The Son of Clemenceau written by Alexandre (fils) Dumas

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The student sighed as he ate the piece of bread broken off a small loaf
and drank from the bottle out of which the faithless turnkey hobnobbed
with the sexton, the undertaker's men and the hearse-coachman.

If the bell should ring, with him alone to hear, ought he hasten out by
the gate providentially open, and leave for the care of heaven alone the
unknown wretch who would have summoned his brother-Christians most
uselessly? The resuscitated man would not be "of his parish," since he
was a wanderer from afar. Let the natives bury their own dead!

At this instant, when philosophy pointed out to the student the unbarred
portals, the bell in the midst of the row rang clearly if not very
loudly. It sounded in his ear like the last trump. Could he doubt that
this appeal was to him exclusively? The removal of the custodian, his
own miraculous escape--all pointed to this conclusion.

But might he not run out and, if he saw the traitorous warder on his
road, repeat to him the alarm? Not much time would be lost, for the gong
still vibrated, and his personal safety ranked above his neighbor's in
such a crisis.

But Claudius' hesitation had been that of physical weakness; confronted
in this way with the problem of fraternity, he did not waver any longer.
On the threshold of safety, he turned straight back into the jaws of
destruction. He had not emerged from that darkness and depth of earth,
to descend into a lower profundity and a denser darkness of the soul.

He glanced at the brazen monitor: its surface still shivered, though his
senses were not fine enough to hear the faint sound. But there was no
delusion; the dead in the morgue had signaled to the world on whose
verge it was balanced.

It cost the student no pang now to retrace the steps he had painfully
counted, to reach the building, out of the cellars of which he had so
gladly climbed. On thus facing it, he knew by a window being lighted
that his goal was there.

He had found fresh energy in his mission, rather than the scanty
refreshment, and in three minutes was at the door. Heavy with iron
banding the oak, it was not made for the hand of the dying to move it,
but Claudius dragged it open with violence. He sprang inside with the
vivacity of a bridegroom invading the nuptial chamber, although here was
no agreeable sight.

A long plain hall, of grey stone, the seams defined with black cement;
all the windows high up, small and grated; only the one door, never
locked. Two rows of slate beds, three of which only were occupied; two
men and a boy, nude save a waistcloth; over their heads--sluggishly
swayed by the air the new-comer had carelessly admitted--their clothes
were hung like shapeless shadows. They had been dredged up in the Isar's
mud, found at a corner, dragged from under a cartwheel. No one
identifying them, they were deposited here; their fate? dissection for
the benefit of science, and interment of the detached portions in the
pauper's hell.

Which had rung the bell?

Claudius investigated the three: the boy had been crushed by the
sludge-basket of the steam-dredge; not a spark of life was left there,
his companion was green and horrible; he, too, had passed the bourne.

But on the other row, alone, a robust man with disfigured face, and red
whiskers, looked like a fresh cut alabaster statue. Cold had blanched
him; but a faint steam arose from his armpits, in the sepulchral light
of a green-shaded gas-jet. There heat remained to prove that the great
furnace in the frame had not ceased to be fed.

The student bent over him to feel the heart, when, as promptly, he
sprang back. Spite of the maltreated face, he recognized his combatant
in the duel with canes; it was Major Von Sendlingen, who had been flung
on the slab in the public dead-house.

Had Baboushka commanded his death to prevent her complicity in the
assault on Daniels and his daughter being published, and had she
suggested the stripping which caused the police to confound the noble
officer with the victim of the "pickers-up" of drunkards?

But the major shivered in the blast from the door left open, and a brief
flush ran over the icy skin.

If his enemy did not extend relief to him immediately, he would never
recover strength to ring the death-bell to which ran the wires appended
to his fingers and toes.

With three or four rapid strokes and twistings, Claudius broke them. He
looked round; this waif of the gutter had no clothes, but a torn and
shapeless garment dangled over his head; it was the old cloak of the
student. The pockets had been torn bodily away to save time; it was the
mere integument of the garment.

But it sufficed to retain the scanty heat lingering in the unfortunate
man, when wrapped about him. With a surprising spell of strength,
Claudius lifted him upon his breast when so enveloped, and crossed the
grounds for the third time.

The warder had returned but he had left the gate open to close its
sliding grate by mechanism worked within his little house. To his amazed
eyes, Claudius presented himself with the burden.

"Help him! revive him! he is living!" he said. "I will go fetch the
police surgeon! it is my officer--Major von Sendlingen!"

After the announcement of the rank, Claudius knew that the officer would
want for nothing. He let the body fall into the large armchair and,
taking advantage of the warder's consternation at seeing the dead-like
body sitting between him and the only exit, glided through the narrow
space between the sliding rails and disappeared.

The boom of an alarm bell, set swinging over the gateway by the warder,
added wings to his feet, for he feared that police and patrol would
hurry to the cemetery from all quarters, and he wanted, above all, to
reach the Jew's hotel before morning.

CHAPTER VI.

TWO AUGURS.

Fortunately for the student, the night birds whom he met and to whom in
asking information to arrive at the Persepolitan Hotel, he gave
preference over the policemen, felt a fellow feeling for a man pallid,
tottering, and in clothes which had suffered during his scramble through
the exhausted mines underlaying Munich.

He reached the hotel before dawn and was not sorry to find it one of
those old-fashioned hostelries continuing traditions of the
posting-houses, where he might not expect to be challenged because of
his appearance. In the stable yard, between a half-awakened horse and a
sleepy watchdog, who received the new guest with a blinking eye and
affectionate tongue, an ostler was washing down a ramshackle chaise.
Claudius guessed that it was prepared for his flight and his heart
warmed at this proof of the Jew having counted on his coming, though
belated. The shock-headed man, clattering over the rounded stones in
wooden shoes, made to fit by the insertion of straw around his naked
feet, no sooner heard him name Herr Daniels as the one expecting him,
than he bade him welcome in a cordial tone which his surly face had not
presaged.

"I suppose he is asleep," he said, "but he left word that he was to be
aroused at any hour on your coming. I am not allowed within doors in my
stable dress," he added, "but you will have no trouble in finding the
rooms. It is that one where the candle burns, one floor above, numbers
11, 12 and 13--the number is unlucky for a Christian, but that does not
matter for the likes of them!--and a lamp burns at the turn of the
stairs. The back door is on the latch."

Claudius, with the satisfaction of having anchored in the harbor,
crossed the yard and entered the house. He was closing the door behind
him when he heard a heavy tread at the street gate where he had come in.
and the dog began to growl. The ostler caught it by the collar as it
made a bound, and cried out:

"Who is there?"

The schutzman, who had dismounted, prudently held the door close, with
one hand, to prevent the dog gliding through, while he showed his sword
drawn in the other, and answered with affected joviality:

"What, Karlchen, am I not known by you better than by your pagan of a
hound? But catch me putting silly questions to my boon-companion, my
oldest friend! It is not in here that I saw a suspicious shadow creep,
eh?"

"By my faith!" replied the groom, laughing heartily, "it may have been a
shadow--but flesh-and-blood is what my true Ogre is waiting for! We are
up betimes, worthy Hornitz, and we have neither had our breakfast. What
has put you on the alert?"

"A general order! There was a riot at the great music hall of the
Freyers Brothers--plague on it! What art they have in brewing beer that
leaves a pleasant memory! and we have orders to overhaul every
suspicious character in the streets, while none can get out of the town.
It appears that some monstrous criminal is at large! Oh, for the reward,
that would buy me a little cottage on the Friedplatz road with beer
unstinted!"

"Pooh! as usual, you gentlemen of the nightwatch are badly informed,"
grumbled the ostler, pushing the dog into a corner. "I know what it was,
for one of the theatrical players is a lady lodger of ours. She was
unfairly supplanted by some insignificant young upstart and, of course,
the public, always knowing true talent from shallow pretension, broke up
the seats and pelted the manager with it along with his imposter!"

"Well, good-morning, Karlchen," said the gendarme, taking the
correction in good part, and withdrawing his booted leg from the door.
"I may see you when I am off duty and we will make sure that Freyers
have better taste in brewing beer than in choosing actresses."

Having heard enough to convince him that Daniels was in a house guarded
by the faithful, Claudius proceeded up the stairs dimly visible before
him at the end of a clean, bricked passage. His progress was more easy
when he reached the landing, as the lamp mentioned, in a recess and
projecting its rays in two directions, shone on the door of the suite of
three rooms where the Jew and his daughter were lodged.

Pausing before he knocked, Claudius heard the soft step of slippered
feet. On tapping discreetly, a reserved voice ordered him to come in. It
was Daniels who spoke; he was in a dressing-gown, with bare head, and,
having cleared the chairs back to enable him to make the circuit of the
table in the center of the spacious room, had apparently been walking
round it like a caged lion. On the table were various articles heaped up
without order and an open trunk, partly packed. He looked up in emotion
while Claudius paused on the sill, more affected than he understood the
reason for.

"Ah, heaven be praised! it is you," said the old man with grave joy, and
holding out his hands, paternally. "I feared for the worst--that you
would never come. It is so serious a matter: a nobleman and an officer
who belongs to the Secret Intelligence Department--his death is not to
go unpunished."

"At least, he is not dead," said the student; and he hastened to tell
his story.

"Speak at any tone you please," interrupted Daniels, at the stage of his
having escaped from the music-hall by the artistes' door and of the
help of the woman whom he did not profess to distinguish. "My daughter
is sleeping, and a sitting-room is here between her apartment and this
one."

But, though without any fear that the noble girl would stoop to listen,
the student related the rest with a cautious voice. Others might not be
so delicate.

"You have a great heart," said Daniels, when he heard of the rescue of
the major from the frigid slab of the morgue. "To do this for an enemy
is lofty conduct. God grant that you have not met one of those monsters
of ingratitude whom a kind act embitters. But it would hardly appear
that he could survive the beating by Baboushka's gang, the ill usage
from the street sweepers and that of the ghouls of the dead-house. All
this makes me tremble for the plan I formed to have you conveyed hence
in a chaise. I have the papers to cover your departure as a clerk whom a
business firm of good standing are sending out to Buenos Ayres. Once at
Hamburg, you may turn your face in any direction you desire. But the
slayer of Major Von Sendlingen would not be able to cross the French or
Italian frontier."

"For a man intending to see Italy, that would be taking me greatly out
of the road," muttered Claudius, sinking into a chair.

"Then go as far as Ulm only, where you will let the train proceed
without you. Send for a doctor whose address I will give you and I
answer for his helping you to get into Switzerland. After all, that will
be better. But I see that you are weak with your exertions and want of
proper nourishment."

"It is rest I most need."

"Then stretch yourself on this sofa, and let me cover you with a
traveling-rug. When you awake, refreshments will be at hand."

"But you, whom I deprive of rest?"

"It is true that anxiety about you, my young friend, has prevented me
lying down, but I am not desirous of sleep now. Do as I tell you. I will
countermand the chaise, and return with the food. This house is not a
famous inn, but my coreligionists, who are traveling merchants, frequent
it, and the edibles are good. As for the honesty of the servants and of
the host, I guarantee it. Unless you have been dogged to the door, I
believe you are safe."

Claudius said that he seemed not to have been followed. At the house, a
patrolman had caught a glimpse of him but the ostler had jestingly
turned him off and quieted his suspicions. Before his host had reached
the door, where he paused to look back, the young man was nodding with
eyes closing in spite of his will, and he was soon steeped in slumber.

"The sleep on the night before execution," muttered the Jew. "This is a
sad matter! That Baboushka is a witch of malevolence, or I am woefully
misinformed, and the major an awkward antagonist. I would a thousand
miles separated my daughter, and this young man, from both of them."

In the lobby he saw a young girl, with her hair in curl-papers and a
candle in her hand, descending the stairs from above.

"Ah, Hedwig," he said gently, "I am not sorry you have risen so early."
The girl blushed.

"You are as rosy as a carnation. Will you please bring me up some coffee
and light food as soon as you get the hot water? My daughter and I will
probably start before your regular breakfast-hour."

The girl seemed vexed by this news, for she bit her lip, but forcing a
smile, she continued her journey to the kitchen. No one else seemed
afoot in the large and rambling house, through which the Jew sent
searching looks as he took the turn to the yard. The ostler received him
with a grin, and the dog with friendly wags of the stub tail.

"We shall not use the chaise as we purposed, Karl," said the Jew. "At
your breakfast-time, my daughter will go out alone for an airing, with
you or your fellow to drive. The young gentleman whom you welcomed is
quite unfit for a journey before at least three days are over.
Meanwhile, not an incautious word that will betray where he took
shelter. In these three days," he added to himself, "we shall know how
the major fares. Unfortunately, his race have iron constitutions."

This was said with a sorrow rare in one of a people who seldom deplore
the survival of a brother man.

Daniels was right in his fear: the student needed repose, and only the
most vigorous counter measures drove off an attack of fever. Rebecca was
his nurse in the same devoted and intelligent manner as her father was
his physician, but as he was on the margin of delirium half the time, he
saw her like one in a vision.

His antagonist, Von Sendlingen, was not so blessed. After a cursory
treatment in the cemetery gate-keeper's lodge, he was removed, wrapped
in blankets, to his quarters in the great barracks; the iron
constitution, of which Daniels spoke, bore him up, and before Claudius
was on foot again, the officer was outdoors--a little pale, but
seemingly none the worse for his horrible adventure.

He took up his own case. Fraulein von Vieradlers had already tired of
her assay in elevating the stage in a social point of view. She had
excited the adoration of the eccentric Marchioness de Latour-lagneau, a
very old lady of fortune, who had the habit of conceiving singular
fancies. This lady engaged the cantatrice as a "noble companion," and
she hurried off with her into Italy. So the story ran, and added that
her manager found that the Vieradlers promptly repudiated any kinship
with her when he talked of their paying the forfeit money. He had
thereupon endeavored to win back La Belle Stamboulane to his deserted
stage, but she was obdurate, and the beer flowed flat in the double
absence of stars inimitable.

The major, whose body, reeking with arnica and iodine, reminded him at
every step of the drubbing he owed to the civilian, concentrated his
searches therefore to discover him. He was sure that he had not left the
town by the ordinary channels, but, as time passed, and the week ended
fruitlessly, he was inclined to believe that the fiend which befriended
Baboushka had also shielded Claudius with his wing.

He did not doubt that the old hag, believing he was lifeless, had
hounded on her followers to steal his uniform and hurl him into the
kennel for the most hideous of fates, which even the homeless and
hopeless dread. But for the enemy whom he hated, he might now be a
boxful of dissected bones in the poor man's lot instead of still
enjoying the prospect, dear to the scion of an ancient race, of
occupying his shelf in the family vault.

Although a soldier, he had such intimate relations with the civil
powers, that the police aided him in searches which he took care
astutely to represent as quite non-personal. They led him to the street
of the Persepolitan Hotel, where, before he entered, he was scrutinizing
the vicinity when he spied the well-known form of the old beggar-chief.
Their surprise was alike.

"Traitress!" he said, with a red spot blazing on his pale cheeks, as he
played with the swordknot on his new sword as if he wanted to loose it
and flog her. "After receiving my gold, to bring me to death's door!
What have you to say to stay me from handing you to the town's officers
to be whipped out of it at the cart's-tail?"

To his surprise again, she met his glance firmly, and her eyes seemed as
irate as his own.

"You are mistaken," she replied, carelessly, as if the matter were of no
consequence. "How can you expect those stalwart bullies to obey an old
woman like me? They would have beaten me to a jelly if I had tried to
shield you. Besides, my officer, I thought you had not a spark of life
left in you after that beating."

"He shall pay for it--with the sword if worthy--with the stick if a
plebeian."

"You need not believe he will ever meet you with the sword," said the
hag, glad to have the dialogue turn on another head than her own in
spite of her unconcern. "I am going to tell you all about one whom I
hated by instinct and whom I find to be a hereditary enemy."

"What do you mean? He is but a boy and cannot have wronged you or
yours."

"His father, major, murdered my loveliest daughter and interrupted her
career of splendor! Alas! one that had a palace where kings were
received and to whom princes often sued in vain!"

"Halloa! you, to have a daughter of that calibre!" and he laughed
coarsely.

"You, who know everything, my officer, must at least have heard of the
peerless Iza, the original of the most beautiful statue
which--reproduced in the precious and the mean metals, in clay, in
parian, in plaster--made the round of the civilized world? 'The Bather!'
That was my daughter! She had her faults--even the truly lovely have
mental flaws, though bodily they are perfect--but whilst she lived, her
poor old mother dressed in silks and velvets--not in rags; she ate and
drank delicately, not sour crusts and sourer wine; she slept on down and
not in a cellar!"

Von Sendlingen shook his head; he was of the new generation and he
preserved but a dim remembrance of the noted beauties--the stars of the
living galaxy decorating the first cycle of the Bonapartist Restoration.

"I foresaw it all and I warned her; but she was so perverse! It is my
duty to avenge her, and to see that the same blunder is not made by--no
matter! Enough that my science--at which you smile, I see--points out to
me that your greatest enemies and mine are in that house." She gestured
toward the hotel, which the major had been studying.

"Do you say enemies in the plural?" he said, ceasing to curl his lip in
mocking of the witch.

"In that house are the Jewish couple, father and daughter, who played at
the Harmonista, La Belle Stamboulane and the Turkophonist Daniel, and
the young man who belabored your excellency so that he almost died of
the drubbing."

"Hang you for being so profuse in your explanations! How do you know all
this?"

"The servant-maid is a customer of mine. I tell her fortune and she
tells me all that goes on in her master's house. The young man has been
cared for there these five or six days, and they only await the chance
to smuggle him out of the city. Have him seized and secure him in
prison, where he shall rot--for I declare to you, as surely as there are
stars above, these letters of the divine volume in which soothsayers
read, he will be your death in the end unless you are his."

"I would not be contented with that. I want to return him blow for
blow--and yet you say I cannot fight him in duello."

"Listen, my officer. He has been brought up in ignorance of his name and
origin, in my country Poland. He is French by birth, and his name is
Felix Clemenceau. It was his father, a celebrated sculptor, who married
my daughter Iza, after decoying her to Paris from her mother's side, and
he murdered her on some frivolous pretext when they were living
separated and he, heaven knows, had no farther claim upon her--his
existence was pure indifference to her. I answer for it! They tried his
father for the atrocity. Even a French jury could not find extenuating
circumstances for that kind of cold-blooded assassin who slays in the
small hours the wife of his bosom--after having cast her off and driven
her to evil ways, poor, spotless angel! They brought him in guilty of a
foul murder and he was guillotined--gentleman and artist of merit though
he was. They were kind to his young son; his friends made up a purse and
sent him afar to be educated and reared in ignorance. But the shadow of
the guillotine is projected afar, and I saw its red finger point to the
assassin's offspring. I have found him. If my hand is not too feeble to
strike, it may anticipate yours."

"I cannot measure swords with a felon's son!" muttered Von Sendlingen.
"But I shall not cease aching in the heart until he is in the shameful
grave he imprudently snatched me from."

"You are a man after my own liking," said the hag, chuckling. "I can
foresee that you will go far and perish in a blaze of glory! Listen!
There are troublous times when an unscrupulous and ambitious soldier may
make his mark and carve a good slice out of the great, rich cake called
Europe. Aid me, and I will aid you. Yes, Herr Major, it is one potentate
speaking with another," the singular woman went on with sinister pride,
and trying to draw her shrunken form into straightness; "I rule an army
of my own, camped by cohorts in the capitals of Europe--dating farther
back than your own, and, perhaps, as formidable. It is we who spy out
the weak spots in great cities. The next time, we shall swarm into the
doomed city in a mass and we shall devour its wealth and luxuries until
we are gorged. But for the day, it will be glut enough for me to have
the life's blood of this man. You cannot honor him with single combat,
it appears. Then, let me propose another mode to finish him."

The major was silent. Standing high in the ranks of the police, he was
not sure how closely he might ally himself with this avowed leader of
the evil-doers, who announced the pillage of a metropolis. She took his
silence for consent or approval, for she jauntily continued:

"The house-maid has told me all they are hatching. They have a chaise
always ready and passports to mask the departure of the young man as a
clerk going abroad. But for precaution, they will not have him go to the
train at the depot; he might be questioned and the discrepancies in the
passport be perceived. The chaise is to convey him down the line, and he
will get on the cars at a rural depot where the gendarme and
ticket-seller will be dull and easily hoodwinked."

"Very neat," said Von Sendlingen, appreciating the plan at its due
value. "I always said old Daniels was no fool."

"What more easy than to post a couple of the horse patrol on the
road--young, hot-headed fellows with restless fingers on the triggers?
The youth will certainly refuse to surrender, whereupon, bang, bang! he
falls into the ditch with a brace of bullets in his body. You and I will
have an enemy the less. This is not the way I planned it in my dreams,
but we must take our revenge with the sauce fate serves it up to us 'on
the table of Fact.'"

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