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

“You were like her?”

“You could not tell one from the other. And that was my ruin. She wished to carry out through me her great idea⁠—Cagliostro’s legacy.”

“And had she documents?”

“A scrap of paper⁠ ⁠… the list of the four enigmas. One of her friends had found it in an old book; and it really seemed to be in Cagliostro’s handwriting. She was intoxicated by it and by her success with the Empress Eugenie, from whom she got most of her information. So I had to carry on the work. She put that into my head when I was quite a child. My brain was trained to hold only that idea. That was to be my livelihood⁠—my destiny. I was the daughter of Cagliostro. I was to take up the life she had led, the life he had led a life as brilliant as he leads in the romances in which he figures⁠—the life of an adventuress, adored by everyone and dominating the world. No scruples⁠—no conscience. I was to take vengeance for all that she had suffered. On her deathbed her last words to me were ‘Avenge me.’ ”

Ralph reflected. Then he said: “But your crimes⁠—this lust to kill?”

He could not catch her answer, and again he did not catch it when he said: “Your mother was not the only person to bring you up and equip you for evil. Who was your father?”

He fancied he caught the name of Leonard. But did she mean that Leonard was her father, the man who had been expelled from France in the days of the second empire⁠—it was likely enough⁠—or that Leonard had trained her in crime?

He learned no more. He had loved her; and he had not the heart to force his way into those obscure regions in which evil instincts come to birth and are fostered, in which ferments everything that unbalances, ruins, and disintegrates, all the vices, the vanities, and bloodthirsty appetites, all the cruel and inexorable passions which escape from our control. He asked no more.

Weeping silently, she caught his hands; and he was weak enough to abandon them to her. He felt her kisses and her tears rain on them. Insensibly pity filled his heart. The evil creature became a human being, a woman delivered over to a diseased instinct, the victim of the law of irresistible forces, one whom he ought perhaps to regard with at least a little indulgence.

“Do not drive me from you,” she said. “You are the only being in the world who might have saved me from evil. I felt it at once. There is something so sane and healthy about you. Love is the only thing that has ever appeased me; and I have never loved anyone but you. So if you cast me off⁠—”

Her lips filled Ralph with an infinite languor. Pleasure and desire embellished that dangerous compassion which weakens the wills of men. And perhaps if Josephine had contented herself with that humble caress, he might have succumbed of himself to the temptation to bend down and once again taste the savor of those lips which offered themselves to him. But she raised her head, slipped her arms round his neck, and gazed into his eyes. And that gaze sufficed to enable him to see in her no longer the woman who implored, but the woman who desired to seduce and was employing the tenderness of her eyes and the enchantment of her lips to that end.

Looks link lovers. But Ralph knew so well what lay behind that charming, ingenuous, and dolorous expression. The clearness of the mirror did not redeem all the ugliness and ignominy which he saw so plainly in it. Little by little he recovered. He withdrew from temptation and releasing himself from the siren who enlaced him he said:

“Do you remember, one day on the barge, that we feared one another, as if we were trying to strangle one another? It is the same today. If I fall again into your arms, I am lost. Tomorrow⁠—the day after, it would be death.”

She drew herself up of a sudden hostile and dangerous. Once more pride took possession of her and the storm once more rose suddenly, causing them to pass without any transition from the kind of torpor in which the memory of their love lulled them, to a bitter constraint of enmity and hatred.

“Yes,” Ralph went on. “At the bottom of our hearts, from the very first day, we have been ferocious enemies. Neither of us thought of anything but the defeat of the other. Especially you! I was the rival and intruder. In your brain my image was mixed with the idea of death. Voluntarily or not, you condemned me.”

She shook her head and said in an aggressive tone: “Not till now.”

“But now you have, haven’t you? Only a new fact presents itself; and that is that now I can laugh at you, Josephine! The pupil has become the master; and that was what I wished to demonstrate to you by letting you come here and accepting the battle. I offered myself, alone, to your attack and to the attack of your gang. And now that we are face to face with one another, you can do nothing to me. Defeat all along the line. What? Clarice alive. Myself free. Come, my dear: clear out of my life. You are hopelessly beaten; and I have a contempt for you.”

He flung these insults at her like the blows of a scourge which scarred her. She was deathly pale; her face was distorted; and for the first time her unchangeable beauty showed signs of withering and decay.

“I shall avenge myself,” she said between her clenched teeth.

“Impossible!” said Ralph with a careless laugh. “I have cut your claws. You’re afraid of me. That is the real miracle I have worked today: you are afraid of me.”

“I’ll devote my whole life to avenging myself,” she