Conscience Part 38

"Are you going?" he asked.

"I want to carry Madame Dammauville's words to mamma; you can imagine with what anguish she awaits me."

"Let us, go. I will leave you at the boulevard to go to see Nougarede."

The interview with the advocate was short.

"You see, dear friend, that my plan is good; bring Madame Dammauville to court, and we shall have some pleasant moments."

This time Saniel had not the hesitation of the previous evening, and he entered the first barber-shop he saw. When he returned to his rooms he lighted two candles, and placing them on the mantle, he looked at himself in the gla.s.s.

Coquetry had never been his sin, and often weeks pa.s.sed without his looking in a mirror, so indifferent was he when making his toilet.

However, as a young boy he sometimes looked in his small gla.s.s, asking himself what he would become, and he could now recall his looks--an energetic face with clearly drawn features, a physiognomy open and frank, without being pretty, but not disagreeable. His beard had concealed all this; but now that it was gone, he said to himself without much reflection that he would find again, without doubt, the boy he remembered.

What he saw in the gla.s.s was a forehead lined transversely; oblique eyebrows, raised at the inside extremity, and a mouth with tightened lips turned down at the corners; furrows were hollowed in the cheeks; and the whole physiognomy, hara.s.sed, ravaged, expressed hardness.

What had become of that of the young man of other days? He had before him the man that life had made, and of whom the violent contractions of the muscles of the face had modelled the expression.

"Truly, the mouth of an a.s.sa.s.sin!" he murmured.

Then, looking at his shaved head, he added with a smile:

"And perhaps that of one condemned to death, whose toilet has just been made for the guillotine."

CHAPTER XXIX. A BROKEN NEGATIVE

To have made himself unrecognizable was, without doubt, a safe precaution; but having started on this course, he would not be easy until he had destroyed all traces of himself in such a way that Madame Dammauville would never be able to find the man that she had seen so clearly under Caffie's lamp.

Precisely because he was not vain and had no pretension to beauty, he had escaped the photograph mania. Once only he had been photographed in spite of himself, simply to oblige a cla.s.smate who had abandoned medicine for photography.

But now this once was too much, for there was danger that this portrait taken three years before, and showing him with the hair and beard that he wished to suppress, might be discovered. Without doubt there were few chances that a copy of it would be seen by Madame Dammauville; but if there existed only one against a hundred thousand, he must arrange it so that he need have no fear.

He had had a dozen copies of this photograph, but as his relatives were few, he kept the majority of them. One he sent to his mother, who was living at that time; another went to the priest of his village, and later he had given one to Phillis. He must, then, have nine in his possession. He found them and burned them immediately.

Of the three that remained, only one might testify against him, the one belonging to Phillis. But it would be easy for him to get it again on inventing some pretext, while as to the others, truly he had nothing to fear.

The real danger might come from the photographer, who perhaps had some of the photographs, and who undoubtedly preserved the negative. This was his first errand the next day.

On entering the studio of this friend, he experienced a disagreeable feeling, which troubled him and made him uneasy; he had not given his name, and counting on the change made by the cutting of his hair and beard, he said to himself that his friend, who had not seen him for a long time, certainly would not recognize him.

He had taken but a few steps, his hat in his hand, like a stranger who is about to accost another, when the photographer came toward him with outstretched hand, and a friendly smile on his face.

"You, my dear friend! What good fortune is worth the pleasure of your visit tome? Can I be useful to you in any way?"

"You recognize me, then?"

"What! Do I recognize you? Do you ask that because you have cut your hair and beard? Certainly it changes you and gives you a new physiognomy; but I should be unworthy of my business if, by a different arrangement of the hair, I could not recognize you.

"Besides, eyes of steel like yours are not forgotten; they are a description and a signature."

Then this means in which he placed so much confidence was only a new imprudence, as the question, "You recognize me, then?" was a mistake.

"Come, I will pose you at once," the photographer said. "Very curious, this shaved head, and still more interesting, I think, than with the beard and long hair. The traits of character are more clearly seen."

"It is not for a new portrait that I have come, but for the old one.

Have you any of the proofs?"

"I think not, but I will see. In any case, if you wish some they are easily made, since I have the plate."

"Will you look them up? For I have not a single proof left of those you gave me, and on looking at myself in the gla.s.s this morning I found such changes between my face of to-day and that of three years ago, that I would like to study them. Certain ideas came to me on the expression of the physiognomy, that I wish to study, with something to support them."

The search for the proofs made by an a.s.sistant led to no results; there were no proofs.

"Exactly; and for several days I have thought of making some," the photographer said. "Because your day of glory will come, when your portrait will be in a distinguished place in the shop-windows and collections. Every one talks of your 'concours'. Although I have abandoned medicine without the wish to return to it, I have not become indifferent to what concerns it, and I learned of your success. Which portrait shall we put in circulation? The old or the new?"

"The new."

"Then let us arrange the pose."

"Not to-day; it is only yesterday that I was shaved, fearing an attack of pelagre, and the skin covered by the beard has a crude whiteness that will accentuate the hardness of my physiognomy, which is really useless.

We will wait until the air has tanned me a little, and then I will return, I promise you."

"How many proofs do you want of your old portrait?"

"One will do."

"I will send you a dozen."

"Do not take the trouble; I will take them when I come to pose. But in the mean time, could you not show me the plate?"

"Nothing easier."

When it was brought, Saniel took the gla.s.s plate with great care, holding it with the tips of his fingers by the two opposite corners, in order not to efface the portrait. Then, as he was standing in the shadow of a blue curtain, he walked towards the chimney where the light was strong, and began his examination.

"It is very good," he said; "very curious."

"Only a photograph can have this doc.u.mentary value."

To compare this doc.u.ment with the reality, Saniel approached the chimney more closely, above which was a mirror. When his feet touched the marble hearth he stopped, looking alternately at the plate which he held carefully in his hands, and at his face reflected in the gla.s.s. Suddenly he made an exclamation; he let fall the plate, which, falling flat on the marble, broke into little pieces that flew here and there.

"How awkward I am!"

He showed a vexation that should not leave the smallest doubt in the photographer's mind as to its truth.

"You must get one of the proofs that you have given away," his friend said, "for I have not a single one left."