Memoirs of Arsène Lupin - Maurice Leblanc (books like beach read TXT) 📗

consider this silence either an avowal or a denial,” said Godfrey d’Etigues, turning towards his friends. “What this woman says is of no importance; and it is a waste of time to refute her statements. We’re here to make our decisions, most important decisions, in a matter which we all know in its entirety, but of which certain details are unknown to the majority of us. It is then necessary to run over the main facts. They are set forth as shortly as possible in the memorandum which I am going to read to you, and to which I beg you to give your most earnest attention.”

And he read quietly a document which⁠—at least Ralph had no doubt about⁠—it must have been drawn up by Beaumagnan. It ran:

At the beginning of March, 1870, that is to say, four months before the outbreak of the Franco-Prussian war, among the crowd of strangers who, as was usual every spring, descended on Paris, none excited greater interest than the Countess Cagliostro. Beautiful, charming, lavish of her money, generally alone, but sometimes accompanied by a young man, whom she introduced to people as her brother, everywhere she went, in every house into which she was welcomed, she was the object of the most lively curiosity.

First of all her mere name excited people’s interest, then the truly impressive fashion in which she emphasized her relationship to the famous Cagliostro by her mysterious bearing, by certain miraculous cures she effected, and by the answers she gave to those who consulted her concerning their past or their future. The novel of Alexander Dumas had made Joseph Balsamo, that is to say the Count of Cagliostro, the fashion. Employing the same methods, even more boldly, she boasted that she was Cagliostro’s daughter, declared that she knew the secret of eternal youth, and with a smile spoke of this and that meeting, of this and that event which had befallen her in the days of Napoleon I.

Such was her prestige that she forced open for herself the doors of the Tuileries and appeared at the Court of Napoleon III. People even talked of private séances at which the Empress Eugenie gathered round the beautiful Countess her most faithful intimates. A secret number of that satirical journal, the Charivari, which was instantly suppressed, tells the story of one of the séances in which an occasional collaborator took part. I quote this passage from it:

She is truly a wonderful woman, with something of La Joconde about her. Her expression changes very little but it is very difficult to describe. It is quite as caressing and ingenuous as perverse and cruel. There is a wealth of experience in her gaze and a bitterness in her unchanging smile⁠—such a wealth of experience, indeed, that one is willing to allow her the eighty years she allots to herself. Now and again she draws from her pocket a small golden mirror, lets fall on it two drops from a tiny flask, dries it, and look at herself in it. And once more she is Youth in its most adorable perfection.

When we questioned her about it, she replied:

“This mirror belonged to Cagliostro. For those who look at themselves in it with assured confidence, time stands still. Look: the date is engraved on the back, 1783, and it is followed by four lines which are the list of the four great enigmas. These enigmas which he had set himself the task of solving, he had from the lips of Queen Marie Antoinette herself; and he was wont to say, so at least they told me, that the man who found the key to them would be a King of Kings.”1

“May one hear them?” somebody asked.

“Why not? To know them is not to solve them; and Cagliostro himself hadn’t the time to do so. I can only give you their titles. They are:

“In Robore Fortuna.

“The Flagstone of the Bohemian Kings.

“The Fortunes of the Kings of France.

“The Candlestick with Seven Branches.”

Afterwards she talked to all of us in turn; and to each she made astonishing revelations.

But that was only the prelude; and the Empress, though she refused to put the most trivial question about matters which concerned her personally, asked her to throw some light on the future.

“Would your Majesty be so good as to breathe lightly on this,” said the Countess, holding out the mirror.

And forthwith, after examining the mist that the Queen’s breath had spread over its surface she murmured:

“I see many excellent things.⁠ ⁠… In the summer great war.⁠ ⁠… Victory.⁠ ⁠… The return of the troops under the Arc de Triomphe.⁠ ⁠… They are cheering the Emperor.⁠ ⁠… The Prince Imperial.⁠ ⁠…”

Godfrey d’Etigues folded the paper and went on:

“Such is the document which has been communicated to us. It is a disconcerting document since it was published several weeks before the war it foretold. What was this woman? Who was this adventuress whose dangerous predictions, acting on the somewhat feeble mind of our unfortunate sovereign, played their part in bringing about the catastrophe of 1870? Someone⁠—you will find it in the same number of the Charivari, said to her one day:

“ ‘Granted that you are the daughter of Cagliostro, who was your mother?’

“ ‘For my mother,’ she replied, ‘you must look high among the contemporaries of Cagliostro⁠ ⁠… higher still⁠ ⁠… Yes: that’s right⁠ ⁠… Josephine de Beauharnais, the future wife of Bonaparte, Empress that was to be.’

“The police of Napoleon III could not remain inactive. At the end of June they sent in a report the facts of which were established after a difficult inquiry by one of their best agents. I’ll read it. It runs:

The Signorina’s Italian passport, while making reservations about the date of her birth, describes her as Josephine Pellegrini-Balsamo, Countess of Cagliostro, born at Palermo on the 29th of July, 1788. Having gone to Palermo, I succeeded in discovering the old registers of the Parish of Mortarana; and in one of them, under the date of the 29th