Chapter 8

“Why, here is the most fascinating romance possible on some spoiled proof used to wrap yours in. Here, read it. _Olympia, or Roman Revenge_.”

“Let us see,” said Lousteau, taking the sheet the doctor held out to him, and he read aloud as follows:--

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cavern. Rinaldo, indignant at his companions’ cowardice, for they had no courage but in the open field, and dared not venture into Rome, looked at them with scorn.

“Then I go alone?” said he. He seemed to reflect, and then he went on: “You are poor wretches. I shall proceed alone, and have the rich booty to myself.--You hear me! Farewell.”

“My Captain,” said Lamberti, “if you should be captured without having succeeded?”

“God protects me!” said Rinaldo, pointing to the sky.

With these words he went out, and on his way he met the steward

“That is the end of the page,” said Lousteau, to whom every one had listened devoutly.

“He is reading his work to us,” said Gatien to Madame Popinot-Chandier’s son.

“From the first word, ladies,” said the journalist, jumping at an opportunity of mystifying the natives, “it is evident that the brigands are in a cave. But how careless romancers of that date were as to details which are nowadays so closely, so elaborately studied under the name of ‘local color.’ If the robbers were in a cavern, instead of pointing to the sky he ought to have pointed to the vault above him.--In spite of this inaccuracy, Rinaldo strikes me as a man of spirit, and his appeal to God is quite Italian. There must have been a touch of local color in this romance. Why, what with brigands, and a cavern, and one Lamberti who could foresee future possibilities--there is a whole melodrama in that page. Add to these elements a little intrigue, a peasant maiden with her hair dressed high, short skirts, and a hundred or so of bad couplets.--Oh! the public will crowd to see it! And then Rinaldo--how well the name suits Lafont! By giving him black whiskers, tightly-fitting trousers, a cloak, a moustache, a pistol, and a peaked hat--if the manager of the Vaudeville Theatre were but bold enough to pay for a few newspaper articles, that would secure fifty performances, and six thousand francs for the author’s rights, if only I were to cry it up in my columns.

“To proceed:--

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The Duchess of Bracciano found her glove. Adolphe, who had brought her back to the orange grove, might certainly have supposed that there was some purpose in her forgetful- ness, for at this moment the arbor was deserted. The sound of the fes- tivities was audible in the distance. The puppet show that had been promised had attracted all the guests to the ballroom. Never had Olympia looked more beautiful. Her lover’s eyes met hers with an answering glow, and they under- stood each other. There was a mo- ment of silence, delicious to their souls, and impossible to describe. They sat down on the same bench where they had sat in the presence of the Cavaliere Paluzzi and the

“Devil take it! Our Rinaldo has vanished!” cried Lousteau. “But a literary man once started by this page would make rapid progress in the comprehension of the plot. The Duchesse Olympia is a lady who could intentionally forget her gloves in a deserted arbor.”

“Unless she may be classed between the oyster and head-clerk of an office, the two creatures nearest to marble in the zoological kingdom, it is impossible to discern in Olympia--” Bianchon began.

“A woman of thirty,” Madame de la Baudraye hastily interposed, fearing some all too medical term.

“Then Adolphe must be two-and-twenty,” the doctor went on, “for an Italian woman at thirty is equivalent to a Parisian of forty.”

“From these two facts, the romance may easily be reconstructed,” said Lousteau. “And this Cavaliere Paluzzi--what a man!--The style is weak in these two passages; the author was perhaps a clerk in the Excise Office, and wrote the novel to pay his tailor!”

“In his time,” said Bianchon, “the censor flourished; you must show as much indulgence to a man who underwent the ordeal by scissors in 1805 as to those who went to the scaffold in 1793.”

“Do you understand in the least?” asked Madame Gorju timidly of Madame de Clagny.

The Public Prosecutor’s wife, who, to use a phrase of Monsieur Gravier’s, might have put a Cossack to flight in 1814, straightened herself in her chair like a horseman in his stirrups, and made a face at her neighbor, conveying, “They are looking at us; we must smile as if we understood.”

“Charming!” said the Mayoress to Gatien. “Pray go on, Monsieur Lousteau.”

Lousteau looked at the two women, two Indian idols, and contrived to keep his countenance. He thought it desirable to say, “Attention!” before going on as follows:--

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dress rustled in the silence. Sud denly Cardinal Borborigano stood before the Duchess.

“His face was gloomy, his brow was dark with clouds, and a bitter smile lurked in his wrinkles.

“Madame,” said he, “you are under suspicion. If you are guilty, fly. If you are not, still fly; because, whether criminal or innocent, you will find it easier to defend yourself from a distance.”

“I thank your Eminence for your solicitude,” said she. “The Duke of Bracciano will reappear when I find it needful to prove that he is alive.”

“Cardinal Borborigano!” exclaimed Bianchon. “By the Pope’s keys! If you do not agree with me that there is a magnificent creation in the very name, if at those words _dress rustled in the silence_ you do not feel all the poetry thrown into the part of Schedoni by Mrs. Radcliffe in _The Black Penitent_, you do not deserve to read a romance.”

“For my part,” said Dinah, who had some pity on the eighteen faces gazing up at Lousteau, “I see how the story is progressing. I know it all. I am in Rome; I can see the body of a murdered husband whose wife, as bold as she is wicked, has made her bed on the crater of a volcano. Every night, at every kiss, she says to herself, ‘All will be discovered!’”

“Can you see her,” said Lousteau, “clasping Monsieur Adolphe in her arms, to her heart, throwing her whole life into a kiss?--Adolphe I see as a well-made young man, but not clever--the sort of man an Italian woman likes. Rinaldo hovers behind the scenes of a plot we do not know, but which must be as full of incident as a melodrama by Pixerecourt. Or we can imagine Rinaldo crossing the stage in the background like a figure in one of Victor Hugo’s plays.”

“He, perhaps, is the husband,” exclaimed Madame de la Baudraye.

“Do you understand anything of it all?” Madame Piedefer asked of the Presidente.

“Why, it is charming!” said Dinah to her mother.

All the good folks of Sancerre sat with eyes as large as five-franc pieces.

“Go on, I beg,” said the hostess.

Lousteau went on:--

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“Your key----”

“Have you lost it?”

“It is in the arbor.”

“Let us hasten.”

“Can the Cardinal have taken it?”

“No, here it is.”

“What danger we have escaped!”

Olympia looked at the key, and fancied she recognized it as her own. But Rinaldo had changed it; his cunning had triumphed; he had the right key. Like a modern Cartouche, he was no less skilful than bold, and suspecting that nothing but a vast treasure could require a duchess to carry it constantly at her belt.

“Guess!” cried Lousteau. “The corresponding page is not here. We must look to page 212 to relieve our anxiety.”

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“If the key had been lost?”

“He would now be a dead man.”

“Dead? But ought you not to grant the last request he made, and to give him his liberty on the con- ditions----”

“You do not know him.”

“But--”

“Silence! I took you for my lover, not for my confessor.”

Adolphe was silent.

“And then comes an exquisite galloping goat, a tail-piece drawn by Normand, and cut by Duplat.--the names are signed,” said Lousteau.

“Well, and then?” said such of the audience as understood.

“That is the end of the chapter,” said Lousteau. “The fact of this tailpiece changes my views as to the authorship. To have his book got up, under the Empire, with vignettes engraved on wood, the writer must have been a Councillor of State, or Madame Barthelemy-Hadot, or the late lamented Desforges, or Sewrin.”

“‘Adolphe was silent.’--Ah!” cried Bianchon, “the Duchess must have been under thirty.”

“If there is no more, invent a conclusion,” said Madame de la Baudraye.

“You see,” said Lousteau, “the waste sheet has been printed fair on one side only. In printer’s lingo, it is a back sheet, or, to make it clearer, the other side which would have to be printed is covered all over with pages printed one above another, all experiments in making up. It would take too long to explain to you all the complications of a making-up sheet; but you may understand that it will show no more trace of the first twelve pages that were printed on it than you would in the least remember the first stroke of the bastinado if a Pasha condemned you to have fifty on the soles of your feet.”

“I am quite bewildered,” said Madame Popinot-Chandier to Monsieur Gravier. “I am vainly trying to connect the Councillor of State, the Cardinal, the key, and the making-up----”

“You have not the key to the jest,” said Monsieur Gravier. “Well! no more have I, fair lady, if that can comfort you.”

“But here is another sheet,” said Bianchon, hunting on the table where the proofs had been laid.

“Capital!” said Lousteau, “and it is complete and uninjured. It is signed IV.; J, Second Edition. Ladies, the figure IV. means that this is part of the fourth volume. The letter J, the tenth letter of the alphabet, shows that this is the tenth sheet. And it is perfectly clear to me, that in spite of any publisher’s tricks, this romance in four duodecimo volumes, had a great success, since it came to a second edition.--We will read on and find a clue to the mystery.

OR ROMAN REVENGE 21

corridor; but finding that he was pursued by the Duchess’ people

“Oh, get along!”

“But,” said Madame de la Baudraye, “some important events have taken place between your waste sheet and this page.”

“This complete sheet, madame, this precious made-up sheet. But does the waste sheet in which the Duchess forgets her gloves in the arbor belong to the fourth volume? Well, deuce take it--to proceed.

Rinaldo saw no safer refuge than to make forthwith for the cellar where the treasures of the Bracciano fam- ily no doubt lay hid. As light of foot as Camilla sung by the Latin poet, he flew to the entrance to the Baths of Vespasian. The torchlight already flickered on the walls when Rinaldo, with the readiness be- stowed on him by nature, discovered the door concealed in the stone- work, and suddenly vanished. A hideous thought then flashed on Rinaldo’s brain like lightning rend- ing a cloud: He was imprisoned! He felt the wall with uneasy haste

“Yes, this made-up sheet follows the waste sheet. The last page of the damaged sheet was 212, and this is 217. In fact, since Rinaldo, who in the earlier fragment stole the key of the Duchess’ treasure by exchanging it for another very much like it, is now--on the made-up sheet--in the palace of the Dukes of Bracciano, the story seems to me to be advancing to a conclusion of some kind. I hope it is as clear to you as it is to me.--I understand that the festivities are over, the lovers have returned to the Bracciano Palace; it is night--one o’clock in the morning. Rinaldo will have a good time.”

“And Adolphe too!” said President Boirouge, who was considered rather free in his speech.

“And the style!” said Bianchon.--“Rinaldo, who saw _no better refuge than to make for the cellar_.”

“It is quite clear that neither Maradan, nor Treuttel and Wurtz, nor Doguereau, were the printers,” said Lousteau, “for they employed correctors who revised the proofs, a luxury in which our publishers might very well indulge, and the writers of the present day, would benefit greatly. Some scrubby pamphlet printer on the Quay--”

“What quay?” a lady asked of her neighbor. “They spoke of baths--”

“Pray go on,” said Madame de la Baudraye.

“At any rate, it is not by a councillor,” said Bianchon.

“It may be by Madame Hadot,” replied Lousteau.

“What has Madame Hadot of La Charite to do with it?” the Presidente asked of her son.

“This Madame Hadot, my dear friend,” the hostess answered, “was an authoress, who lived at the time of the Consulate.”

“What, did women write in the Emperor’s time?” asked Madame Popinot-Chandier.

“What of Madame de Genlis and Madame de Stael?” cried the Public Prosecutor, piqued on Dinah’s account by this remark.

“To be sure!”

“I beg you to go on,” said Madame de la Baudraye to Lousteau.

Lousteau went on saying: “Page 218.

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and gave a shriek of despair when he had vainly sought any trace of a secret spring. It was impossible to ignore the horrible truth. The door, cleverly constructed to serve the vengeful purposes of the Duchess, could not be opened from within. Rinaldo laid his cheek against the wall in various spots; nowhere could he feel the warmer air from the passage. He had hoped he might find a crack that would show him where there was an opening in the wall, but nothing, nothing! The whole seemed to be of one block of marble.

Then he gave a hollow roar like that of a hyaena----

“Well, we fancied that the cry of the hyaena was a recent invention of our own!” said Lousteau, “and here it was already known to the literature of the Empire. It is even introduced with a certain skill in natural history, as we see in the word _hollow_.”

“Make no more comments, monsieur,” said Madame de la Baudraye.

“There, you see!” cried Bianchon. “Interest, the romantic demon, has you by the collar, as he had me a while ago.”

“Read on,” cried de Clagny, “I understand.”

“What a coxcomb!” said the Presiding Judge in a whisper to his neighbor the Sous-prefet.

“He wants to please Madame de la Baudraye,” replied the new Sous-prefet.

“Well, then I will read straight on,” said Lousteau solemnly.

Everybody listened in dead silence.

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A deep groan answered Rinaldo’s cry, but in his alarm he took it for an echo, so weak and hollow was the sound. It could not proceed from any human breast.

“Santa Maria!” said the voice.

“If I stir from this spot I shall never find it again,” thought Ri- naldo, when he had recovered his usual presence of mind. “If I knock, I shall be discovered. What am I to do?”

“Who is here?” asked the voice.

“Hallo!” cried the brigand; “do the toads here talk?”

“I am the Duke of Bracciano. Whoever you may be, if you are not a follower of the Duchess’, in the name of all the saints, come towards me.”

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“I should have to know where to find you, Monsieur le Duc,” said Ri- naldo, with the insolence of a man who knows himself to be necessary.

“I can see you, my friend, for my eyes are accustomed to the darkness. Listen: walk straight forward-- good; now turn to the left--come on--this way. There, we are close to each other.”

Rinaldo putting out his hands as a precaution, touched some iron bars.

“I am being deceived,” cried the bandit.

“No, you are touching my cage.

OR ROMAN REVENGE 221

Sit down on a broken shaft of por- phyry that is there.”

“How can the Duke of Bracciano be in a cage?” asked the brigand.

“My friend, I have been here for thirty months, standing up, unable to sit down----But you, who are you?”

“I am Rinaldo, prince of the Cam- pagna, the chief of four-and-twenty brave men whom the law describes as miscreants, whom all the ladies admire, and whom judges hang in obedience to an old habit.”

“God be praised! I am saved. An honest man would have been afraid, whereas I am sure of coming to an understanding with you,” cried the Duke. “Oh, my worthy

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deliverer, you must be armed to the teeth.”

“_E verissimo_” (most true).

“Do you happen to have--”

“Yes, files, pincers--_Corpo di Bacco_! I came to borrow the treas- ures of the Bracciani on a long loan.”

“You will earn a handsome share of them very legitimately, my good Rinaldo, and we may possibly go man hunting together--”

“You surprise me, Eccellenza!”

“Listen to me, Rinaldo. I will say nothing of the craving for vengeance that gnaws at my heart. I have been here for thirty months --you too are Italian--you will un- OR ROMAN REVENGE 223

derstand me! Alas, my friend, my fatigue and my horrible incarcera- tion are nothing in comparison with the rage that devours my soul. The Duchess of Bracciano is still one of the most beautiful women in Rome. I loved her well enough to be jealous--”

“You, her husband!”

“Yes, I was wrong, no doubt.”

“It is not the correct thing, to be sure,” said Rinaldo.

“My jealousy was roused by the Duchess’ conduct,” the Duke went on. “The event proved me right. A young Frenchman fell in love with Olympia, and she loved him. I had proofs of their reciprocal affection

“Pray excuse me, ladies,” said Lousteau, “but I find it impossible to go on without remarking to you how direct this Empire literature is, going to the point without any details, a characteristic, as it seems to me, of a primitive time. The literature of that period holds a place between the summaries of chapters in _Telemaque_ and the categorical reports of a public office. It had ideas, but refrained from expressing them, it was so scornful! It was observant, but would not communicate its observations to any one, it was so miserly! Nobody but Fouche ever mentioned what he had observed. ‘At that time,’ to quote the words of one of the most imbecile critics in the _Revue des Deux Mondes_, ‘literature was content with a clear sketch and the simple outline of all antique statues. It did not dance over its periods.’--I should think not! It had no periods to dance over. It had no words to play with. You were plainly told that Lubin loved Toinette; that Toinette did not love Lubin; that Lubin killed Toinette and the police caught Lubin, who was put in prison, tried at the assizes, and guillotined.--A strong sketch, a clear outline! What a noble drama! Well, in these days the barbarians make words sparkle.”

“Like a hair in a frost,” said Monsieur de Clagny.

“So those are the airs you affect?”[*] retorted Lousteau.

[*] The rendering given above is only intended to link the various speeches into coherence; it has no resemblance with the French. In the original, “Font chatoyer les _mots_.”

“Et quelquefois les _morts_,” dit Monsieur de Clagny.

“Ah! Lousteau! vous vous donnez de ces R-la (airs-la).”

Literally: “And sometimes the dead.”--“Ah, are those the airs you assume?”--the play on the insertion of the letter R (_mots, morts_) has no meaning in English.

“What can he mean?” asked Madame de Clagny, puzzled by this vile pun.

“I seem to be walking in the dark,” replied the Mayoress.

“The jest would be lost in an explanation,” remarked Gatien.

“Nowadays,” Lousteau went on, “a novelist draws characters, and instead of a ‘simple outline,’ he unveils the human heart and gives you some interest either in Lubin or in Toinette.”

“For my part, I am alarmed at the progress of public knowledge in the matter of literature,” said Bianchon. “Like the Russians, beaten by Charles XII., who at least learned the art of war, the reader has learned the art of writing. Formerly all that was expected of a romance was that it should be interesting. As to style, no one cared for that, not even the author; as to ideas--zero; as to local color--_non est_. By degrees the reader has demanded style, interest, pathos, and complete information; he insists on the five literary senses--Invention, Style, Thought, Learning, and Feeling. Then some criticism commenting on everything. The critic, incapable of inventing anything but calumny, pronounces every work that proceeds from a not perfect brain to be deformed. Some magicians, as Walter Scott, for instance, having appeared in the world, who combined all the five literary senses, such writers as had but one--wit or learning, style or feeling--these cripples, these acephalous, maimed or purblind creatures--in a literary sense--have taken to shrieking that all is lost, and have preached a crusade against men who were spoiling the business, or have denounced their works.”

“The history of your last literary quarrel!” Dinah observed.

“For pity’s sake, come back to the Duke of Bracciano,” cried Monsieur de Clagny.

To the despair of all the company, Lousteau went on with the made-up sheet.

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I then wished to make sure of my misfortune that I might be avenged under the protection of Providence and the Law. The Duchess guessed my intentions. We were at war in our purposes before we fought with poison in our hands. We tried to tempt each other to such confidence as we could not feel, I to induce her to drink a potion, she to get posses- sion of me. She was a woman, and she won the day; for women have a snare more than we men. I fell into it--I was happy; but I awoke next day in this iron cage. All through the day I bellowed with rage in the

OR ROMAN REVENGE 225

darkness of this cellar, over which is the Duchess’ bedroom. At night an ingenious counterpoise acting as a lift raised me through the floor, and I saw the Duchess in her lover’s arms. She threw me a piece of bread, my daily pittance.

“Thus have I lived for thirty months! From this marble prison my cries can reach no ear. There is no chance for me. I will hope no more. Indeed, the Duchess’ room is at the furthest end of the palace, and when I am carried up there none can hear my voice. Each time I see my wife she shows me the

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poison I had prepared for her and her lover. I crave it for myself, but she will not let me die; she gives me bread, and I eat it.

“I have done well to eat and live; I had not reckoned on robbers!”

“Yes, Eccellenza, when those fools the honest men are asleep, we are wide awake.”

“Oh, Rinaldo, all I possess shall be yours; we will share my treasure like brothers; I would give you everything--even to my Duchy----”

“Eccellenza, procure from the Pope an absolution _in articulo mor- tis_. It would be of more use to me in my walk of life.”

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“What you will. Only file through the bars of my cage and lend me your dagger. We have but little time, quick, quick! Oh, if my teeth were but files!--I have tried to eat through this iron.”

“Eccellenza,” said Rinaldo, “I have already filed through one bar.”

“You are a god!”

“Your wife was at the fete given by the Princess Villaviciosa. She brought home her little Frenchman; she is drunk with love.--You have plenty of time.”

“Have you done?”

“Yes.”

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“Your dagger?” said the Duke eagerly to the brigand.

“Here it is.”

“Good. I hear the clatter of the spring.”

“Do not forget me!” cried the robber, who knew what gratitude was.

“No more than my father,” cried the Duke.

“Good-bye!” said Rinaldo. “Lord! How he flies up!” he added to him- self as the Duke disappeared.--“No more than his father! If that is all he means to do for me.--And I

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had sworn a vow never to injure a woman!”

But let us leave the robber for a moment to his meditations and go up, like the Duke, to the rooms in the palace.

“Another tailpiece, a Cupid on a snail! And page 230 is blank,” said the journalist. “Then there are two more blank pages before we come to the word it is such a joy to write when one is unhappily so happy as to be a novelist--_Conclusion_!