I was describing the Street of Paris, when suddenly the man with the green umbrella cried out in a voice so unlike the previous voice, so strangely that the other gentleman and lady looked startled: Zounds, it is the walk of the Straw Dealers. He said it in a weird tone and his whole attitude was changed. He used the expression, zounds, twice. I told him he was mistaken, that the walk of the Straw Dealers is what we call to-day the Street of Paris. He answered me in the same strange voice: Zounds, you cannot tell me that! I have lain there on that straw like the others! I remarked to him, smilingly, although not without a feeling of fear, that no one had lain on that straw in the alley of the Straw Dealers for more than two hundred years.
He was just about to answer me when his wife intervened. What are you saying, Théophraste? said she. Do you wish to teach Monsieur his business? You have never been to the Conciergerie before. Then he said in his natural voice, the voice by which I had known him at first: That is so, I have never been here before.
I could not understand then at all, but thought the incident closed, when he did something stranger still.
We visited the Queens Dungeon, Robespierres Dungeon, the Chapel of the Girondists, and that little gate, which is still the same as when the unfortunate prisoners, called the Septembrians, leaped over it to be massacred in the court. We were now in the Street of Paris. There was a little stairway on the left which we did not descend. It led to the cellars which I did not deem necessary to show, as it was dark and difficult of access. The gate at the bottom of this staircase is closed by a grating which is perhaps a thousand years old-possibly more. The gentleman, whom they called Adolphe, proceeded with the lady toward the door leading out of the guard-room, but without saying a word the man with the green umbrella descended the little staircase. When he was at the grating he cried out in that strange, weird voice: Well, where are you going? It is here. The gentleman and the lady stopped as if petrified. The voice was terrible, and nothing in the outward appearance of the man would make you believe that the voice came from him. In spite of my fear I ran to the head of the stairs. I was thunderstruck. He ordered me to open the grating, and I dont know how I obeyed him. It was as if I had been hypnotized. I obeyed mechanically. Then when the grating was opened he disappeared in the darkness of the cellar. Where had he gone? How could he find his way? Those subterranean passages of the Conciergerie are plunged in frightful darkness and nobody has been down there for centuries and centuries.
He had already gone too far for me to stop him. He had hypnotized me. I stayed about a quarter of an hour at the entrance of that dark hole. His companions were in the same state as I was. It was impossible to follow him. Then suddenly we heard his voice, not his first voice, but his second. I was so startled I had to cling to the grating for support. He cried out: It is thou, Simon lAnvergust. I could not answer. He passed near me, and as he passed it seemed to me that he put a scrap of paper in his jacket pocket. He leaped up the steps with one bound and rejoined the lady and gentleman. He gave them no explanation. As for me, I ran to open the door of the prison for them. I wanted to get them outside. When the wicket was open and the man with the green umbrella was walking out, without apparent reason he said: We must avoid the wheel. I dont know what he meant, as there was no carriage near.
CHAPTER II
An Explanation from Théophraste
NOW in reading the last chapter one would immediately think that M. Longuet had gone mad. What had possessed him? Where did he go? In order that you might fully understand his peculiar actions I will give you the extract from his memoirs relating to this incident. He writes:
I am a man of sound body and mind. I am a good citizen and recognize all the laws. I believe laws are necessary for the proper regulation of society. I dislike heartily any formalities, and in determining my lines of conduct I have always chosen the simplest way.
I dislike imaginative people, and the occult has always been repulsive to me. However, this is not through want of understanding, for my friend, Adolphe Lecamus, had given himself up to the study of spiritualism. Whoever teaches spiritualism teaches foolishness, and the desire to question the spirits of the dead by means of the planchette seems to me to be beyond belief, it is grotesque. However, I have assisted at some of Adolphes seances which he had given for the benefit of Marceline and myself. I have even taken a certain part in them, desiring to prove the absurdity of his theories. My wife and I once rested our hands on a table for a quarter of an hour waiting for it to move. Nothing happened, and we laughed heartily at him. However, my wife was more sympathetic, and was inclined to be a little more serious. Women are always more susceptible to the occult and ready to believe in the mysterious. Adolphe bought her books, which she read eagerly, and he amused himself sometimes by willing her to sleep, by making passes with his hands and breathing on her eyes. It seemed foolish, and I should not have allowed it from any one else, but I have always had a liking for Adolphe, and know that it amuses him. Marceline and he said that I was a skeptic. However, I am not a skeptic, as a skeptic is one who doubts all. I believe in progress, but do not believe that one person having an unnatural influence over another tends towards progress. Therefore I am not a skeptic, but rather a philosopher.
During his travels Adolphe read a great deal. I have had to work hard all my life, therefore, while he is an idealist, I am a materialist.
It seems necessary for me to thus describe my character so that it may be well understood that the happenings of the day before yesterday were not due to any occult reasons. I visited the prison in just the same manner as I would go to a store to buy a cravat. I wanted to learn, that is all. Having sold my business, I have more leisure, and so I said to myself: I will visit the interesting places of the city of Paris. Fate decreed that the Conciergerie was the first place to be visited. I do not know whether I really regret it.
At present I am calm and collected and can relate all I remember of what happened.
While we were in the Towers nothing happened worth recording. I remember trying to picture to myself in the little room which looked like a grocery store all the horrors of the place, how the executioners and their assistants approached the prisoners with their monstrous machines, how so many illustrious persons were martyred, and all the terrible griefs and agonies which had been witnessed within these walls. But the transformation had taken all the romance away, and the labels, Senna, Hops, etc., did not inspire imagination. Even the Bon Bee Tower, also called Bavarde, on account of the terrible cries which were heard in it, has been changed into offices. However, I must not complain. These are all the signs of progress and a more enlightened age.
But we penetrated into that part of the Conciergerie which has changed little during all these centuries, which had not been spoiled by the plasterer and in which all the stones could tell their own history; then it was that a most inexplicable fever took possession of me, and when we had reached the dark end of the walk of the Straw Dealers, I cried out from my soul, Zounds! this is the walk of the Straw Dealers.
I turned around immediately to find out who had uttered these words. They were all staring at me, and I was convinced that it was myself who had cried out. It seemed so strange. The voice was not like mine, but it had emanated from me. Even now it is unaccountable.
I turned around immediately to find out who had uttered these words. They were all staring at me, and I was convinced that it was myself who had cried out. It seemed so strange. The voice was not like mine, but it had emanated from me. Even now it is unaccountable.
The Warden pretended that we had passed the walk of the Straw Dealers. I told him that I knew the place better than he, for I had lain there on the straw myself. But I had never been in the Conciergerie before, and yet I was sure of it. It is difficult to explain. While we walked through the chapel of the Girondists, and the Warden was explaining the story to us, I played with my umbrella. I tried to appear natural and collected. Although the things which happened were quite natural, and not the result of any effort, a cold perspiration seized me and I shook like a leaf. I remember that I found myself at the bottom of the stairs, standing before a grating. I was endowed with almost superhuman strength. Shaking the grating, I called out for the others to follow. However, the others had gone ahead and did not hear. I called to the Warden to open the grating. I dont know what would have happened if he had not done so, quickly. I was crazy, and yet everything was natural to me. Truly, I was in a state of great nervous excitement, but everything was lucid to me. Never before had I seen so clearly as when in that dark cellar. Never before had I recognized a place so vividly as when I was down there where I had never been before. My God! I did not know them, and yet I recognized them.
Without hesitating I groped around, feeling the stones in the dark, and my feet trod a soil which seemed familiar but which had not been trodden for centuries. I seemed to know these very stones, forgotten in the darkness of those cellars. I slid the length of the damp flagstones as if I had been accustomed to the way. My finger-nails came in contact with sharp stones in the wall and I counted the seams as I passed. I knew that if I turned round I would see a certain square light in the distant gallery, a single ray in all this place where the sun had forgotten to shine since Frances history had begun. I turned and saw it, and I felt my heart beat violently.
Here there was a momentary interruption in the writings. M. Longuet, having explained what had happened to him in that strange hour in the Conciergerie, was greatly agitated. It was with difficulty he remained master of his thoughts. It was difficult to follow them; they seemed to come and go, just leaving faint traces on the paper of the record.
He resumed the pen with feverish hand. Continuing to busy himself with the subterranean passages, he writes:
It is necessary to pause here as one pauses at the edge of a precipice. My very thoughts make me shiver!
And the Bavarde, there it stands. There are the walls which have helped to make history. It is not on high in the glorious sunlight that the Bavarde tells its history. It is here in the blackness of the earth. There are some large iron staples in the wall here. The very chains of Ravaillac! I recall no more; but towards that ray, the sole ray of light, as eternal and immovable as the very walls- towards that small square beam, which since the beginning of things has taken and kept the shape of a sentinel, I advanced. There was some impelling force which urged me on. I rushed ahead while the fever was in me and seemed to intoxicate me. Suddenly I paused, my feet seemed held to the ground and my fingers ran sliding and pressing the length of the wall. What it was that impelled my finger, what was the thought, I cannot tell. All at once I let my umbrella fall, and drawing my pen-knife, began to scrape steadily between two stones. The dust and cement powdered away easily, and soon my knife struck something between the stones, and I pulled the thing out.
This is why I am sure I was not mad. This thing has been before my eyes. In my most peaceful hours I, Théophraste Longuet, see it in my writing-desk. It is not I who am mad, but this thing itself! It is a piece of torn paper, stained. . . a document of which it is easy to tell the age and calculated to plunge any man into the deepest consternation.
The paper is, as you must know, terribly decayed. The dampness has eaten into half the words, which seem, on account of their reddish tint, to have been written with blood.
I took the document to the small ray of light, and on looking it over my hair seemed to stand on end with horror. There I could recognize my own handwriting, and I give you this precious and mysterious document clearly translated:
Dead and buried all his treasures after the Treachery of April 1st. Go, take a look in the barroom! Look at the furnace! Look at the weathercock! Dig a while and you shall be rich!
CHAPTER III
A Search and a Discovery
M. ADOLPHE LECAMUS and Marceline thought M. Théophrastes actions strange, but they were too much occupied with an affair of their own to attach very great importance to them. However, M. Théophraste concealed his anxiety and pretended that the visit to the Conciergerie was quite a natural occurrence. He had gone down in the cellars just to satisfy a natural curiosity, not being one of those who make a superficial inspection of things of interest.
The following day, M. Théophraste, under the pretext of putting his affairs in order, shut himself up in his office and gave instructions for nobody to disturb him. Leaning over the balcony he looked out upon the little square of Anvers and reflected over the happenings of yesterday. There was nothing in the view to distract him. He was accustomed to the scene below: nurses pushing perambulators gossiping over the latest news, and a few professors walking towards the Rollie College. The Avenue Touraine rang with the shouts of college students who had come before the lecture hour.
Nothing had changed; the world was just the same. To-day, like yesterday, or like the day before yesterday. The people were going to their business just the same. Even Nidine Petito, the wife of the Italian professor, who lived in the apartment below, was the same. She began to play the Carnival of Venice on the piano just as she did every day.
Nothing had changed; thus he reflected. On turning round he could see amongst his papers on the desk, the document. Did it really exist? He had passed a restless night and was now attributing his strange adventure to a bad dream-but no, it could not be that, for there was the paper on his desk, in his own handwriting, and written in blood. Good God! perhaps it was his own blood. What thoughts, what thoughts!
Théophraste passed his hand over his forehead. He was perspiring and restless. Suddenly breathing a sigh and slapping his thigh with his hand, he appeared to have come to a definite resolution, and put the paper carefully away in his portfolio.
He remembered that Signor Petito, the Italian professor, was an expert in handwriting and that he had had experience in engraving. He would take the document to him and ask his opinion. His friend Adolphe was also interested in graphology, but only in a spiritual way, and so he would not confide in him. There was already too much mystery in the affair without mixing it up with spiritualism and mediums.
He had only known the professor to bow to on the stairs, and so in presenting himself he was introduced. The professor greeted him cordially, and after the usual formalities, Théophraste broached the subject of his visit. He produced the paper, and a letter which he had written some time previously. Signor Petito, he commenced, having heard of your renown as an expert in handwriting, I would be grateful to you if you would examine this letter, and this document, and give me the result of your observations. I may say that there is no connection between the two papers.