813 - Maurice LeBlanc (best short novels of all time TXT) 📗

silky eyelids with the long black lashes. But how she seemed to feel that look of love which sought for hers! How she quivered under that impalpable caress!

“She loves him… she loves him,” thought Lupin, burning with jealousy.

And, when Pierre made a movement:

“Oh, the villain! If he dares to touch her, I will kill him!”

Then, realizing the disorder of his reason and striving to combat it, he said to himself:

“What a fool I am! What, you, Lupin, letting your self go like this!… Look here, it’s only natural that she should love him… Yes, of course, you expected her to show a certain emotion at your arrival… a certain agitation… You silly idiot, you’re only a thief, a robber… whereas he is a prince and young…”

Pierre had not stirred further. But his lips moved and it seemed as though Dolores were waking. Softly, slowly, she raised her lids, turned her head a little and her eyes met the young man’s eyes with the look that offers itself and surrenders itself and is more intense than the most intense of kisses.

What followed came suddenly and unexpectedly, like a thunder-clap. In three bounds, Lupin rushed into the drawing-room, sprang upon the young man, flung him to the ground and, with one hand on his rival’s chest, beside himself with anger, turning to Mrs. Kesselbach, he cried:

“But don’t you know? Hasn’t he told you, the cheat?… And you love him, you love (hat! Does he look like a grand-duke? Oh, what a joke!”

He grinned and chuckled like a madman, while Dolores gazed at him in stupefaction:

“He, a grand-duke! Hermann IV., Grand-duke of Zweibrucken-Veldenz! A reigning sovereign! Elector of Treves! But it’s enough to make one die of laughing! He! Why, his name is BauprŽ, Gerard BauprŽ, the lowest of ragamuffins… a beggar, whom I picked up in the gutter!… A grand-duke? But it’s I who made him a grand-duke! Ha, ha, ha, what a joke!… If you had seen him cut his little finger… he fainted three times… the milksop!… Ah, you allow yourself to lift your eyes to ladies… and to rebel against the master!… Wait a bit, Grand-duke of Zweibrucken-Veldenz, I’ll show you!”

He took him in his arms, like a bundle, swung him to and fro for a moment and pitched him through the open window:

“Mind the rose trees, grand-duke! There are thorns!”

When he turned round, Dolores was close to him and looking at him with eyes which he had never seen in her before, the eyes of a woman who hates and who is incensed with rage. Could this possibly be Dolores, the weak, ailing Dolores?

She stammered:

“What are you doing?… How dare you?… And he… Then it’s true?… lied to me?…”

“Lied to you?” cried Lupin, grasping the humiliation which she had suffered as a woman. “Lied to you? He, a grand-duke! A puppet, that’s all, a puppet of which I pulled the string… an instrument which I tuned, to play upon as I chose! Oh, the fool, the fool!”

Overcome with renewed rage, he stamped his foot and shook his fist at the open window. And he began to walk up and down the room, flinging out phrases in which all the pent-up violence of his secret thought burst forth:

“The fool! Then he didn’t see what I expected of him? He did not suspect the greatness of the part he was to play? Oh, I shall have to drive it into his noddle by force, I see! Lift up your head, you idiot! You shall be grand-duke by the grace of Lupin! And a reigning sovereign! With a civil list! And subjects to fleece! And a palace which Charlemagne shall rebuild for you! And a master that shall be I, Lupin! Do you understand, you numskull? Lift up your head, dash it! Higher than that! Look up at the sky. remember that a Zweibrucken was hanged for cattle-lifting before the Hohenzollerns were ever heard of. And you are a Zweibrucken, by Jove, no less; and I am here, I, I, Lupin! And you shall be grand-duke, I tell you! A pasteboard grand-duke? Very well! But a grand-duke all the same, quickened with my breath and glowing with my ardor. A puppet? Very well. But a puppet that shall speak my words and make my movements and perform my wishes and realize my dreams… yes… my dreams.”

He stood motionless, as though dazzled by the glory of his conception. Then he went up to Dolores and, sinking his voice, with a sort of mystic exaltation, he said:

“On my left, Alsace-Lorraine… On my right, Baden, Wurtemburg, Bavaria… South Germany… all those disconnected, discontented states, crushed under the heel of the Prussian Charlemagne, but restless and ready to throw off the yoke at any moment… Do you understand all that a man like myself can do in the midst of that, all the aspirations that he can kindle, all the hatred that he can produce, all the angry rebellion that he can inspire?”

In a still lower voice, he repeated:

“And, on my left, Alsace-Lorraine!… Do you fully understand?… Dreams? Not at all!It is the reality of the day after tomorrow, of tomorrow!… Yes… I wish it… I wish it… Oh, all that I wish and all that I mean to do is unprecedented!… Only think, at two steps from the Alsatian frontier! In the heart of German territory! Close to the old Rhine!… A little intrigue, a little genius will be enough to change the surface of the earth. Genius I have… and to spare… And I shall be the master! I shall be the man who directs. The other, the puppet can have the title and the honors… I shall have the power!… I shall remain in the background. No office: I will not be a minister, nor even a chamberlain. Nothing. I shall be one of the servants in the palace, the gardener perhaps… Yes, the gardener… Oh, what a tremendous life! To grow flowers and alter the map of Europe!”

She looked at him greedily, dominated, swayed by the strength of that man. And her eyes expressed an admiration which she did not seek to conceal.

He put his hands on Dolores’ shoulders and said:

“That is my dream. Great as it is, it will be surpassed by the facts: that I swear to you. The Kaiser has already seen what I am good for. One day, he will find me installed in front of him, face to face. I hold all the trumps. Valenglay will act at my bidding… England also… The game is played and won… That is my dream… There is another one…”

He stopped suddenly. Dolores did not take her eyes from him; and an infinite emotion changed every feature of her face.

A vast joy penetrated him as he once more felt, and clearly felt, that woman’s confusion in his presence.He no longer had the sense of being to her… what he was, a thief, a robber; he was a man, a man who loved and whose love roused unspoken feelings in the depths of a friendly soul.

Then he said no more, but he lavished upon her, unuttered, every known word of love and admiration; and he thought of the life which he might lead somewhere, not far from Veldenz, unknown and all-powerful…

A long silence united them. Then she rose and said, softly:

“Go away, I entreat you to go… Pierre shall marry GeneviŽve, I promise you that, but it is better that you should go… that you should not be here… Go. Pierre shall marry GenevieVe.”

He waited for a moment. Perhaps he would rather have had more definite words, but he dared not ask for anything. And he withdrew, dazed, intoxicated and happy to obey, to subject his destiny to hers!

On his way to the door, he came upon a low chair, which he had to move. But his foot knocked against something. He looked down. It was a little pocket-mirror, in ebony, with a gold monogram.

Suddenly, he started and snatched up the mirror. The monogram consisted of two letters interlaced, an “L” and an “M.”

An “L” and an “M!”

“Louis de Malreich,” he said to himself, with a shudder.

He turned to Dolores:

“Where does this mirror come from? Whose is it? It is important that I should…”

She took it from him and looked at it:

“I don’t know… I never saw it before… a servant, perhaps…”

“A servant, no doubt,” he said, “but it is very odd… it is one of those coincidences…”

At that moment, GeneviŽve entered by the other door, and without seeing Lupin, who was hidden by a screen, at once exclaimed:

“Why, there’s your glass, Dolores!… So you have found it, after making me hunt for it all this time!… Where was it?” And the girl went away saying, “Oh, well, I’m very glad it’s found!… How upset you were!… I will go and tell them at once to stop looking for it…”

Lupin had not moved. He was confused, and tried in vain to understand. Why had Dolores not spoken the truth? Why had she not at once said whose the mirror was?

An idea flashed across his mind; and he asked, more or less at random:

“Do you know Louis de Malreich?”

“Yes,” she said, watching him, as though striving to guess the thoughts that beset him.

He rushed toward her, in a state of intense excitement:

“You know him? Who was he? Who is he? Who is he? And why did you not tell me? Where have you known him? Speak… answer… I implore you…”

“No,” she said.

“But you must, you must… Think! Louis de Malreich! The murderer! The monster!… Why did you not tell me?”

She, in turn, placed her hands on Lupin’s shoulders and, in a firm voice, declared: Ç

“Listen, you must never ask me, because I shall never tell… It is a secret which I shall take with me to the grave… Come what may, no one will ever know, no one in the wide world, I swear it!”

He stood before her for some minutes, anxiously, with a confused brain. ‘ J

He remembered Steinweg’s silence and the old man’s terror when Lupin asked him to reveal the terrible secret. Dolores also knew and she also refused to speak.

He went out without a word.

The open air, the sense of space, did him good. He passed out through the park-wall and wandered long over the country. And he soliloquized aloud:

“What does it mean? What is happening? For months and months, fighting hard and acting, I have been pulling the strings of all the characters that are to help me in the execution of my plans; and, during this time, I have completely forgotten to stoop over them and see what is going on in their hearts and brains. I do not know Pierre Leduc, I do not know GeneviŽve, I do not know Dolores… And I have treated them as so many jumping-jacks, whereas they are live persons. And to-day I am stumbling over obstacles.”

He stamped his foot and cried:

“Over obstacles that do not exist! What do I care for the psychological state of GeneviŽve, of Pierre?… I will study that later, at Veldenz, when I have secured their happiness. But Dolores… she knew Malreich and said nothing!… Why? What relation united them? Was she afraid of him? Is she afraid that he will escape from prison and come to revenge himself for an indiscretion on her part?”

At night, he went to the chalet which he had allotted to his own use at the end of the park and dined in a very bad temper, storming at Octave, who waited on him and who was always either too slow or too fast:

“I’m