Just then a stout fellow, whose expression must have been in the ordinary way bright and good-humoured, but who seemed then somewhat dejected, came up to Jean and greeted him by name. Jean returned the greeting, wondering where he had seen his face before.
“Don’t you recognize me?” asked the newcomer. “Let me introduce myself. I am Monsieur Nicolas Tournesol.... No, doesn’t that tell you anything?... I am the channel of communication between the manufacturer, the agent and the wholesale merchant.
Nicolas Tournesol, who was in Sever Turn when so many misfortunes beset you. I met you at the Hôtel des Balkans with Monsieur Joseph Rouletabille.’’ “Yes, of course. Delighted to meet you in Paris. But where is Rouletabille?”
“He has not yet turned up. But for that fact I should have already left, after giving him back a small package which he entrusted to my keeping.”
“Did you not receive an invitation from Madame de Meyrens?”
“I may tell you, Monsieur de Santierne, that Madame de Meyrens did not invite me to the lunch, which seems to be an engagement lunch, but Monsieur Rouletabille was good enough to remember me.”
“Then stay.”
“No, Monsieur de Santierne, because I paid some attention to Madame de Meyrens in Sever Turn.”
“You don’t mean to say so.”
“And I value Monsieur Rouletabille’s friendship.”
“Yes, of course. It is a delicate position. You are very tactful, Monsieur Tournesol. But, as it happens, here comes Madame de Meyrens.”
“I’ll be off.”
It was too late. Madame de Meyrens, who had in fact come in, caught sight of Monsieur Tournesol, and hastened to thank him for giving up all else in order to be present at her little dinner-party. As she spoke she pressed his hand in à very significant manner, so that Monsieur Nicolas Tournesol could not help changing colour as he thought of poor Rouletabille’s honour in jeopardy.... There was no longer any question of tact.... After all, there was nothing of the Joseph about him! All was fair in love and war.... War in lace and ruffles, of course.
Nevertheless, when the entire party was assembled in the dining-room which overlooked the lake, Monsieur Tournesol was inclined to think that Madame de Meyrens was going a little too far in asking him, to the amazement of all, to take a seat beside her, and starting in the most downright way to press his foot under the table. Downright is the word, for she had a substantial foot, the shameless creature, and did not spare Monsieur Tournesol’s chilblains, so that he was suffering tortures.
“Rouletabille might well say that she is a dangerous woman,” he thought.
The extraordinary part was that Rouletabille had not yet arrived, and Madame de Meyrens, thinking that they had waited for him long enough, ordered the dinner to be served without him. Such free and easy manners threw a constraint over the little company. Still Jean said nothing any more than the other guests, who were feeling sorry that they had come.
The only person who was really at his ease was Monsieur Crousillat, who had lost nothing of his tremendous appetite, and as soon as the hors-d’ œuvre were served, threw himself with zest upon a Russian salad, to which he did full justice as if it had been a special Provençal dish.
La Candeur, one of Rouletabille’s colleagues on the Epoque, sat facing him, and watched him with some emotion, for he, too, was not given to quarrel with his food, and yet he ate nothing... he ate nothing because the forthcoming marriage of Madame de Meyrens and Rouletabille had taken away his appetite. He ate nothing because Rouletabille was absent and he missed him. As to one Vladimir, another of Rouletabille’s journalist friends and companions in arms, he rose from the table.
“What is going on is incomprehensible. I must telephone to the office and inquire what has become of Rouletabille.”
And he darted out of the room.
“That good-looking fellow makes a mistake to worry,” said the charming young Madame de Meyrens in her drawling voice with its musical intonation. “Rouletabille will be here presently. The reason why he is a little late is because we have both definitely made up our minds to part for good and all.”
An “Ah!” of surprise which, it must be said, was at the same time an “Ah!” of satisfaction, greeted this unexpected announcement, and Monsieur Tournesol grew a deeper crimson as Madame de Meyrens made still greater play with her foot.
“And it was agreed between us that he should not come here until after I have gone,” continued Madame de Meyrens. “Gentlemen, I am therefore saying ‘Good-bye’ to you. I shall never see you again.... No need to offer any protest. I know what many of you think of me. I bear you no ill-will. Fate has decreed that I should never love a man without bringing upon him misfortune.... There is only one man here whom I do not inspire with fear — I mean Monsieur Nicolas Tournesol. Our hearts are very near to each other, and I will also confess that our feet have not ceased contact since this dinner began! That is one more reason why I should disappear. I wish to save Monsieur Tournesol from myself. We have had enough disasters. Gentlemen, I did not invite you to an engagement party, but to a death performance.... I am about to commit suicide.”
The entire party rose to its feet. A look of horror passed over the face of each one. Monsieur Tournesol wept. Monsieur Crousillat gasped for breath and implored La Candeur to pat him on the back.... That was not the moment to play a trick upon them.... To commit suicide after such an excellent repast!
Jean had said nothing for some time, but eyed Madame de Meyrens as if he ended at last by understanding something which had been at the back of his mind from the beginning but which he had thrust aside as being too far-fetched.
Madame de Meyrens retained her marvellous composure in her speech, and it was with a truly tragic gesture that she gave the order:
“And now let the undertaker come in.”
When Lucrezia Borgia announced to the noblemen of Ferrara that they had been poisoned and had but an hour to liver she could not have produced a more deadly effect than Madame de Meyrens when she called for the undertaker; and each guest was asking himself whether this strange woman to whom they attributed a thousand fantastic actions, had determined to commit suicide before them, when a sight of the undertaker dispelled the gruesome supposition. The undertaker was no other than Vladimir himself, who was wearing the time-honoured glossy silk hat pertaining to important funeral ceremonies, and grinning in the most cheerful manner conceivable. By way of a coffin he was carrying under his arm a small box, which he laid on the table, and which bore the inscription:
“Here lies Madame de Meyrens, alias the Octopus.”
Just then Madame de Meyrens was seen to divest herself, in a trice, of her wig and feminine finery, and when finally her dress slipped off, Rouletabille stood revealed in his well-known check-suit, amidst the yells and guffaws of the assembled company.
Jean alone, who had already witnessed a similar quick change, was not unduly impressed by it. And he would doubtless have suspected the whole truth from the beginning had not the dinner at Ville d’Avray been fixed by Rouletabille at an hour which shrouded him in the kindly gloom of twilight. Moreover, the dinner which was held in the room facing the lake was lit up only by a few candles.
Rouletabille quietly deposited what remained of Madame de Meyrens in the little coffin brought in by Vladimir, closed it, and straightway began his funeral oration:
“Madame de Meyrens was shot for espionage in the trenches at Schlusselbourg, and was buried where she fell. When I made my last trip to Petrograd I managed to secure her papers, and with their assistance I was able to bring her back to life again. She was very useful in my dealings with a department which had few secrets from her and none at all from me. I was playing a dangerous game, so much so that when I mentioned in my notes or diary the name of Madame de Meyrens or the Octopus, I invariably referred to her in the third person. In this way I protected myself against the department in question, for I always dreaded some inopportune search of my study.
“In this last affair with the gipsies, I was obliged, disguised as the Octopus, to deceive not only the police but many worthy persons to whom I make humble apology here and now.... I apologize to Monsieur Crousillat. I apologize to poor Monsieur Bartholasse, whom I did not invite to this function, fearing lest he might suffer an apoplectic stroke as a result of such a cruel disclosure. These worthy persons will understand that I was able, by means of this disguise, to learn many things which, without it, would have remained a lasting mystery. Moreover, was not Madame de Meyrens in a position to wander about Les Saintes Maries and question the gipsies at a time when Rouletabille could not show himself in Camargue under pain of death? Do not, therefore, be surprised any longer, Monsieur Crousillat, that Rouletabille was so fully aware of what happened in Zina’s cave. And do not yourself be surprised any longer, my dear Jean, that despite your stormings, I continued to visit the terrible woman whom you hated the very sight of.”
“Look here, what are you talking about?” objected Jean. “You now tell me that you disguised yourself as Madame de Meyrens from the beginning of this business. But I saw you and Madame de Meyrens at one and the same time. I saw you talking to Madame de Meyrens.”
“No, my dear Jean, you are mistaken. You saw Rouletabille disguised as Madame de Meyrens talking to — don’t look at me like that — well, yes, you shall know the whole truth. That day or rather that evening, I was having a game with you. I left Arles prison in my disguise as Madame de Meyrens, and you saw and followed me.... I was extremely annoyed, and I wondered whether you had any suspicion of the strange farce which I was playing. For some years this secret of the sham Madame de Meyrens had been too valuable to me, and also too dangerous to allow me to make a confidant of any person whatever, and above all of an impulsive person like yourself, my dear Jean. I was determined, therefore, to keep the secret to myself — myself alone — and I made up my mind to dispel your suspicions if by chance you entertained any. I got back to the Hôtel du Forum. You remained in the square watching my windows. I saw you. My room was still in darkness.... Quickly, with a clothes-peg, a bolster, my own jacket and cap, I made up a dummy which I seated in a chair with its back to the square; and I switched on the electric light as if I, Madame de Meyrens, was entering the room in which Rouletabille was waiting to receive me. That is how you saw Madame de Meyrens talking to Rouletabille. Do you follow me now?”
“Ah, I should think I did follow you now. I’ve got it this time. We all understand now.”
“Well, and what about me?” asked Monsieur Nicolas Tournesol. “Do you think that I don’t understand!”
This time the company burst out laughing. He made such a comical face did poor Tournesol.
“When I think,” he went on, “that from the beginning of this dinner he has been stamping on my chilblains! Oh, I shan’t forget my conquest in Sever Turn!”
“You have this consolation, my dear Tournesol,” said Rouletabille. “You have made a friend in me, and it is better sometimes to find a friend than a wife, and besides, as Madame de Meyrens I feel that I should have been unfaithful to you.... She was shot once, and to-day we are about to drown her. I hope that after suffering capital punishment twice she will be really dead.”
And, in fact, they drowned her — first in an ocean of champagne and then in the lake in which they threw the box after filling it with stones to make sure that she would never again come to the surface.
The little ceremony was hardly completed when the telephone bell rang. La Candeur made a dash for the adjoining room, and came back again almost at once.
“This time the thing is serious,” he said. “It’s the governor himself who has telephoned from the office: ‘Tell Rouletabille to come here at once. It is a question of clearing up an affair which has just come to a head and is most mysterious.”
“Of course,” returned Rouletabille, rising from the table, “I should be surprised if it were not, but he might have waited until to-morrow. What a profession!”
“Stow that,” cried La Candeur. “You live for it.... But you must take me with you in this affair.”
“And me too,” interposed Vladimir.
“What about you?” asked Rouletabille, turning to Jean with a smile. “You don’t ask to come with me.”
“No,” said Jean, pressing his hand. “I am returning to Odette.”
“Give her my love and make her happy, my dear Jean, or you will have me to deal with.”
“Don’t worry. Thanks to you nothing can disturb our happiness unless...”
“Unless what?”
“Unless the terrible Callista...”
“Have no fear. I have suggested to Andréa a means of taming her.”
THE END
Chéri Bibi Series
Leroux obtained the baccalaureate of letters in 1886 at the Lycée de Caen, a commune in north-western France.
The Wolves of the Sea (1913)
Translated by Hannaford Bennett, 1923
Original French Title: ‘Première Aventures de Chéri-Bibi’
In a plot reminiscent of Les Misérables, this novel introduces the popular character Bibi, a former butcher’s boy, who is wrongly accused of a crime and sent to the galleys as punishment. He is then dogged by his past involvement with the justice system as he tries to do the right thing – although he is nothing like as virtuous as Victor Hugo’s hero, Jean Valjean. Leroux returned to his former employer from his journalistic days to publish these stories. Première Aventures de Chéri-Bibi first appeared in 120 daily soap operas in Le Matin (5 April to 4 August 1913). The 110 part sequel, La Nouvelle Aurore, delayed by the advent of war, did not appear in the magazine until 18 April 1919 and ran till 7 August 1919. Finally, Le Coup d’Etat by Chéri-Bibi was published in 81 daily soap operas in Le Matin, between 16 and 4 October, 1925, under the original title of Chéri-Bibi, the Peanut Merchant.
The first instalment in the Chéri-Bibi series opens with a conversation between two prisoners, Little Buddha and the Toper, who with other cell mates are incarcerated on a prison ship. The ship is the Bayard, an old cruiser that has been converted into a transport and commissioned recently to convey convicts and persons deported from their country, from the Isle de Re to Cayenne, the capital city of French Guyana and a penal colony for the French. It is an unpleasant voyage and the convicts have ‘pallid faces…tinged with green; hollow cheeks, feverish eyes.’ The guards are a brutal, ever-threatening presence, with their guns always at the ready to use against the convicts. The prisoners are, of course, acutely aware of the guards, who have been threatened that the more the prisoners cause trouble on the ship, the worse their fate will be when they arrive at Cayenne.
The discussion between the convicts turns to the subject of Chéri-Bibi, the fellow prisoner who was apparently incarcerated for crimes he claims he is innocent of. He is the prisoner the guards and the Captain are most wary of, even afraid of — a man who has no fear of authority and even literally laughs in its face. He is kept away from the other prisoners in irons and is held under constant scrutiny by two guards, on this occasion because he spat in the face of the ‘Guv’nor’, Captain Barrachon. However, the prisoners know that –Chéri-Bibi had planned this, because he needed time alone to think through his next ‘scheme’ and according to the Toper, ‘It’s a good’un’. The prisoners are intent on taking the ship, disposing of the Captain and the guards and perhaps becoming pirates on the high seas.
Some men, like the Toper, of ‘impulsive, thoughtless temperament’, are fired up and ready to risk their lives in the name of freedom; others, like Kanaka, argue for a less reckless strategy. Whilst the men sing, bicker and fantasise about future adventures, more dramatic events occur. Chéri-Bibi escapes his shackles, for which only the Captain has a key (they are still locked when discovered), strangles his two guards and is at liberty somewhere on the ship, armed with a gun and ammunition that he stole from the armoury. The Captain is reeling from shock and wants a full scale search undertaken, but his officers c
ounsel caution, so as not to alert the other prisoners to the escape.
The Captain and his officers speculate as to how the escape could have happened and it is suggested that one of the women prisoners could have helped free Chéri-Bibi. And indeed, one of the leading female convicts, The Countess, is also missing. After much discussion, the Captain and officers decide to take the initiative, storm the hold where Chéri-Bibi must be hiding and flush him out. The tension levels on the ship are at unbearable levels; all the men and women are trapped together at sea and almost certainly, in the forthcoming violence, deaths will occur. How bad will it get?
This is a refreshing story from Leroux, as even though the tale has a gritty and rather downbeat theme, he tells the tale in a brisk and appealing style, with strong characterisation for the majority of the players. Even for the times, Leroux manages to avoid his convict characters becoming stereotypical and there is an edginess about Chéri-Bibi that makes him an appealing anti-hero. Little wonder that he was used in numerous film and television adaptations over the subsequent decades.
The first film was directed by Charles Krauss with Émile Keppens in the role of Chéri-Bibi, was released as Early Adventures of Chéri Bibi in 1914. In 1918, Gaston Leroux himself wrote the script that formed the basis of La Nouvelle Aurore, produced and directed by the René Navarre (who also played the part of Palas). By this time, Leroux had invested financially in the French film industry and it made sense that he should write scripts for his own adaptations. In an unusual about-turn, the film was then adapted to be published as a serial in Le Matin from 25 April 1919. With two Chéri-Bibi stories running in the popular press at about the same time after the end of the First World War, it would seem that the colourful life of Chéri-Bibi, a working class man that succeeds against the odds and becomes a popular hero, appealed to the war-weary nation in the immediate post-war years.
Collected Works of Gaston Leroux Page 137