The King Of The Mountains Part 20

"No, wretch! my ransom will never be paid! No! I have not asked anyone for the money! Thou wilt get from me only my head, which will serve thee nothing. Take it quickly if it seems good to thee. It will do me a favor and thyself also. Thou wilt spare me two weeks of torture, and the disgust of looking at thee, which is the most of all. Thou wilt save my board for fifteen days. Do not miss it, it is the only benefit that thou wilt reap from me!"

He smiled, shrugged his shoulders, and replied: "Ta! ta! ta! ta! Thus it is with young people! Extremists in everything! They throw the helve after the hatchet. If I listened to you, I would regret it before eight hours had pa.s.sed, and so would you. The Englishwomen will pay, I am sure of it. I know women yet, although I have lived in retirement for a long time. What would be said if I killed you to-day, and your ransom arrived to-morrow? The story would go out that I had broken my word, and my prisoners would allow themselves to be killed like sheep, without asking a centime of their parents. It would spoil the trade."

"Ah! thou believest that the Englishwomen will pay thee, my clever fellow? Yes, they will pay thee as thou meritest!"

"You are very good."

"Their ransom will cost thee 80,000 francs, dost thou hear? Eighty thousand francs out of thy pocket!"

"Do not say such things. One would think that the blows of the stick had turned your brain."

"I tell thee the truth. Dost thou recall the name of thy prisoners?"

"No, but I have it in writing."

"I will jog thy memory. The lady called herself Mrs. Simons."

"Well!"

"Partner of the firm of Barley in London."

"My banker?"

"Precisely."

"How doest thou know my banker's name?"

"Because thou didst dictate before me."

"What matter, after all? They cannot escape; they are not Greeks, they are English; the courts--I will make complaint!"

"And thou wouldst lose. They have a receipt!"

"That is so. But by what mischance did I give them a receipt?"

"Because I advised thee to do it, poor man!"

"Wretch! dog wrongly baptized! heretic of h.e.l.l! thou hast ruined me!

thou hast betrayed me! Thou hast robbed me! eighty thousand francs! I am responsible! If they were the bankers of the company, I would lose only my share. But they hold only my capital; I shall lose it all. Art thou very sure that she is a partner of the firm of Barley?"

"As I am sure of dying to-day."

"No! thou shalt not die till to-morrow. Thou hast not suffered enough.

We will make thee pay for those 80,000 francs. What punishment can we invent? Eighty thousand francs! Eighty thousand deaths would be little.

What have I done to this traitor who has robbed me! Peuh! Child's play, a pleasantry! He has not howled two hours! I must invent something better. But may be there are two firms of the same name?"

"Cavendish Square, No. 31."

"Yes, it is the same. Fool! why didst thou not warn me instead of betraying me? I would have asked double the sum. They would have paid it; they have the means. I would not have given the receipt; I will never give another. No! no! it is the last time! Received a hundred thousand francs of Mrs. Simons! What a foolish sentence! Was it really I who dictated that? But I reflect now; I did not sign it. Yes, but my seal is equal to a signature! There are twenty letters in my name. Why didst thou demand this receipt? What do you expect from those ladies?

Fifteen thousand francs for thy ransom? Selfishness, everywhere! Thou shouldst have confided in me; I would have let thee go without the ransom; I would even have paid thee. If thou art poor, as thou sayest thou art, thou shouldst know how good money is. Thou thinkest only of a sum of 80,000 francs? Dost thou know what a heap that would make in a room? How many pieces of gold? How much money one could make in business with 80,000 francs? It is a calamity! Thou hast robbed me of a fortune!

Thou hast robbed my daughter, the only being I love in the world. It is for her that I work. But, if thou knowest my affairs, thou knowest that I scour the mountains for a whole year to gain 40,000 francs. Thou hast plundered me of two years' income; it is as if I had slept for two years!"

I had then found the tender chord. The old Palikar was touched to the heart. I knew that there was a heavy score against me, and I expected no mercy, and moreover, I experienced an intense joy in seeing that impa.s.sable mask torn asunder and that stony face wrung with emotion. I rejoiced to see in his wrinkled face, the convulsive movements of pa.s.sion, as the s.h.i.+p-wrecked boat lost in a raging sea, admires, afar off, the wave which is to engulf it. I was like the thinking reed, which the brutal universe crushes into a shapeless ma.s.s, and which consoles itself in dying with the lofty thought of its superiority. I said to myself, with pride: "I shall die by torture, but I am the master of my master, and the executioner of my execution!"

VII.

JOHN HARRIS.

The King contemplated his vengeance, as a man who has fasted three days contemplates a bountiful repast. He examined, one by one, all the dishes, I mean to say all the tortures; he licked his dry lips, but he knew not where to commence nor what to choose. One would have said that excess of hunger spoiled his appet.i.te. He struck his head with his fist, as if he could force out some ideas, but they came so rapidly that it was not easy to seize one in its pa.s.sage. "Speak!" he cried to his subjects. "Advise me! What good are you, if you are not able to give me advice? Shall I await the coming of the Corfuan, or until Vasile shall speak from the depths of his tomb? Find for me, beasts that you are, some torture for the loss of 80,000 francs."

The young pipe-bearer said to his master: "An idea strikes me. Thou hast one officer dead, another absent, and a third wounded. Put up their places for compet.i.tion. Promise us that those who shall tell of the best way to avenge thee, shall succeed Sophocles, the Corfuan, and Vasile."

Hadgi-Stavros smiled complacently at this stratagem. He stroked the young boy's chin and said to him:

"Thou art ambitious, my little man! All in good time! Ambition is the result of courage. Agreed, for a compet.i.tion! It is a modern idea, a European idea, that pleases me. To reward thee, thou shalt give thy advice, first; and if thou findest something very good, Vasile shall have no other heir but thee."

"I would," said the child, "pull out some of my lord's teeth, put a bit in his mouth, and make him run, bridled, till he dropped from fatigue."

"His feet are too sore; he would fall down at the first step. And you others? Tambouris, Moustakas, Coltzida, Milotia, speak, I am listening."

"I," said Coltzida, "I would break boiling hot eggs under his arm-pits.

I tried it on a woman of Magara, and I had much fun."

"I," said Tambouris, "I would put him on the ground with a rock weighing five hundred pounds on his chest. It thrusts out one's tongue and makes one spit blood; it is fine!"

"I," said Milotia, "I would put vinegar in his nostrils, and drive thorns under every nail. One sneezes violently and one does not know what to do with one's hands."

Moustakas was one of the cooks of the band. He proposed to cook me in front of a small fire. The King's face expanded.

The monk a.s.sisted at the conference, and let them talk without giving his advice. He, however, took pity on me, according to the measure of his sensibility, and helped me as far as his intelligence permitted.

"Moustakas," he said, "is too wicked. One can torture milord finely without burning him alive. If you will give him salt meat without allowing him to drink he will live a long time, he will suffer a great deal, and the King will satisfy his vengeance without interfering with G.o.d's vengeance. It is my disinterested advice which I give you; I shall make nothing by it; but I wish everyone to be pleased, since the monastery has received its t.i.the."

"Halt, there!" interrupted the coffee-bearer. "Good old man, I have an idea which is better than thine. I condemn milord to die of hunger. The others will do any evil to him which pleases them; I will not hinder them. But I would place a sentinel before his mouth, and I would take care that he had neither a drop of water nor a crumb of bread. Weakness would redouble his hunger; his wounds would increase his thirst, and the tortures of the others would finally finish him to my profit. What dost thou say, Sire? Is it not well reasoned and will it not give me Vasile's place?"

"Go to the devil, all of you!" cried the King. "You would reason less calmly if the wretch had plundered you of 80,000 francs! Carry him away to the camp and take your pleasure out of him. But unhappy the one who kills him by any imprudence! This man must die only by my hand. I intend that he shall reimburse me, in pleasure, for all that he has taken from me in money. He shall shed his blood drop by drop, as a bad debtor who pays sou by sou."

You would not believe, Monsieur, with what struggles the most wretched man will cling to life. Truly, I longed to die; and the happiest thing which could happen to me would be to end it all with one blow.

Something, however, rejoiced me at Hadgi-Stavros' threat. I blessed the extension of my time. Hope sprang up in my heart. If a charitable friend had offered to blow out my brains I would have looked twice at him.

Four brigands took me by the shoulders and legs and carried me, a shrieking ma.s.s, to the King's cabinet. My voice awakened Sophocles on his pallet. He called his companions and made them tell him the news, and asked to look at me closely. It was the caprice of a sick person.

They threw me down by his side.

"Milord," he said to me, "we are both very weak, but the odds are that I shall get well sooner than you do. It appears that they are already talking of my successor. How unjust men are! My place is up for compet.i.tion. Oh, well! I wish to compete and to put myself in the race.

You will bear witness in my favor and your groans will testify that Sophocles is not yet dead. You shall be bound, and I take upon myself the pleasure of tormenting you with one hand, as spiritedly as the strongest of the band."