by Eugène Sue
After a pause, Samuel continued:
“To bring his heirs together at the distant time set for the opening of his will, Monsieur Rennepont, a short time before his death, hit upon an ingenious plan. He transmitted to each of his descendants a medal which bore on one side the legend:
VICTIM OF S. J.
PRAY FOR ME
1682.
And on the reverse, the words:
AT PARIS, SAINT FRANCOIS STREET, NO. 3
IN A CENTURY AND A HALF YOU WILL BE
FEBRUARY THE 13TH, 1832.
“It is by means of these medals, handed down from generation to generation, that the Rennepont heirs will one day be reunited here, in this, the house of their ancestor.”
“My friend,” asked Bathsheba, “in the note you were dictating to me for our friend Levi, you made mention of a Lebrenn family, related to Monsieur Rennepont, which, in spite of its relationship, will probably not partake in the division of the fortune. Whence and why this exclusion?”
“I learned from my father that the grandfather of Monsieur Rennepont, after his abjuration, conceived the greatest aversion for his relatives of the Lebrenn branch, severed all connection with them, and even concealed the fact of their existence from his son, out of dread to submit him some day to the influence of that family, the implacable enemy, as it was, of the Church.”
“And did the father of Monsieur Marius Rennepont remain true to the Roman faith?”
“He did, my beloved Bathsheba; but his son, Monsieur Marius himself, reaching the age of reason shortly after his father’s death, embraced Protestantism, which still later he feigned to renounce, in order to protect his fortune for his son — a regrettable act of weakness.”
“How, then, was the existence of this Lebrenn branch discovered? It all grows more and more mysterious to me, and whets my curiosity.”
“Shortly before his death, by suicide, Monsieur Marius Rennepont was looking over some family papers running back to the Sixteenth Century, to the period of the religious wars. There he found to a certainty proof of the connection between the Renneponts and the Lebrenns. But whether the latter had left any descendants he was unable to determine.”
“Does that mean, Samuel, that should there be living survivors of the Lebrenn family at the time the Rennepont fortune is partitioned, they will have no share in it?”
“The formal wish of the testator,” replied Samuel, “is that only those who in 1832 present themselves here armed with their hereditary medallion shall be admitted to benefice in the inheritance. I shall abide by the instructions which have been handed down to me. According to what my father said, who had his information direct from his father, the confidant of Monsieur Rennepont himself, that clause was dictated by motives which will be revealed in the will.”
“Everything in this affair is strange and singular. Probably no one even knows where to find the present descendants of Monsieur Rennepont.”
“As to me, Bathsheba, I have not the slightest clue. Still — my father did tell me that twice in his life, Rennepont heirs presented themselves here with their hereditary medals bearing the address of this house, drawn hither by curiosity or vague pecuniary expectations — curiosity and expectations which met only with disappointment.”
“What said your father to them?”
“Just what I should say in like case: ‘I have nothing to communicate to you. This house belongs to me; it was left me by my father. I know not for what purpose or with what plan in view your ancestor designated this building to his heirs as their rendezvous a century and a half from date.’”
“That is, in fact, the answer commanded by prudence, Samuel. The world must remain in ignorance of the great value of the bequest you are charged with.”
“Reasons of the utmost gravity impose upon us an absolute secrecy on the subject. In the first place, according to what my father had from my grandfather, the Society of Jesus, always so well served by its innumerable host of spies, succeeded in finding out that Monsieur Rennepont had saved an important sum from the confiscation which proved so profitable to the reverend fathers; for the informers and the executioners parted the spoils.”
“Samuel! If these priests, so powerful, so masterful, and with so many avenues of underground working should ever suspect the truth! I tremble at the mere thought.”
“Take heart, my good wife. The danger would be great, but I should know how to escape it. It was even more necessary in my grandfather’s and especially in my father’s case that they kept in profound secrecy the treasures they possessed; for the governments of Louis XIV, the Regent, and Louis XV, always in want, always at their wits’ end for cash, were none too scrupulous in the means they chose to replenish their coffers. We Jews have always been a little beyond the pale of common rights, so that my grandfather or my father, once suspected of being the possessors of a sum amounting to several millions, would have been haled off on lettres de cachet, thrown into the cell of some State prison, and kept there till they had bought off their liberty, or, perhaps, their very lives at the price of the treasure which they were suspected of guarding.”
“Ah, Samuel, I shudder to think that in those days every wickedness was possible. They might even have put your father to the torture.”
“Thanks be to God, all that is out of the question to-day. And still, anticipating ill chances and exactions, we have always stowed our treasure in safe places and safe hands. Should the mansion be ransacked from cellar to eaves, the wealth of which we are the keepers would escape the search—”
Pricking his ear, Samuel checked his speech and listened intently a moment in the direction of the street gate. Then he said aloud to himself:
“Who is knocking there? It is not one of our men.”
“The hour is unearthly,” answered Bathsheba, uneasily. “It is past midnight. This lonely street has long since been deserted. May it not be our lookout come to warn us of the approach of some peril?”
“No, our lookout would have given the established signal,” answered the Jew. “I’ll go see what it may be.”
And taking the lamp, he passed out of the chamber.
CHAPTER II.
REVOLUTIONARY EFFERVESCENCE.
LAMP IN HAND, Samuel approached the wicket gate. The light he carried revealed to him standing outside a lackey in a livery of orange and green, trimmed with silver lace. The fellow, swaying unsteadily on his feet, and with the air of one half-seas over with drink, knocked again, violently.
“Ho, friend!” cried Samuel. “Don’t knock so hard! Perhaps you mistake the house.”
“I — I knock how I please,” returned the lackey in a thick voice. “Open the door — right off. I want to come in — gallows-bird!”
“Whom do you wish?”
“You do not want to open; dog of Jewry! Swine! My master will beat you to death with his stick. He said to me: ‘Carry — this letter to Samuel the Jew — and above all — rascal — do not tarry at the inn!’ So I want to get in to your dog-kennel, you devil of a Jew!”
“May I ask your master’s name?”
“My master is Monseigneur the Count of Plouernel, colonel in the Guards. You know him well. You have before now lent him money — triple Arab! — according to what my lord’s steward says — and at good interest, too.”
“Have you your master’s letter?”
“Yes — pig! And so, open. If not — I’ll break in the gate.”
“Then pass me the letter through the wicket, and hurry about it. Else I shall go in and leave you as you are.”
“Mule! Isn’t he stubborn, that animal!” grumbled the lackey as he shoved the letter through the grating. “I must have an answer, good and quick, I was told,” he added.
“When I have read the letter,” replied Samuel.
“To make me wait outside the door — like a dog!” muttered the tipsy servingman. “Me, the first lackey of my lord!”
Samuel, without paying the least attention to the impertinences of the lack
ey, read the letter of the Count of Plouernel by the light of his lamp, and then answered:
“Say to your master that I shall visit him to-morrow morning at his rooms. Your errand is done. You may leave.”
“You won’t give me a written answer?”
“No, the reply I have just given you will suffice.”
Leaving the valet outside to fume his wrath away, Samuel refastened the wicket and returned to the room where he had left his wife. Bathsheba said to him, with some uneasiness:
“My friend, did I not hear a threatening voice?”
“It was a drunken lackey who brought me a letter from the Count of Plouernel.”
“Another demand for a loan, I suppose?”
“Exactly. He has ordered me to undertake to secure for him the sum of 100,000 livres. He did not call on me direct for the loan, because he thought me too poor to be able to furnish it.”
“Will you lend him the money, my friend?”
“Surely, on excellent securities of thirty deniers to one. The Count is good for it, and it will please me to squeeze him, along with other great seigneurs, to the profit of the strong-box of the Voyants.”
Hardly had Samuel uttered these words when Prince Franz of Gerolstein, accompanied by one single companion, entered the room. Samuel and his wife silently passed upstairs to the floor above, leaving the two alone.
Franz of Gerolstein, then at the age of twenty-five, tall of stature and at once graceful and robust, presented an appearance both noble and impressive. In his face could be read frankness, resolution, and generosity. He was simply dressed. His companion, who was evidently a woman disguised in male habiliments, seemed as young as he, though she was really thirty. In spite of their rare beauty, her features bore the stamp of virility. Her figure was tall and lithe; a brownish down marked strongly her upper lip; everything harmonized with her masculine garments. Yet the beauty of this woman was of a sinister character. The marble-like pallor of her brow, the flashes of her black eyes, the contraction of her pupils, the bitterness of the smile, frequently cruel, which curled on her lips — all seemed to bear witness to the ravages of passion or to some incurable chagrin. She seemed either a superb courtesan, or a repentant Magdalen.
Neither Franz nor his companion broke the silence of the lower room for an instant. The Prince spoke first, in a voice grave and almost solemn:
“Victoria, it is now three months since my visit to the Prison of the Repentant Women. Your beauty, marked with a depth of sadness, seized possession of me at once. I learned why you had been condemned to confinement. Those reasons, once learned, moved me deeply. From that time dates the interest with which you have inspired me. By the intervention of a powerful friend, I am fortunate enough to have secured your release.”
“Yes, I owe you my liberty,” responded she whom he called Victoria, in a virile voice. “And moreover, you have given me, in my misfortune, many proofs of affection.”
“But the interest I have shown you has other springs than in your misfortune — although that has much augmented it.”
“What may they be, Franz? Speak — I am listening.”
The Prince paused in silence for a second, and then asked:
“Know you who I am?”
“Have you not told me that you were a student in one of the universities of Germany, your native land?”
“I deceived you as to my station, Victoria. I am no student.”
“You deceived me! You whom I thought so true?”
“You will soon learn for what cause I hid from you the truth. But first I would make you aware of the nature of the sentiments you inspire in me. I can no longer hold back the confession. Hear me, then, Victoria—”
The young woman shuddered, stopped the Prince, and said in tones of bitterness:
“Unless I greatly mistake, I foresee the end of this speech, Franz. So before you proceed, and in the hope of sparing you a refusal which would be an insult to you, I must declare that I have not changed since I met you. I must repeat what I said to you in our first interview: My heart is dead to love — one single passion rules me, and that is, vengeance. I have hid from you nothing of the past.”
“Aye, I know that you have suffered. Victoria, if your heart is dead, mine is no longer mine. I left behind in Germany a young girl, an angel of candor, of virtue, of beauty. She is poor and obscure of birth, but I have sworn before God to make her my wife. I shall remain true to my love and to my oath.”
“Oh, thanks, Franz, thanks for your confidence. It has lifted from me a fearsome apprehension,” said Victoria, with a sigh of joy. “I love you with the tenderness of a sister, or rather, of a friend. For I am no longer a woman, and it would have been cruelty on my part to inspire in you a sentiment I could not share. But what, then, is the nature of your feeling towards me?”
“I feel for you the tender compassion due to the sorrows of your childhood and early youth — a profound esteem for the qualities which in you have survived, have overcome, all the causes of your degradation; — and finally, Victoria, I am united to you by an indissoluble bond which reaches into the most distant past — that of kinship.”
Victoria gazed at the Prince in a sort of stupor as he proceeded: “We are of one blood, Victoria. We are relatives. One cradle, one origin, embraced our two families. Have you ever read the records your fathers have handed down from age to age, for now over sixteen centuries?”
“I learned of those writings during the two years I spent with my mother and brother, subsequent to the event I have related to you. The reading of our annals, added to all the ferments of hate, already planted in my soul, and to the disappearance of my father, now dead or languishing in some pit of the Bastille, all created and matured in me that craving for vengeance, or rather for reprisals, which now possesses me. I long to serve that vengeance, at the cost of my life, if need be. That is why I have consented to this initiation, the hour of which is now approached. Vengeance will be but justice, and I wish it to be implacable.”
“The hour is indeed arrived, Victoria, and also the moment to reveal to you what we are to each other. You have in your plebeian annals a princely name, that of Charles of Gerolstein. That prince was a descendant of Gaëlo the Pirate, who in the Tenth Century accompanied old Rolf, chief of the Northman pirates, to the siege of Paris. One of the descendants of Gaëlo, taking his departure from Norway, went, some time in the Tenth Century, to establish himself with one of the independent tribes of Germany. His courage, his military prowess, caused his election as chief of the tribe. His son, equal to his father for wisdom and bravery, succeeded him to the command. The chieftainship from that time forward became hereditary in the family. Later, the tribe of Gerolstein became one of the foremost in the German confederation. Thus did the descendants of Gaëlo found the sovereign house of Gerolstein, to-day represented by my father, who now holds sway in his German principality. Our relationship is beyond doubt, Victoria, and the bonds thereof were again strengthened in the Sixteenth Century, when, in the religious wars, the ancestors of us both fought together under Admiral Coligny.”
“So, Franz, you are of the race of sovereigns,” Victoria made answer. Then she continued: “It is now three months since you rescued me from prison. Shame, grief, self-contempt have deterred me from returning to my mother and brother. I am penniless. I wished to earn my living as a sempstress, a trade in which my mother instructed me during my stay with her. That would be the wisest thing to do. Why have you opposed my desires?”
“Because I thought you could serve the cause of humanity more fruitfully than by occupying yourself with the needle.”
“You told me that I was to go through a novitiate of several months, during which time I might demand no assistance in my work. I accepted of you the money necessary for my modest needs. You were to me both brother and teacher. I saw you every day for hours. Little by little my eyes were opened to the light. Radiant horizons dazzled my vision. You filled me with your generous aspirations. You fired me w
ith that fever of devotion and resignation, that thirst for sacrifices, from which spring saints and martyrs. You followed with interest my progress in the new path that you opened out to me. Day by day I wished that my initiation might end. I wished to take my part in action, in your projects. But now that you have revealed your birth, your station, I begin to doubt you. Is the object of your society really that which you have taught me it was, the recovery of the rights ravaged from the disinherited classes?”
“The least doubt on your part on that score, Victoria, would be a cruel blow to me. We have taken arms for justice and right.”
“Pardon me, Franz. Then the level, that inflexible emblem — the social level—”
“Is our emblem. Equality of rights for man and woman!”
“It is your emblem, my lord? Yours, the son of a sovereign?”
“The aim of my life is the triumph of liberty, the birth of the Republic! Hear me, Victoria. You have borne the hardships, the sufferings, the shame of a prison. Which, you or a person unknown to prison horrors, knows them better? Which would hate them more?”
“I read your thought. Despotism itself has taught you its horror.”
“And you will no longer wonder at me — of a sovereign race, but yet as lowly of origin as you, as both our families originated in the same place — when I take the level as my emblem?”
“I shall wonder no more, Franz; but to my wonder succeeds a glow of admiration.” With her eyes full of tears, and bowing her knee before the Prince of Gerolstein, Victoria kissed his hand, saying, “May you be blessed and glorified for your generous sentiments.”
“Rise, Victoria,” answered the Prince with emotion. “My conduct does not merit your admiration. It is but a puny sacrifice for us to make of our privileges, compared with the grandeur of our cause.” Then after a pause, he resumed in mild and grave tones: “But now reflect on this solemn moment of your initiation. There is still time for you to retract your allegiance to us.”
“Franz, after three months of proof, I shall not weaken at the last moment. I am ready for the ceremony.”