The Crystal Stopper by Maurice Leblanc (good book club books .txt) 📗

“Really!”

Lupin hesitated for a few moments and then said with a smile:

“My dear fellow, I will let you into a secret that will make me seem ridiculous in your eyes. But you know that I have always been as sentimental as a schoolboy and as silly as a goose. Well, on the evening when I went back to Clarisse Mergy and told her the news of the day—part of which, for that matter, she already knew—I felt two things very thoroughly. One was that I entertained for her a much deeper feeling than I thought; the other that she, on the contrary, entertained for me a feeling which was not without contempt, not without a rankling grudge nor even a certain aversion.”

“Nonsense! Why?”

“Why? Because Clarisse Mergy is an exceedingly honest woman and because I am... just Arsene Lupin.”

“Oh!”

“Dear me, yes, an attractive bandit, a romantic and chivalrous cracksman, anything you please. For all that, in the eyes of a really honest woman, with an upright nature and a well-balanced mind, I am only the merest riff-raff.”

I saw that the wound was sharper than he was willing to admit, and I said:

“So you really loved her?”

“I even believe,” he said, in a jesting tone, “that I asked her to marry me. After all, I had saved her son, had I not?... So... I thought. What a rebuff!... It produced a coolness between us... Since then...”

“You have forgotten her?”

“Oh, certainly! But it required the consolations of one Italian, two Americans, three Russians, a German grand-duchess and a Chinawoman to do it!”

“And, after that...?”

“After that, so as to place an insuperable barrier between myself and her, I got married.”

“Nonsense! You got married, you, Arsene Lupin?”

“Married, wedded, spliced, in the most lawful fashion. One of the greatest names in France. An only daughter. A colossal fortune... What! You don’t know the story? Well, it’s worth hearing.”

And, straightway, Lupin, who was in a confidential vein, began to tell me the story of his marriage to Angelique de Sarzeau-Vendome, Princesse de Bourbon-Conde, to-day Sister Marie-Auguste, a humble nun in the Visitation Convent... [*]

* See The Confessions of Arsene Lupin By Maurice Leblanc Translated by Alexander Teixeira de Mattos

But, after the first few words, he stopped, as though his narrative had suddenly ceased to interest him, and he remained pensive.

“What’s the matter, Lupin?”

“The matter? Nothing.”

“Yes, yes... There... now you’re smiling... Is it Daubrecq’s secret receptacle, his glass eye, that’s making you laugh?”

“Not at all.”

“What then?”

“Nothing, I tell you... only a memory.”

“A pleasant memory?”

“Yes!... Yes, a delightful memory even. It was at night, off the Ile de Re, on the fishing-smack in which Clarisse and I were taking Gilbert away.... We were alone, the two of us, in the stern of the boat... And I remember ... I talked... I spoke words and more words... I said all that I had on my heart... And then... then came silence, a perturbing and disarming silence.”

“Well?”

“Well, I swear to you that the woman whom I took in my arms that night and kissed on the lips—oh, not for long: a few seconds only, but no matter!—I swear before heaven that she was something more than a grateful mother, something more than a friend yielding to a moment of susceptibility, that she was a woman also, a woman quivering with emotion ...” And he continued, with a bitter laugh, “Who ran away next day, never to see me again.”

He was silent once more. Then he whispered:

“Clarisse... Clarisse... On the day when I am tired and disappointed and weary of life, I will come to you down there, in your little Arab house ... in that little white house, Clarisse, where you are waiting for me...”

End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Crystal Stopper, by Maurice LeBlanc