Claudine and Constanze were quite startled when they suddenly heard their names being called out loud. Claudine raised her head high and fixed a stare on the Hungarian which said loud and clear: “You, my dear count, are shameless; we were introduced only a few hours ago, and you already dare to make me the target of your special attentions in the presence of such a select company!” And Claudine’s aunt, the old Baroness de Saint Marie Église, turned as red as a firecracker as she thought: “This whipper-snapper of a Hungarian count has no place in this company—I cannot imagine how this person could ever have awakened the least interest in me.” Constanze had no thoughts at all but simply glanced from the prince to the old Scotswoman in discomfort.
“The ladies are conjuring up a revolution?” the prince of Württemberg and the captain asked in jocular tones, and they stared first at the Hungarian and then at the ladies mentioned.
“What other thing is possible?” the Hungarian asked. “How could you expect the ladies to carry on a conversation over the effect of a cargo of slaves? For, I must confess, I myself do not feel so comfortable with that sort of discussion—and on account of the ladies—”
With the exception of Gertrude and Dudley, who were still disputing among themselves over the garter, the entire company was completely confused by these words. Frida thought she would sink through the floor from embarrassment.
The Hungarian calmly stood up, grabbed his armchair by its back, and rolled it right across the salon to the place where Countess Gertrude and Dudley were sitting. There he sat himself down in the chair ingenuously, oblivious to the notion that he might have any obligation to anyone else in the company.
If the company had been confused before, now they felt utterly disoriented.
Most fortunately, the captain possessed enough intellectual awareness and ability to turn the conversation in such a way as to avoid the confrontation which otherwise would have been inevitable. Without taking any notice of the Hungarian whatsoever, the captain asked the ladies on behalf of himself and the prince for forgiveness if they had been troubled by the introduction of this subject, and he promised that the error committed by himself and the prince would be made good at once if the ladies would be so good as to give him their attention now.
This succeeded. The long faces vanished, and all eyes turned to the man who had managed so quickly and skillfully to reverse the painful silence that had been setting in.
Only Frida might have had a reason to say anything—quietly, in her wonted gentle way, about her husband’s conduct.
“Since the conversation was about the yellow fever,” the captain said, “I will tell this high company an extremely interesting story of my experience last year on my expedition in search of the source of the Red River. But before I begin, let me ask a question of my sympathetic listeners.” In truth, the captain was well aware of how to get his listeners’ attentions and make even the indifferent curious.
“And what would this question be?” they all asked, without exception. But they asked this only with their eyes.
“Ladies and gentlemen, have you ever heard anything about the Mantis religiosa?” the captain asked, quite clearly, yet in a mysterious tone, so that even the flaccid face of the Hungarian showed momentary interest.
“I know it, Captain!” Gertrude cried out in a lively voice, while the crystal voice of Miss Dudley sounded: “I know it too—there are many Mantis religiosa in our garden—”
The prince of Württemberg could barely suppress a hearty laugh over the rival zeal of the two young women. He turned to Lady Evans-Stuart with a pleased expression and said: “See, Madame, how attentive Angel and Psyche are tonight!”
“Forget not Genius, too, Your Royal Highness!” Constanze declared with gusto: “I trapped two Mantis religiosa for you yesterday evening.”
“Trapped?” the captain puzzled quietly. “What sort of Mantis religiosa could that be that the good young ladies are describing?”
“My God, if only the young people would have the patience to wait until we adults have spoken!” the old baroness de Saint Marie dogmatized, rubbing the coat of arms on her finger as if wisdom was supposed to arise from it.
“We must excuse them,” the prince of Württemberg retorted, “youth has the right to be precocious.”
The old Scotswoman had too fine, too clever a tact to be upset by the prince’s words. This was not the case with the baroness of Saint-Marie-Eglise. She was extremely upset, and she stared in rage at the prince.
Claudine de Lesuire stared down at her pansies and joined her aunt in irritation.
The prince, however, to put an end to all the sparring, and to give the captain an opportunity to tell his story, which was certainly interesting, turned to him with the words: “You asked whether we had heard anything about the Mantis religiosa? The Mantis religiosa is the Latin name for a type of insect which is called a wandelndes Blatt or a Gottesanbeterin in German, since this creature looks like a leaf on one side, while from the other side it always raises its front legs in the air, folded together, as if it were trying to pray.”4
“Yes, yes, that’s it!” Gertrude and Dudley joined in together.
“I can see,” the captain interrupted, with the most amiable manner in the world, “that our high company has not yet heard of the Mantis religiosa that will play such a great role in my narrative; for it is not an insect but a plant, a plant that only grows close to the source of the Red River, and which during some years is supposed to have the dreadful capacity to cause the plague of yellow fever—”
One can easily imagine that such a mysterious declaration met with no further objections and that everyone pressed the captain to fulfill his promise.
The captain, who is surely already recognized by the reader as Captain Marcy of the Red River expedition, now described the preparations he had made on the command of the United States government to seek the source of the Red River, and he quickly came to speak of his meeting with Emil and Lucy, who the reader already knows.
“It is a demonstration that I have not described both the young people wrongly,” he said, among other things, “that they were intimately acquainted with the mysterious personality of this Cagliostro of the New World,5 who they called Hiram.”
“But permit me, my dear captain,” the prince of Württemberg interrupted, “did you already have a description of this person you could compare with that the two young people gave you? Or are you perhaps in possession of a certain manuscript, which I had thought was only in my own hands, or rather—do you have a transcription of a certain manuscript, which made you acquainted with this dreadful man?”
The captain appeared shocked. Instead of answering the prince’s question, he turned to him with a question of his own: “You possess a manuscript with references to this Hiram? Prince, you could perform a great service for our government in Washington—”
“I had no idea what to do with the manuscript—I have it from the estate of the former president of the University of Louisiana, the member of the French Convention, Joseph Lakanal; it has the strange title, ‘Narratives of an Ursuline Novice in New Orleans’—a promising title, isn’t it, ladies? Isn’t it, Captain?”
Lady Evans-Stuart assumed a mysterious manner that clearly signaled she was acquainted with the manuscript of the patriarch of Mobile.
“But you found nothing about the Mantis religiosa in the manuscript—otherwise you would have said right away that it was a plant?” Captain Marcy asked the prince.
The prince of Württemberg admitted it.
“But then what is your source for the existence of this Cagliostro, Hiram, allowing you to recognize the description of the two young people to be correct?” the old Scotswoman asked Captain Marcy.
“In the archives of our government in Washington there is an old issue of the Moniteur in which this Hiram is accused,* among other things, of endangering the lives of the inhabitants of New Orleans by throwing the seeds of a poisonous plant known only to him into the
cisterns. This accusation is repeated in a warrant for his arrest, which describes this Cagliostro precisely as the two young people described him.”
“Perhaps they had the same issue of the Moniteur in hand and pulled one over on you, Captain Marcy,” Lajos mocked. “So much humbug is done in this country, and one could hardly blame the two vagabonds if they used your Mantis religiosa, as you call it, to make some money … By the way, I forbid you to call this cad a Cagliostro. So far as I know, Cagliostro was not a poisoner but a mere innocent gold-maker who never managed to find the philosopher’s stone, although he is supposed to have attained great age—”
Frida gave her husband an indescribably moving look. If she had been at his side, she would have whispered: “But Lajos, I beg of you, pull yourself together!”
It was really not the Hungarian’s habit to be so demonstrative and careless. On the contrary, he always proved himself to be the astute man of the world in such situations, and he had a very good reputation for this, particularly with Constanze and Dudley, as well as with the prince of Württemberg and the old Scotswoman. And so the last two named grew very uncomfortable over the fact that his conduct should prove so tactless and unrestrained this very day, when he met the captain and the baroness and her niece for the first time; he certainly was making a bad impression on them. Did he perhaps harbor a particular premonition in his head? Or perhaps an inner voice whispered to him: “Let it go, Count Est***, the measure of your crimes and atrocities will soon be full in any case—for the time being, it is no longer worth the trouble to feign having sensitivities. Show yourself as you are so that they are not so surprised when they discover who and what you are. Who knows whether it is still necessary to take precautions—who knows whether you will live to see the death of your wife’s old uncle! Let it go, this dissimulation and playacting is just too much of a bother for you! Or are you so reckless, Count Est***, because your dear, evil demon, which has ever spurred you on and led you by the hand, whispers in your ear: ‘Now, Lajos, is it perhaps fatal that you have lost the whole treasure of the mill? Wouldn’t it be better, perhaps, if you had not burned down the Hamburg Mill, and the clubmen and Lady Merlina and the Pontifex Maximus still lived? Wouldn’t you still have your enormous income? Then perhaps your child would still be alive? What now, Lajos?’”
“You are much inclined to satire, today, my dear Count,” Lady Evans-Stuart responded to the count’s aforementioned misconduct, hoping that the captain would be moved to greater caution.
Lajos, who had perceived the old Scotswoman’s finesse at once, did not want to remain with his wonted caution, yet he also wanted to demonstrate that he could conduct himself well if he so chose.
With the finest restraint, the Hungarian rose from his deep armchair, bowing slightly to Lady Evans-Stuart, speaking with a Versailles accent: “Madame, if you take the trouble to pay so much attention to me as to try to convince your esteemed guest, Captain Marcy of the United States Army, of the worth of my person, then the only way I can thank you is to recognize your superiority by giving you homage in the manner of the clans of your homeland.”
As he spoke the last words, the Hungarian left his place next to the armchair and approached Lady Evans-Stuart. Then he knelt down and graciously kissed her right hand.
“Arise, Earl, and let your banner wave freely from the battlements of our country,” Lady Evans-Stuart parried the Hungarian with an historical reference, like for like.
Following this absolution, the Hungarian arose and gave his hand to the captain. He greeted the prince and each of the ladies with the same silent apology.
“He is a splendid man, this Hungarian count,” the baroness de Saint Marie declared to herself—for the Hungarian had gazed at her with more than indifference when he offered his hand. “It is only too bad that he was so clumsy before.”
In any other situation, the Hungarian’s conduct would have been condemned as the most tastelessly theatrical farce. And yet how strange it was! Just as Lajos was rewinning the hearts of everyone with his sudden display of chivalric conduct, there were still two persons who conceived for the first time an inexplicable hostility to him, at the very moment of his gallant ostentation: the prince of Württemberg and—Frida. One glance at the right instant tells us more than the empiricism of the most practiced physiognomy.6 A shudder ran through Frida’s breast for which she could not account—her heart hid an uncanny feeling whose origin she knew not. She wanted to say that she was feeling something for the first time, something she had never felt before. For the first time she did not look at him openly—rather she looked at him several times in furtive glances. Her husband’s courtly gallantry, so often a marvel when she was with him in a select company, now appeared repellent, dreadful to her. Her ideas began associating irresistibly with the strange feeling that overcame her when she thought she saw his face, pale as death, the color altered in the reflection from the green lens of the glass lens. The thought occurred to her that he had wept no tears at the death of their unhappy child—and that he had left her alone in her night of pain and shut himself up in his study. Now Lajos no longer appeared to her to be her husband. And now the good Frida no longer heard a word of the conversation that was being conducted in lively terms over the Mantis religiosa and Hiram—she was suddenly no longer the quiet, musing thinker she usually was; her imagination pulled her ever further into a labyrinth of distrust. She thought of the planned duel with Karl, of the Doppelgänger and his mate, and in the end she arrived at the most dreadful thought, which was that Lajos was not the man with whom she had crossed the ocean on the Gutenberg. The unfortunate woman finally rested on the thought that Lajos had become his own double, whom her sister had seen in the clearing of Ranney’s Timber—her heart shrank spasmodically at the thought. May your guardian spirit remain with you, poor, unfortunate woman! Only a step further and you will doubt your own personality. Your cogent spirit departs weeping, and madness calls mockingly within you: Why do you want to desire more than to be the double’s wife? So be mine, too, Frida the Doppelgänger! …
• • •
So we shall leave the company for a moment in order to direct our steps to another place.
When that dreadful night, when the crimes of an inhuman father were revenged on his own innocent child, had been succeeded by the morning, Lajos sat alone on the sofa of his study—the valise of the murdered Jew was in his hand. He was carefully reviewing the contents, and in particular he was giving his full attentions to that letter from Milwaukee which we have already revealed in a note. He had locked the doors from inside.
“Madness!” he accused himself half-aloud. “The whole story obviously rests on a deception—”
“Just as is the case with the whole story of the money from the mill … my dear count, we meet again!”
As if a bolt of lightning had paralyzed his members, the Hungarian looked at the place from which the voice had originated.
“We meet again, count!” and a tall, gaunt figure passed him on its way out the door.
Now he leaped as if he had been whipped by the snakey locks of Medusa.
“The door was locked—how did that uncanny old beast manage to come and go? It is ordinary enough to be visited by ghosts in the night, but in the bright light of morning? Nonsense! No one spoke, no one was in the room. Oh you big fool, Lajos, have you suddenly become such a pitiful hallucinator? It is one of Satan’s new properties today that he has become the most sensational of authors, who sees ghosts and spirits in broad daylight? I am amazed that the horse’s bust on the mantel doesn’t laugh me to scorn, and that the Black Prince doesn’t rear out of the picture and stomp me with a couple hooves … for such pitiful weakness! And this old, gray beast, who yelled ‘Cheating!’ in my ears while I was playing dóminos, so that I am still half-deaf from it—I’m supposed to have seen and heard him? I had long since forgotten him—if it had been the Jew, or my panther of a little wife! Then the nonsense would be excusable—ha, ha, the door is as locke
d as it ever was—ha, ha, Lady Wilmington, gallant mare, take your riding crop down from there and chastise my little-boy brain, chastise it until the count realizes what value a clear, healthy brain can have. Now, now, stop Satan! What did you say? The story about the money from the mill—stop—if you—? Yet here I’m weighing it in my hand—ragged paper and still a hundred thousand dollars!”
Then the Hungarian suddenly let the banknotes fall as he pressed his brow against a doorpost, as if he were trying to bore through it with all his force. His fists were clenched, and out of his eyes there shone a devilish mockery. What had he seen? What had appeared to him? Anyone may take the banknotes who wants them! Can we explain why?
When the Hungarian had been searching for the treasure under the bed, it was utterly natural for him to think he had found it once he discovered a book of the proper thickness in the cavity of the correct size. It was even more natural that he should entertain not a doubt about the genuineness of the hundred-dollar notes, nor did he undertake a precise examination of them; for since he was sure that the total fortune from the mill was under the master bed, why should he have suspected that some sort of deception was afoot? And yet it was so. Madame Merlina certainly had reasons, which were not groundless, to doubt the honesty of the Italian Lombardi and worry that he might want to come into the exclusive possession of the treasure. It was not in her power to change the hiding place of the money to her own advantage, since she had to be present during every moment of any audit ordered by clubmen of the 99th and 100th degree, a prerogative she could not attempt to change since it was established in the statutes in the mill book. Still, in her caution she developed a great scheme. She had an engraver and illustrator in the Spanish newspaper office, which engraved the club’s tickets, reproduce the impression of an old banknote plate that had belonged years before to Jennison’s infamous counterfeiting band in Plaquemine, and she had substituted these false hundred-dollar notes for all those of the mill’s treasure, which by old agreement was supposed to be kept in an opening under the master bed, covered by a board, until an assembly of the club membership decided otherwise. Meanwhile Merlina had hidden the real treasury of the mill on the top of the bed’s canopy, where no one suspected. There had never been an audit, not even a comment by any of the members that one was wanted. So Merlina would make a report, which would be signed by Lombardi, the Pontifex Maximus, then by Lajos, and that had sufficed. Either clubmen had been convinced of Madame Merlina’s honesty, or they were hesitant to cast doubt on their trust in her through an audit. Expenditures flowed from her hands into those of the membership, where more care was taken. One finds a similar procedure in certain joint-stock companies or the So-and-So Canal Company: the president is raised above all distrust, but the directors are continually laying for one another. Nevertheless, Merlina had prepared herself in case the membership happened to want assurance of the existence of the fund. It had been her plan to take Lajos into her confidence and to deceive the membership with his help, if the two even allowed the membership to survive too great an increase of the treasury. Perhaps she was waiting for Dubreuil’s success with his plot in the house of Lady Evans-Stuart. Lajos had always been the one who had made the greatest impression on her, and it could well have happened that, to make sure she could share the treasure with him, a visitation of the membership would have been made—with tar masks. We have long known how it really came out, however.
The Mysteries of New Orleans (The Longfellow Series of American Languages and Literatures) Page 61