Collected Works of Eugène Sue

by Eugène Sue

  Not far distant lay at anchor the Red Galleon of Pog-Reis, which had a severer and more warlike appearance, and near the entrance of the bay the Tsekedery, or light vessel commanded by Erebus, carried the same standard.

  The coasts of France were then, as we have said, in such a deplorable state of defence that these three vessels had been able, without the slightest obstacle, to put into port, in order to escape the storm which raged the day before.

  If the exterior of the Sybarite was splendid, her interior offered all the refinements of the most elaborate luxury, in which there was a happy combination of the customs of the West and the East.

  A dwarf negro, fantastically attired, had just struck three resounding blows on a Chinese gong placed at the stem near the helm. At this signal a band of musical instruments performed some martial airs. It was the dinner-hour of Trimalcyon, and the chamber of the stem had been converted temporarily into a dining-room.

  The partitions were hidden under rich tapestries of poppy-coloured Venetian brocatelle with handsome designs in green and gold.

  Pog and Trimalcyon were seated at table.

  Trimalcyon had the same characteristic corpulence, the same bright complexion, shrewd eye, joyous countenance, and red, sensual lips. His long, soft cloak of blue velvet disclosed, in opening, a buff-skin of extreme elasticity, covered over with a steel net so finely wrought that it was as flexible as the thinnest material. This habit of wearing continually a defensive armour proved in what confident security the captain of the Sybarite was accustomed to live.

  Pog-Reis, sitting opposite his companion, had also the same haughty, sarcastic manner. He wore an Arabian yellek of black velvet embroidered with black silk, on which hung at full length his heavy red beard; his green and red cap of the Albanian fashion covered half his white forehead, which was deeply furrowed with wrinkles.

  Two female slaves of great beauty, one a mulattress, the other a Circassian, dressed in light, thin gowns of Smyrna material, performed, with the aid of the dwarf negro, the table service of Trimalcyon.

  On revolving shelves were displayed magnificent pieces of plate, unmatched and incomplete it is true, but of the most beautiful workmanship, some of silver, some of gilt, and others of gold set with precious stones. In the midst of this plate, the fruit of robbery and murder, were placed, in sacrilegious derision, sacred vessels, carried away either from the churches on the seashore or from Christian ships.

  A very penetrating and very sweet perfume burned in a censer hanging from one of the rafters of the ceiling. Seated on a luxurious divan, the captain of the Sybarite said to his guest:

  “Excuse this poor hospitality, my comrade. I would prefer to replace these poor girls with Egyptian slaves, who, equipped with ewers of Corinthian metal, would sprinkle, as they sang, rose-scented snow-water on our hands.”

  “You do not lack vases and ewers, Trimalcyon,” said Pog, throwing a significant glance at the sideboard.

  “Ah, well, yes, there are vases of gold and silver, but what is that compared to the Corinthian metal of which antiquity speaks: a metal made of a mixture of gold, silver, and bronze, and so marvellously wrought that a large ewer and basin only weighed one pound? By Sardanapalus! comrade, some day I must make a descent on Messina. They say that the viceroy possesses several antique statuettes of that precious metal. But take some of this partridge pudding spiced with wild aniseed; I had it served on its silver gridiron burning hot. Or do you prefer these imitations of pea-fowl eggs? You will find there, instead of the yellow, a very fat tit-lark, well yellowed, and, instead of the white, a thick sauce of cooked cream.”

  “Your fine vocabulary of gormandising ought to win for you the esteem of your cook. You appear to me to be made, both of you, for the purpose of understanding each other,” said Pog, eating with disdainful indifference the delicate dishes served by his host.

  “My cook,” replied Trimalcyon, “understands me well enough, in fact, although sometimes he has his discouragements; he regrets France, from which country I carried him off unawares. I have tried to console him, for a long time, with everything, — silver, money, attention, — nothing succeeds however, so I have finished where I ought to have begun, with a severe bastinado, and am quite well satisfied with it, and he is too, I suppose, since he cooks wonderfully, as you see. Give us something to drink, Orangine!” called Trimalcyon to the mulattress, who poured out a glorious glass of Bordeaux wine. “What is that wine, Crow-provender?” asked he of the negro dwarf, holding his glass up to his eyes to judge its colour.

  “My lord, it was taken, in the month of June, from a Bordeaux brigantine on its way to Genoa.”

  “H’m, h’m,” said Trimalcyon, tasting it, “it is good, very good, but there is the inconvenience of supplying ourselves as we do, friend Pog: we never have the same quality, so if we get accustomed to one kind of wine, we meet with cruel disappointments. Ah! our trade is not a bed of roses. But you do not drink! Fill Seigneur Fog’s glass, Swan-skin,” said Trimalcyon, to the white Circassian, pointing to his guest’s cup.

  Pog, as a refusal, placed his finger over his glass.

  “At least, let us drink to the success of our descent upon La Ciotat, comrade.”

  Pog replied to this new invitation by a movement of contemptuous impatience.

  “As you please, comrade,” said Trimalcyon, without the slightest indication of being offended by the refusal and haughty manner of his guest, “it is just as well not to trust myself to your invocations; the devil knows your voice, and he always thinks you are calling him. But you are wrong to disdain that ham, it is from Westphalia, I think, — is it not, you scoundrel?”

  “Yes, my lord,” said the dwarf, “it came from that Dutch fly-boat, arrested as it sailed out of the strait of Sardinia. It was destined for the Viceroy of Naples.” At that moment the flourishes of the musicians ceased; a noise, at first quite indistinct, but increasing by degrees, soon became loud and threatening. The clanking of chains and complaints of the galley-slaves could be heard, and, finally, rising above the tumult, the voices of the spahis and the cracking of the coxswain’s whip.

  Trimalcyon seemed so accustomed to these cries, that he continued to drink a glass of wine that he was carrying to his lips, and carelessly remarked, as he set his glass on the table:

  “There are some dogs that want to bite; fortunately their chains are good and strong. Crow-provender, go and see why the musicians have stopped playing. I will have them given twenty blows of the cowhide if they stop again, instead of blowing their trumpets. I am too good. I love the arts too much. Instead of selling these do-nothings in Algiers, I have kept them to make music, and that is the way they behave! Ah! if they were not too feeble for the crew, they should find out what it is to handle the oar.”

  “They are certainly too weak for that, my lord,” said the negro dwarf; “the comedians that you captured with them on that galley from Barcelona are still at the house of Jousouf, who bought them. He cannot get two pieces of gold for a single one of the singing, blowing cattle.”

  Pog-Reis seemed thoughtful and oblivious of what was passing around him, although the murmurs of dissatisfaction increased to such violence that Trimalcyon said to the dwarf:

  “Before you go out, place here by me, on the divan, my pistols and a stock of arms. Well, now go and see what is the matter. If it is anything serious, let Mello come and tell me. At the same time, inform those blowers of trumpets that I will make them swallow trumpets and buccinæ if they stop playing a moment.”

  “My lord, they say they have not wind enough to play two hours together.”

  “Ah, they lack wind, do they! Ah, well, tell them that if they give me that reason again I will have their stomachs opened, and by means of a blacksmith’s bellows put them in such a condition that they will not lack wind.”

  At this coarse and brutal pleasantry, Orangine and Swan-skin looked at each other in astonishment.

  “You can tell them besides,” added Trimalcyon, “that as
they are not worth one piece of gold in the slave market, and as it costs me more to keep them than they are worth, I shall think nothing of gratifying my caprice on them.”

  The negro went out.

  “What I like in you,” said Pog, slowly, as he awakened from his reverie, “is that you are a stranger to every sentiment, I will not say of virtue, but of humanity.”

  “And what in the devil do you say that to me for, friend Pog? You see that, as inhuman as I am, I do not forget who you are, and who I am. You say ‘tu’ to me, and I answer ‘vous’ to you.”

  Just then two shots were fired and resounded through the galley.

  “The devil! there is Mello who is also saying ‘tue,’” added Trimalcyon, smiling at his odious play upon words and looking toward the door with imperturbable calmness. The two women slaves fell on their knees with signs of agonising terror.

  Suddenly the trumpets burst forth with an energy which doubtless violated all the laws of harmony, but which proved at least that the threats conveyed by the negro dwarf had taken effect, and that the unhappy musicians believed Trimalcyon capable of torturing them.

  After two more shots, there was a cry, — a terrible roar uttered by all the slaves at once.

  The tumult was then succeeded by a profound silence. “It seems it was nothing after all,” said the captain of the Sybarite, addressing Pog, who had again fallen into a reverie. “But tell me, comrade,” continued he, “in what do you discover that I have nothing human in me? I love the arts, and letters and luxury. I plunder with discretion, taking only what suits me. I enjoy to the utmost all of the five senses with which I am provided. I fight with care, preferring to attack one who is weaker rather than one who is stronger than myself, and my commerce consists in taking from those who have with the least possible chance of loss. Yes, once again I ask you, comrade, where in the devil do you see inhumanity in that?”

  “Come, you excite my shame as well as my pity. You have not even the energy of evil. There is always in you the pedantry of the college.”

  “Fie, fie upon you, my comrade; do not talk of the college, of that sad time of meagre cheer and privations without number. I would be at this moment as dry as a galley mast, if I had continued spitting Latin, while now,” said the insolent knave, striking his stomach, “I have the rotundity of a prebendary; and all that, thanks to whom? To Yacoub-Reis, who, twenty years ago, made me a slave as I was going by sea to Civita-Vecchia, to try my clerical fortune in the city of the clergy. Yacoub-Reis gave me mind, activity, and courage. I was young, he taught me his trade. I renounced my religion, I took the turban, and so from one thing to another, from pillage to murder, I came at last to be commander of the Sybarite. Commerce goes well! I expose myself in extreme cases, and when it is necessary I fight like another, but I take care of my skin, it is true, because I intend before long to retire from business, and repose from the fatigues of war in my retreat in Tripoli, with several Madames Trimalcyon. Again I ask, is not all that very human?”

  These words appeared to make little impression on the silent companion of the captain of the Sybarite, who contented himself with saying, with a shrug of the shoulders:

  “The wild boar to his lair!”

  “Sardanapalus! speaking of wild boars, how I would like to have those that figured in the epic feasts of Trimalcyon, my patron!” cried the unmannerly boor, without appearing to take offence at the contempt of his guest. “Those were worthy wild boars, that they served whole with caps on their heads, and insides stuffed with puddings and sausages imitating the entrails, or perhaps enclosing winged thrushes that would fly up to the ceiling. Those are luxuries I shall realise some day or other. Sardanapalus! I have worked twenty years just to give myself some day a feast worthy of Roman antiquity!”

  The negro dwarf opened the door.

  The pirate then thought only of the tumult which had so suddenly ceased.

  “Ah, well, rascal, what about that noise? Why did not Mello come? Was it, then, nothing?”

  “No, my lord, a Christian quarrelled with an Albanian slave.”

  “And then?”

  “The Albanian stabbed the Christian.”

  “And then?”

  “The Christians cried ‘Death to the Albanian,’ but the Christian who was wounded knocked the Albanian down and almost killed him.”

  “And then?”

  “Then the Albanians and the Moors, in their turn, roared against the Christians.”

  “And then?”

  “To prevent the crew killing each other, and to satisfy everybody, patron Mello blew the wounded Christian’s and the wounded Albanian’s brains out.”

  “And then?”

  “My lord, seeing that, everybody became quiet.”

  “And the musicians?”

  “My lord, I spoke to them about the blacksmith’s bellows, and before I had finished my sentence, they blew so hard on their trumpets and shells, I became almost deaf. I was about to forget, my lord, that Mello signalled the long-boat of Seigneur Erebus, who is coming now to the galley.”

  Pog started.

  Trimalcyon cried, “Quick, Swan-skin, Orangine, a cover for the most beautiful youth who ever captured poor merchant ships.”

  CHAPTER XXVI. POG AND EREBUS

  BEFORE CONTINUING THIS narrative, some explanation is necessary concerning Erebus and Seigneur Pog, the silent and sarcastic man.

  In the year 1612, twenty years before the period of which we write, a Frenchman, still young, arrived at Tripoli, with one servant.

  The captain of the vessel which brought him to Tripoli had frequent opportunity to observe that his passenger was very expert in matters pertaining to navigation; he concluded finally that the traveller was an officer on the vessels and galleys of the king, and he was not mistaken.

  Seigneur Pog — we continue to give him this assumed name — was an excellent sailor, as we shall soon see.

  Upon his arrival at Tripoli, Pog, after having, according to the custom of Barbary, bought the protection of Bey Hassan, hired a house in the suburbs of the city, not far from the sea. He lived there during one year with his valet in profound solitude.

  Some French merchants, established at Tripoli, exhausted their powers of conjecture on the singular taste of their compatriot, who came, as they thought, through mere caprice, to inhabit a wild and deserted coast.

  Some attributed this eccentricity to a violent, desperate grief; others saw, if not an unpardonable folly, a monomania, at least, in his strange determination.

  These last suppositions did not lack foundation.

  At certain periods of the year, Pog, it was said, was subject to such attacks of despair and rage that belated herdsmen, passing his solitary house at night, would hear furious and frantic cries.

  Three or four years passed in this manner.

  To distract his mind from gloomy thoughts, and to recuperate his health, Pog made long voyages at sea in a small vessel, but a very smooth and swift-sailing ship which he himself managed with rare skill. His crew consisted of two young slave Moors.

  One day, one of the most famous and cruel corsairs of Tripoli, named Kemal-Reis, came near perishing with his galley, which ran aground on the Coast a short distance from the house of Pog.

  Pog was just returning from one of his voyages. Recognising the galley of Kemal-Reis, he set sail toward her, and rendered her the most efficient aid.

  One of Pog’s slaves reported later that he had heard him say, “Man would be too happy if all the wolves and tigers were destroyed.” So the saving of Kemal-Reis, dreaded for reason of his cruelties, was due to the bitter misanthropy of Pog. Instead of yielding to an impulse of natural generosity, he desired to preserve to humanity one of its most terrible scourges.

  A short time after this event Kemal-Reis visited the isolated house of the Frenchman, and, by degrees, a sort of intimacy was established between the pirate and the misanthrope.

  One day the newsmongers of Tripoli learned with astonishment that Pog h
ad embarked on board the galley of Kemal-Reis. They supposed the Frenchman to be very rich, and that he had freighted the Tripolitan vessel in order to take a voyage of pleasure on the coast of Barbary and Egypt and Syria.

  To the great astonishment of the public, Kemal-Reis returned a month after his departure, with his galley filled with French slaves, captured from the coasts of Languedoc and Provence, and the rumour was current in Tripoli that the favourable results of this audacious enter-prise were owing to the information and advice given by Pog, who knew better than any one else the weak points on the seashore of France. This rumour soon acquired such probability that our consul at Tripoli deemed it his duty to inform against Pog, and to instruct the ministers of Louis XIII. of what had happened.

  And here we make the statement, once for all, that in 1610, as well as in 1630 and in 1700, the abduction of inhabitants from our coasts by the regencies of Barbary was almost never considered a cause for a declaration of war against these powers. Our consuls assisted at the disembarking of the captives and generally acted as mediators for their ransom.

  If any measures were taken against Pog, it was because he had, as a Frenchman, assisted with his own hand in an attack upon his country.

  The information given by the consul was in vain, to the great scandal of our compatriots and of Europeans established at Tripoli. Pog made a solemn abjuration, renounced the cross, assumed the turban, and henceforth remained unmolested.

  Kemal-Reis had everywhere proclaimed that the new renegade was one of the best captains whom he had ever known, and that the regency of Barbary could not have made a more useful acquisition. From that moment Pog-Reis equipped a galley and directed his operations solely against French vessels, and especially against the galleys of Malta, commanded by the chevaliers of our nation. Several times he ravaged the coasts of Languedoc and Provence with impunity. It must be said, however, that this fury for plunder and destruction only seized Pog, so to speak, periodically, and by paroxysms, and his rage seemed to reach its height about the end of the month of December.