The Mysteries Of Paris Volume Ii Part 9

"Am I not with you to gallows and rope, _fourline_? Didn't I, when I left the hospital, and learnt that you had sent the 'yokel' from St.

Mande to ask for me at the ogress's--didn't I run to you at the village directly, telling those chawbacons of labourers that I was your _rib_?"

These words of the "one-eyed's" reminded the Schoolmaster of an unpleasant affair, and, altering his tone and language with the Chouette, he said, in a surly tone:

"Yes, I was getting tired of being all by myself with these honest people. After a month I could not stand it any longer; I was frightened.

So then I thought of trying to find you out; and a nice thing I did for myself," he added, in a tone of increasing anger; "for the day after you arrived I was robbed of the rest of the money which that devil in the Allee des Veuves had given me. Yes, some one stole my belt full of gold whilst I was asleep. It was only you who could have done it; and so now I am at your mercy. Whenever I think of it, I can hardly restrain myself from killing you on the spot--you cursed old robber, you!" and he stepped towards the old woman.

"Look out for yourself, if you try to do any harm to the Chouette!"

cried Tortillard.

"I will smash you both--you and she--base vipers as you are!" cried the ruffian, enraged; and, hearing the boy mumbling near him, he aimed at him so violent a blow with his fist, as must have killed him if it had struck him. Tortillard, as much to revenge himself as the Chouette, picked up a stone, took aim, and struck the Schoolmaster on the forehead. The blow was not dangerous, but very painful. The brigand grew furious with pa.s.sion, raging like a wounded bull, and, rus.h.i.+ng forward swiftly and at random, stumbled.

"What, break your own back?" shouted the Chouette, laughing till she cried.

Despite the b.l.o.o.d.y ties which bound her to this monster, she saw how entirely, and with a sort of savage delight, this man, formerly so dreaded, and so proud of his giant strength, was reduced to impotence.

The old wretch, by these feelings, justified that cold-blooded idea of La Rochefoucauld's, that "there is something in the misfortunes of our best friends which does not displease us." The disgusting brat, with his tawny cheeks and weasel face, enjoyed and partic.i.p.ated in the mirth of the one-eyed hag. The Schoolmaster tripped again, and the urchin exclaimed:

"Open your peepers, old fellow; look about you. You are going the wrong way. What capers you are cutting! Can't you see your way? Why don't you wipe your eye-gla.s.ses?"

Unable to seize on the boy, the athletic murderer stopped, struck his foot violently on the ground, put his enormous and hairy fists to his eyes, and then uttered a sound which resembled the hoa.r.s.e scream of a muzzled tiger.

"Got a bad cough, I'm afraid, old chap!" said Bras Rouge's brat. "You're hoa.r.s.e, I'm afraid? I have some capital liquorice which a _gen-d'arme_ gave me. P'raps you'd like to try it?" and, taking up a handful of sand, he threw it in the face of the ruffian.

Struck full in his countenance by this shower of gravel, the Schoolmaster suffered still more severely by this last attack than by the blow from the stone. Become pale, in spite of his livid and cicatrised features, he extended his two arms suddenly in the form of a cross, in a moment of inexpressible agony and despair, and, raising his frightful face to heaven, he cried, in a voice of deep suffering:

"_Mon Dieu! Mon Dieu! Mon Dieu!_"

This involuntary appeal to divine mercy by a man stained by every crime, a bandit in whose presence but very recently the most resolute of his fellows trembled, appeared like an interposition of Providence.

"Ha! ha! ha!" said the Chouette, in a mocking tone; "look at the thief making the crucifix! You mistake your road, my man. It is the 'old one'

you should call to your help."

"A knife! Oh, for a knife to kill myself! A knife! since all the world abandons me!" shrieked the wretch, gnawing his fists for very agony and rage.

"A knife!--there's one in your pocket, cut-throat, and with an edge, too. The little old man in the Rue du Roule, you know, one moonlight night, and the cattle-dealer in the Poissy road, could tell the 'moles'

all about it. But if you want it, it's here."

The Schoolmaster, when thus instructed, changed the conversation, and replied, in a surly and threatening tone:

"The Chourineur was true; he did not rob, but had pity on me."

"Why did you say that I had 'prigged your blunt'?" inquired the Chouette, hardly able to restrain her laughter.

"It was only you who came into my room," said the miscreant. "I was robbed on the night of your arrival, and who else could I suspect? Those country people could not have done such a thing."

"Why should not country people steal as well as other folks? Is it because they drink milk and gather gra.s.s for their rabbits?"

"I don't know. I only know I'm robbed."

"And is that the fault of your own Chouette? What! suspect me? Do you think if I had got your belt that I should stay any longer with you.

What a fool you are! Why, if I had chosen to 'pouch your blunt,' I could, of course; but, as true as I'm Chouette, you would have seen me again when the 'pewter' was spent, for I like you as well now with your eyes white, as I did--you rogue, you! Come, be decent, and leave off grinding your 'snags' in that way, or you'll break 'em."

"It's just as if he was a-cracking nuts," said Tortillard.

"Ha! ha! ha! what a droll baby it is! But quiet, now, quiet, my man of men; let him laugh, it is but an infant. You must own you have been unfair; for when the tall man in mourning, who looks like a mute at a funeral, said to me, 'A thousand francs are yours if you carry off this young girl from the farm at Bouqueval, and bring her to the spot in the Plain of St. Denis that I shall tell you,' say, cut-throat, didn't I directly tell you of the affair and agree to share with you, instead of choosing some 'pal' with his eyesight clear? Why, it's like making you a handsome present for doing nothing; for unless to bundle up the girl and carry her, with Tortillard's a.s.sistance, you would be of no more use to me than the fifth wheel to an omnibus. But never mind; for, although I could have robbed you if I would, I like, on the contrary, to do you service. I should wish you to owe everything to your darling Chouette--that's my way, that is. We must give two hundred 'bob' to Barbillon for driving the coach, and coming once before with the servant of the tall man in mourning, to look about the place and determine where we should hide ourselves whilst we waited for the young miss; and then we shall have eight hundred 'bob' between us. What do you say to that old boy? What! still angry with your old woman?"

"How do I know that you will give me a 'mag' when once the thing's done?

Why!--I"--said the ruffian, in a tone of gloomy distrust.

"Why, if I like, I need not give you a dump, that's true enough; for you are on my gridiron, my lad, as I once had the Goualeuse; and so I will broil you to my own taste, till the 'old one' gets the cooking of my darling--ha! ha! ha! What, still sulky with your Chouette?" added the horrible woman, patting the shoulder of the ruffian, who stood mute and motionless.

"You are right," said he, with a sigh of concentrated rage; "it is my fate--mine--mine! At the mercy of a woman and child whom but lately I could have killed with a blow. Oh, if I were not afraid of dying!" said he, falling back against the bank.

"What! a coward!--you--you a coward!" said the Chouette, contemptuously.

"Why, you'll be talking next of your conscience! What a precious farce!

Well, if you haven't more pluck than that, I'll 'cut' and leave you."

"And that I cannot have my revenge of the man who in thus making a martyr of me has reduced me to the wretched situation in which I am!"

screamed the Schoolmaster, in a renewal of fury. "I am afraid of death--yes, I own it, I am afraid. But if I were told, 'This man Rodolph is between your arms--your two arms--and now you shall both be flung into a pit,' I would say, 'Throw us, then, at once.' Yes, for then I should be safe not to relax my clutch, till we both reached the bottom together. I would fix my teeth in his face--his throat--his heart. I would tear him to pieces with my teeth--yes, my teeth; for I should be jealous of a knife!"

"Bravo, _fourline_! now you are my own dear love again. Calm yourself.

We will find him again, that wretch of a Rodolph, and the Chourineur too. Come, pluck up, old man; we will yet work our will on them both. I say it, on both!"

"Well, then, you will not forsake me?" cried the brigand to the Chouette in a subdued tone, mingled, however, with distrust. "If you do leave me, what will become of me?"

"That's true. I say, _fourline_, what a joke if Tortillard and I were to 'mizzle' with the 'drag,' and leave you where you are--in the middle of the fields; and the night air begins to nip very sharp. I say, it would be a joke, old cutpurse, wouldn't it?"

At this threat the Schoolmaster shuddered, and, coming towards the Chouette, said tremulously, "No, no, you wouldn't do that, Chouette; nor you, Tortillard. It would be too bad, wouldn't it?"

"Ha! ha! ha! 'Too bad,' says he, the gentle dear! And the little old man in the Rue du Roule; and the cattle-dealer and the woman in Saint Martin's Ca.n.a.l; and the gentleman in the Allee des Veuves; they found you nice and amiable, I don't think--didn't they--with your 'larding-pin?' Why, then, in your turn, shouldn't you be left to such tender mercy as you have showed?"

"I'm in your power, don't abuse it," said the Schoolmaster. "Come, come, I confess I was wrong to suspect you. I was wrong to try and thump Tortillard; and, you see, I beg pardon; and of you too, Tortillard. Yes, I ask pardon of both."

"I will have you ask pardon on your knees for having tried to beat the Chouette," said Tortillard.

"You rum little beggar, how funny you are!" said the Chouette, laughing loudly; "but I should like to see what a 'guy' you will make of yourself. So on your knees, as if you were 'pattering' love to your old darling. Come, do it directly, or we will leave you; and I tell you that in half an hour it will be quite dark, though you don't look as if you thought so, old 'No-Eyes.'"

"Night or day, what's that to him?" said Tortillard, saucily. "The gentleman always has his shutters closed."

"Then here, on my knees, I humbly ask your pardon, Chouette; and yours also, Tortillard! Will not that content you?" said the robber, kneeling in the middle of the highway. "And now will you leave me?"

This strange group, enclosed by the embankment of the ravine, and lighted by the red glimmer of the twilight, was hideous to behold. In the middle of the road the Schoolmaster, on his knees, extended his large and coa.r.s.e hands towards the one-eyed hag; his thick and matted hair, which his fright had dishevelled, left exposed his motionless, rigid, gla.s.sy, dead eyeb.a.l.l.s--the very glance of a corpse. Stooping deprecatingly his broad-spread shoulders, this Hercules kneels abjectly, and trembles at the feet of an old woman and a child!

The old hag herself, wrapped in a red-checked shawl, her head covered with an old cap of black lace, which allowed some locks of her grizzled hair to escape, looked down with an air of haughty contempt and domineering pride on the Schoolmaster. The bony, scorched, shrivelled, and livid countenance of the parrot-nosed old harridan expressed a savage and insulting joy; her small but fierce eye glistened like a burning coal; a sinister expression curled her lips, shaded with long straight hairs, and revealed three or four large, yellow, and decayed fangs.

Tortillard, clothed in a blouse with a leathern belt, standing on one leg, leaned on the Chouette's arm to keep himself upright. The bad expression and cunning look of this deformed imp, with a complexion as sallow as his hair, betokened at this moment his disposition--half fiend, half monkey. The shadow cast from the declivity of the ravine increased the horrid _tout ensemble_ of the scene, which the increasing darkness half hid.

"Promise me,--oh, promise me--at least, not to forsake me!" repeated the Schoolmaster, frightened by the silence of the Chouette and Tortillard, who were enjoying his dismay. "Are you not here?" added the murderer, leaning forward to listen, and advancing his arms mechanically.