, would at least be ignorant of the fault of this dear one which would be to them a new despair greater than the girl’s tragic death.

And Count André was silent. Not, however, without a violent effort over himself. This courageous man who possessed by nature and by will the true virtues of a soldier, detested perfidy, compromises of conscience, all expedients and all dastardliness.

He had felt that it was his duty to speak, not to allow an innocent person to be accused. He had in vain said to himself that this Greslon was the moral assassin of Charlotte, and that this assassination merited a punishment as well as the other; this sophism of his hate had not quite controlled the other voice, that which forbids us to become accomplices in an iniquity, and the condemnation of Greslon as a poisoner was certainly iniquitous.

An unexpected and to him an almost monstrous circumstance had completely overwhelmed André de Jussat; the silence of the accused.

If Greslon had spoken, recounted his amours, defending his life at the price of the honor of his victim, the count could not have despised him enough. By a contrast of character which must appear still more inexplicable to a simple mind, this infamous man suddenly displayed the generosity of a gentleman in not speaking a word which could soil the memory of one whom he had drawn into so detestable an ambuscade.

This scoundrel was brave in the presence of justice, almost heroic in his way. In any case he ceased to be worthy of disgust only. André said to himself that this might be the tactics of the court of assizes, a proceeding to obtain an acquittal in the absence of proofs. But, on the other hand, he knew by the letter of his sister of the existence of the journal in which the details of the scientific experiment had been consigned hour by hour. This journal singularly diminished the chances of conviction, and Greslon did not produce it.

The officer could not have explained why this dignity of attitude on the part of his enemy so angered him, that he had a frantic desire to rush to the magistrate, in order that the truth might be brought to light, and the dead should owe nothing, not an atom of her posthumous honor to this scoundrel who had won her love.

When he thought of his sister, the sweet creature whom he had loved, with so virile and noble an affection, that of an elder brother for a frail refined child, in the possession of this clown, this chance preceptor, him who had inflicted on his race an outrage so abject he could have roared with fury, as when, during the war, it had been necessary to assist at the capitulation of Metz and to give up his arms.

He felt then a solace in thinking that the bench of infamy on which were seated burglars, swindlers, and murderers was waiting for this man, and then the scaffold or the galleys. And he stifled the voice which said: “You ought to speak.”

My God! what agony for him in these three months, during which there had not been five minutes in which he had not struggled against these contradictory sentiments.

On the field of drill, for he had returned to service; on horseback, galloping over the roads of Lorraine; in his room thinking, over this question: “What was he to do?”

Weeks had passed without any answer, but the moment had come when it was necessary to act and to decide, for in two days--the trial must occupy four sessions--Greslon would be judged and condemned. There would be still some time after the conviction; but what of it! The same debate would only have to be gone over again. He had not decided to be silent until the last. He refrained from speaking, but he had not vowed to himself that he would refrain from speaking. This was the reason it had been physically impossible for him to accompany his father to the Palais de Justice during this first session, of which he should soon hear the account, as twelve was striking, twelve very harsh strokes followed by a carillon in the steeple of a neighboring church.

“My captain, here is M. the Marquis,” said the orderly, who had heard the rolling of a carriage, then its stop before the hotel, after which he took a look out of the window.

“Ah, well, my father?” asked André anxiously as soon as the marquis had entered.

“Ah, well! the jury is for us,” responded M. de Jussat. He was no longer the broken down monomaniac whom Greslon had so bitterly mocked in his memoir. His eyes were brilliant and there was youth in his voice and gestures. The passion for vengeance, instead of breaking him down, sustained him. He had forgotten his hypochondria, and his speech was quick, impetuous, and clear. “They were drawn this morning. Among the twelve jurors, there are three farmers, two retired officers, a physician, two shopkeepers, two proprietors, a manufacturer, and a professor, all good men, men of family, and who would wish to make an example. The procureur-général is sure of a conviction. Ah! the scoundrel! but I was happy, the only time in three months, when I saw him between two gendarmes! But what audacity! He looked around the hall. I was on the first bench. He saw me. Would you believe it, he did not turn away his eyes? He looked at me fixedly as if he wished to brave me. Ah! we must have his head, and we will have it.”

The old man had spoken with a savage accent and he had not noticed the painful expression that his words had brought to the face of the count. This last, at the picture of his enemy, thus conquered by public force, seized by the gendarmes, as if caught in the gear of that anonymous and invincible machine of justice, trembled with a chill of shame, the shame of a man who has employed bravos in a work of death.

These gendarmes, and these magistrates, were really the bravos employed in doing what he would so much have liked to do himself, with his own hands and upon his own responsibility. Decidedly, it was cowardly not to have spoken.

Then the look thrown by Greslon at the Marquis de Jussat, what did it mean? Did he know that Charlotte had written her letter of confession the evening before her suicide? And if he knew it, what did he think? The idea alone that this young man could suspect the truth and despise them for their silence lighted a fever in the blood of the count.

“No,” said he to himself when the marquis had gone back for the afternoon session after a dinner eaten in haste, “I cannot keep silent. I will speak, or I will write.”

He seated himself and began to trace mechanically these words at the head of a sheet:

“Monsieur the President:”

The night fell while this unhappy man was still in the same place, his brow in his hand, and not having written the first line of this letter. He waited for the news of the second session, and it was with a shock that he heard his father recount the details of it.

“Ah! my dear André! You were right not to come! What infamy! Ah! what infamy! Greslon was questioned. He continues his system and refuses to say anything. That is nothing. The experts reported the results of their analyses. Our good doctor first. His voice trembled, the dear man, when he described his impression at seeing our poor Charlotte, you know, in her room. And then Professor Armand; you could not have endured this horrible thing, this autopsy of our angel in that room in which there were certainly five hundred persons. And then the Paris chemist. If there could be any doubt after that! The bottle which that monster used, was on the table. I saw it. And then--how did he dare? His lawyer, an official advocate, however, and who has not even the excuse of being the friend of his client. His advocate. But how shall I tell you? He asked if Charlotte had had a lover. There was a murmur of disgust in the hall, of indignation from everybody. She, my child, so pure, so noble, a saint! I could have choked the man. Even the assassin was moved, he whom nothing touches. I saw him. At that moment he put his head in his hands and wept. Answer, ought it not to be forbidden by law, to speak in that way of a victim in open court? What did this rogue believe then, that she had a lover? A lover! She a lover!”

The old man’s indignation was so strong that he suddenly burst into tears. The son, in presence of this touching grief felt his heart melt and the tears fill his eyes, and the two men embraced one another without a word.

“You see,” resumed the father when he was able to speak, “this is the dreadful side of these trials, the public discussion of the most private matters. I have told you before that I was sure she was unhappy all winter because Maxime was absent. She loved him, but was not willing that it should be seen. It was this that aroused Greslon’s jealousy when he came to the house and found her so gracious, so unpretentious, he believed that he could win her. How could she have suspected such a thing, when I who have had so much experience of men, never saw or guessed any thing?”

Once started on this subject the marquis talked all through the dinner, then during the whole evening. He enjoyed the consolation, the only one possible in certain crises, of recollecting aloud. And the religious worship which the unhappy father preserved for the dead was for the son, who listened without responding, something tragical at this moment when he was preparing to do what? Was he really about to bring this terrible blow on the old man? In his own room, with the great silence of a provincial city around him, he took up his sister’s letter and read it again, although he knew by heart every phrase in it. There arose from these pages traced by the hand forever still, a sigh so profound, a breath of agony so sad and so heartrending! The illusion of the girl had been so mad, her struggles so sincere, her awakening so bitter, that the count felt again the tears flow down his cheeks. This was the second time that he had wept that day, he who, since the death of Charlotte, had kept his eyes dry and burning with hate.

He said: “Greslon has deserved--” He remained motionless some minutes, and, walking toward the chimney in which the fire was just extinguished, he placed on the half-consumed log the leaves of the letter. He struck a match and slipped it under the paper. He saw the line of flame develop all around, then again the frail writing, then transform this only proof of the miserable amour and suicide into a blackish mass.

The brother finished by mixing this debris with the ashes. He lay down saying aloud: “It is done,” and he slept, as on the night after his first battle, the exhausted sleep which succeeds with men of action, great expenditure of will, and he did not open his eyes until nine o’clock the next day.

“Monsieur, the marquis forbade me to wake you,” said Pourat when, called by his master, he opened the shutters. The sunlight entered, the bright sunlight instead of the sad and lowering sky of the evening before. “He has been gone an hour. My captain knows that to-day they are going to take the accused by the subterranean passage, everybody is so excited against him.”

“What subterranean passage?” asked André.

“That one which goes from the jail to the Palais de Justice. They use it for great criminals, those who might be torn to pieces by the public. Faith, captain, if I saw that fellow go by, I believe I should feel like knocking him over on the spot. Those enraged dogs do not judge, they kill. But,” he continued, “I have forgotten the morning’s letters in the salon.”

He returned in a minute, having in his hand three envelopes. André, who threw a glance at the first two, saw at once from whom they came. The third was in an unknown hand. It had been addressed to Lunéville, from Paris, then sent on to Riom. The count opened it, and read the three lines which Sixte had written before taking the train for Riom. The hands of this brave officer who did not know the meaning of the word fear, began to tremble. He became as pale as the paper which he held in his trembling hands, so pale that Pourat said to him with fear:

“My captain is ill.”

“Leave me,” said the count brusquely. “I will dress myself alone.”

He had need to recover from the sudden blow which had just struck him. There was some one in the world who knew the terrible secret, some one who knew the mystery of Charlotte’s death and who was not Robert Greslon, for he had seen some of the young man’s writing and this was quite unlike it.

This was a shock of terror such as the most courageous might feel before a fact so absolutely unexpected that it takes on a supernatural character. If the brother of Charlotte had seen his sister, alive there before him, he could not have been more prostrated with astonishment.

Some one knew of the suicide of the young girl, and of the letter written by her before her death, and possibly all the rest. And this some one, this mysterious witness of the truth, what did he think of him? The question with which the note ended told plainly enough.

Suddenly the count remembered what he had dared to do. He remembered the letter thrown into the fire, and the purple of shame rushed to his cheeks. The resolution, taken the evening before, could not be kept. That any man should have the right to say: “The Count de Jussat has committed a cowardly act,” was more than this gentleman so proud of his honor, was able to endure. The trouble of the night before, that he had believed ended, revived, and was rendered more intolerable by the return of his father who said:

“They have heard all the witnesses. I have deposed. But what was very hard was to find myself in the small hall with Greslon’s mother. It is a chance if she does not come down here. She is at the Hôtel du Commerce, where she has begged me to come to talk with her. Ah! what a scene! She has a face not to be forgotten, a severe face, with black eyes which have, as it were, a fire in their tears. She walked up to me and spoke to me. She adjured me to say that her son was innocent, that I knew it, that I had no right to depose against him. Yes, it was a terrible scene, and the gendarme interrupted it. The unhappy woman! I cannot feel hard toward her. He is her son. What a strange thing that a rascal like him can still have in the world a heart that loves him, even as I loved Charlotte, as I love you! Alas!” continued the old man. “It is one o’clock. The attorney-general is going to speak. Then the defense. Between five and six o’clock we shall have the verdict. Ah, but that will satisfy the heart to see him when the sentence is pronounced! It is only just. He has committed murder. He ought to die.”

When the count was again alone, he began to walk up and down, as the evening before, while Pourat with the valet of M. de Jussat, cleared away the table. These two men have since declared that their master had never seemed so violently uneasy, as during the thirty minutes that they were busy in the room. Their astonishment was very great when he asked to have his uniform got ready.