The Tales of Hoffmann, page 3
In vain did Argenson, the Minister for Public Order, arrest anyone who seemed in the least suspicious; in vain did La Regnie rage and seek to extort confessions; watches and patrols were strengthened in vain – the villains were never detected. Only the precaution of arming yourself to the teeth, and having a lantern carried before you, was of any avail at all; even so, there were cases of servants being distracted and masters being murdered and robbed at the same instant.
What was very peculiar was that, despite investigation and inquiries in every place where jewels could in any way be disposed of, not the slightest trace of the stolen gems ever came to light.
Desgrais was enraged that the villains knew how to elude even his cunning: the quarter of the city in which he happened to be remained quiet, while the murderous thief was stalking his victim in another.
He resorted to theatricals, creating several versions of himself all so similar in walk, stance, speech, figure and facial expression that even the constables did not know who the real Desgrais was. Meanwhile, at the risk of his life, he eavesdropped alone in secret hide-aways, and at a distance followed this person or that who on his instructions was carrying jewellery; but such a person was never attacked; the thieves knew of this trick, too. Desgrais fell into despair.
One morning he went to La Regnie, pale, with face distorted, and quite beside himself.
‘What have you got? What’s the news?’ the president asked him.
‘Ah, Sir,’ Desgrais began, stammering with rage. ‘Last night, not far from the Louvre, the Marquis de la Fare was attacked in my presence.’
‘Heaven and earth!’ cried La Regnie jubilantly. ‘We have them!’
‘Just listen!’ Desgrais interrupted with a bitter laugh. ‘Listen first of all to how things turned out. I was standing outside the Louvre, all Hell pent up inside me, waiting for the devils who are making me a laughing stock. Then there came along, walking uncertainly, constantly looking behind him, a figure who went past me, close by but without seeing me. In the moonlight I recognized the Marquis de la Fare. I was not surprised to see him there, for I knew where he was going. Hardly had he gone a dozen steps past me when a figure sprang up as if out of the ground, threw him down and pounced upon him. Momentarily amazed that the murderer should thus have been delivered into my hands, I cried out and made to leap from my hiding place. But I got entangled in my cloak and fell over. I saw the man make off as if on the wings of the wind. I pulled myself together, ran after him, gave a blast on my horn; from the distance the constables’ whistles answered – everything came alive: the clatter of weapons, hoof-beats from all directions. “To me, to me–Desgrais, Desgrais!” I shouted, so that it echoed down the street. I can still see the man in front of me running in the bright moonlight; he tried to evade me, he turned off, and we came to the Rue Nicaise. As his efforts seemed to be weakening I endeavoured to redouble mine – at the most he was only fifteen paces ahead.’
‘You overtook him, you seized him, the constables came up!’ cried La Regnie with flashing eyes. He gripped Desgrais by the arm as if he were the fleeing murderer.
‘Fifteen paces,’ Desgrais continued in a dull voice, ‘fifteen paces in front of me the man leaped sideways into the shadows and disappeared through the wall.’
‘Disappeared? Through the wall! Are you raving?’ cried La Regnie, taking a step back and throwing up his hands.
‘Call me mad,’ Desgrais continued, rubbing his forehead. ‘Call me raving mad for ever more, a foolish ghostseer, but it is exactly as I am telling you. I was standing before the wall as several constables came running up. The Marquis de la Fare was with them, a drawn sword in his hand. We lit the torches. We groped about the wall: there was no sign of a door, or window, or any other opening. It was a solid, stone-built courtyard wall attached to a house. The people who live there are beyond suspicion. I have had everything inspected again today. It is the Devil himself we are dealing with.’
Desgrais’s adventure was soon common knowledge throughout Paris. Heads were full of stories of sorcery, the evocation of spirits, of the Devil’s alliance with Voisin, Vigoureux and the notorious Le Sage; and, as it lies in our nature to prefer the supernatural and miraculous to sober reason, very soon no one believed anything less than that, as Desgrais had said merely in a moment of ill-humour, the Devil himself was protecting the villains who had sold him their souls. Desgrais’s story became wildly embellished and, illustrated with a woodcut depicting the Devil sinking into the ground in front of the startled Desgrais, was printed and sold at every street corner; it was sufficient to drain the constables of courage, and they now roamed the streets quaking and quailing, festooned with amulets and drenched in holy water.
Argenson saw the efforts of the Chambre ardente foundering, and approached the King, asking him to create a new court with still wider powers; but the King, convinced he had already given the Chambre ardente too much power and shocked by the innumerable executions demanded by La Regnie, rejected the proposal altogether. A further effort was made to persuade him: in Madame de Maintenon’s chambers, where the King was accustomed to spend his afternoons and, indeed, even work with his ministers until late into the night, a poem was submitted to him on behalf of all the imperilled lovers, who complained that, as gallantry required them to bear an expensive gift to their beloved, they stood in peril of their life on each occasion; honourable and desirable though it might be to spill one’s blood for one’s beloved in chivalrous combat, it was quite otherwise with the treacherous attacks of a murderer, against whom no one could arm himself; and Louis, the star of all love and gallantry, who could rend the dark night with his bright rays and unveil the black secret which lurked therein, the godly knight who smote down his enemy, would even now flash his victorious, blazing sword and, like Hercules with the Lernaean Hydra, like Theseus with the Minotaur, do battle with the menacing evil which destroyed all pleasure in love and darkened all joy in sorrow, in wretched grief. The poem conveyed how the lover, creeping on his secret way to his beloved, was filled with such fear and distress that his anxiety killed all joy in love, every beautiful adventure in gallantry. And as it ended in grandiloquent praise for Louis XIV, the King could not fail to read it with satisfaction. He turned briskly to Madame Maintenon without taking his eyes from the paper, read the poem again aloud and then asked, smiling, what she thought of the desires of the imperilled lovers. Madame Maintenon, true to her serious nature and, as always, with a certain show of piety, replied that secret, forbidden paths did not merit special protection, but that the dreadful criminals did merit special measures for their extermination. The King, unhappy with such an indecisive answer, folded the paper and was about to rejoin his Secretary of State, who was at work in another room, when his eyes happened to light on Mademoiselle Scudery, who was present and had just taken her seat in a small armchair close to Madame Maintenon. He stepped over to her; his smile, which had vanished, now reappeared and, standing before the lady and again unfolding the poem, he said mildly: ’The Marquise wishes to know nothing of the gallantries of our enamoured gentlemen and is avoiding my question. But you, Mademoiselle, what do you think of this poetic petition?’
Mademoiselle de Scudery rose respectfully from her chair, a fleeting blush like the glow of evening passed over the pale cheeks of the worthy old lady, and, curtseying low, she said with downcast eyes:
‘Un amant qui craint les voleurs
n’est point digne d’amour.’
The King, amazed at the chivalrous spirit of these words, which annihilated the whole poem and its tedious tirade, cried with flashing eyes: ‘By Saint Denis, you are right, Mademoiselle! No measure which strikes the innocent with the guilty shall shelter cowardice: let Argenson and La Regnie do their duty!’
All the horror of the times was depicted by Martinière in the vividest of colours when, the next morning, she related to her mistress what had happened the previous night and, with much quaking, handed over to her the mysterious casket. Both she and Baptiste – who, standing in a corner as white as a sheet and twisting his nightcap in his hands with anxiety, could scarcely utter a word – begged Mademoiselle in the most pathetic way for heaven’s sake to open the box only with the utmost caution.
Mademoiselle Scudery, weighing the locked secret in her hand and examining it, said with a smile: ‘You look like a couple of ghosts! That I am not rich, that I have no treasures worth murdering for, is as well known to those evil assassins – who, as you yourself said, spy into the innermost corners – as it is to you and me. Can they be after my life? Who can be interested in the death of a person of seventy-three who has pursued scoundrels and disturbers of the peace only in novels she herself has written, who writes mediocre verses incapable of arousing envy, who will leave nothing behind but the wardrobe of an old maid who occasionally went to Court and a couple of dozen books with gilded edges! And you, Martinière, you can make the stranger sound as terrifying as you like, yet I cannot believe he had any evil intent in mind.’
Martinière started back three paces, Baptiste sank almost to his knees with a dull ‘Ah!’, as their mistress pressed a protruding knob and the lid of the box sprang noisily open.
How astonished Mademoiselle was as in the box there sparkled up at her a pair of golden bracelets, richly set with jewels, and an identical necklace. She took out the jewellery, and as she praised the beautiful workmanship of the necklace, Martinière stared at the expensive bracelets and cried over and over again that even the conceited Montespan did not possess such finery.
‘But what is it supposed to be, what does it mean?’ said Mademoiselle Scudery. At that moment she saw a folded note in the bottom of the box; but hardly had she read what it contained than the note fell from her trembling hand, she threw a glance up to heaven, and sank back into the armchair. Terrified, Martinière and Baptiste ran to her side.
‘Oh!’ she cried, in a voice half-choked with tears. ‘Oh, the insult! Oh! the deep humiliation! Must this happen to me at my age? Have I behaved in a silly frivolous way, like a young, witless thing? Oh God, must words uttered half in jest bear such dreadful significance? I, who have been true to virtue and piety, irreproachable since childhood, must I then face such an accusation?’
Mademoiselle held her handkerchief to her eyes and sobbed violently, so that Martinière and Baptiste, utterly bewildered, did not know how to help their dear mistress in her distress.
Martinière picked up the note from the floor, and read what was written:
Un amant qui craint les voleurs,
n’est point digne d’ amour.
Your penetrating wit, most esteemed lady, has saved us from great persecution – us, who exercise the right of the strong on the weak and cowardly, and appropriate to ourselves riches which would otherwise have been shamefully squandered. As proof of our gratitude, kindly accept these jewels. They are the most expensive we have procured for some time, although you, dear lady, should be adorned with much finer jewellery than this. We beg you not to withdraw from us your friendship and your gracious remembrance. We Who Are Invisible.
‘Is it possible,’ cried Mademoiselle Scudery, when she had recovered to some extent, ‘is it possible that impudence and wicked mockery can be carried so far?’
The sun was shining brightly through the window-blinds of bright red silk, and made the diamonds which lay on the table by the open box sparkle with a reddish gleam. Looking at them, Mademoiselle Scudery hid her face in horror, and ordered Martinière to take away the frightful jewels, to which the blood of the murdered victim seemed still to cling. Martinière, shutting the necklace and bracelets back in the box, thought that the best thing to do would be to hand them to the Minister of Police and to confide in him everything that had happened – including the alarming appearance of the young man and the handing over of the box.
Mademoiselle Scudery stood and slowly paced the room in silence, as if considering what should now be done. Then she told Baptiste to fetch a sedan chair, and Martinière to dress her: she wanted to go instantly to see the Marquise de Maintenon.
She had herself conveyed to the Marquise at a time when the latter, as Mademoiselle Scudery well knew, was alone in her apartments. She took the box of jewellery with her.
The Marquise wondered greatly when she saw Mademoiselle, usually the epitome of dignity, charm and grace, now enter pale, with face distorted and with faltering steps.
‘What in heaven’s name has happened to you?’ she cried to the poor woman, who, quite beside herself and scarcely capable of standing, made for the armchair which the Marquise pushed towards her. At last, again able to speak, Mademoiselle explained what intolerable indignity that thoughtless jest with which she had responded to the plea from the imperilled lovers had caused her. The Marquise, after she had heard all in detail, thought that Mademoiselle Scudery was taking the extraordinary event much too much to heart, that insults of the rabble could never strike a noble spirit, and finally she asked to look at the jewels.
Mademoiselle Scudery gave her the opened box, and the Marquise could not suppress a cry of amazement when she beheld the gems. She took out the necklace and the bracelets and walked over to the window with them, where she let the sunlight play on them and held the fine gold-work up to her eyes to see clearly the marvellous craft in each small link of the entwined chains.
Suddenly the Marquise turned to Mademoiselle and cried: ‘Do you realize, Mademoiselle, that these bracelets, this necklace, can have been made by no one but René Cardillac?’
René Cardillac was the most skilful goldsmith in Paris, and one of the most artistically gifted and at the same time strangest men of his age. Small in stature but broad-shouldered and strongly built, though well advanced into his fifties Cardillac still had the strength and agility of a young man. He possessed a head of thick, curly red hair, and a strange glance came from his deep-set, green-flashing eyes. His familiarity with the nature of precious stones was such that jewels rated as insignificant came out of his workshop in glittering splendour. He took on every order with a burning zeal, and fixed a price so low it appeared to bear no relationship to the work he did. Then he laboured without rest: he could be heard hammering in his workshop day and night, and often the work would be almost complete when the design would suddenly displease him or he would have doubts about the elegance of the setting – and that would be sufficient for the whole job to be thrown back into the melting pot and started again from scratch. Each item was thus an unsurpassable masterpiece. Now, however, it was scarcely possible to obtain any finished work from him: on a thousand pretexts he put his customers off from week to week, from month to month. In vain he was offered double for the work: he would take not a penny more than the agreed price. At length he had to yield to the customer’s insistence and produce the jewellery: yet as he did so he could not suppress signs of deep vexation, even of rage. If he had to supply a particularly expensive work, worth perhaps many thousands, he was capable of running round as if out of his mind, cursing himself and his work. But as soon as anyone came to him crying: ‘René Cardillac! Won’t you make a necklace for my bride, bracelets for my girl friend…’ he would suddenly stand still, dart a fiery glance at him and ask, rubbing his hands together: ‘What have you got, then?’ The other would pull out a little case, and say: ‘Here are some gems, they’re nothing special, the usual thing, but in your hands…’ Cardillac would not let him finish, but would snatch the little case from him, take out the gems, which really would not be worth much, hold them up to the light, and cry, full of delight: ‘Ho ho! The usual stuff, eh! Not at all! Pretty stones, magnificent stones – just let me make them up! And if a few more Louis mean nothing to you, I will include a couple of little stones which will sparkle to your eyes like the dear sun itself!’
‘I leave everything to you, Master René,’ the other would say, ‘and I will pay whatever you ask.’ Cardillac would then throw himself impetuously at him, hug and kiss him, and say he was perfectly happy again and the work would be ready in a week. He would run headlong home and into his workshop, and hammer away, and in a week a masterpiece would be completed. But when he who had ordered it came to pay the small fee required and wanted to take the finished jewellery away with him, Cardillac would become rude and pig-headed.
‘But Master Cardillac, just think, my wedding day is tomorrow.’
‘What does your wedding matter to me, inquire again in a fortnight.’
‘The jewellery is ready, here is the money – I must have it!’
‘And I tell you I still have a lot of alterations to do and I will not release it today.’
‘And I tell you that if you do not release the jewellery, for which I am willing to pay you double, you shall see me return straightaway with a couple of Argenson’s men!’
‘Now may Satan torment you with a hundred hot pincers and hang three hundredweight on the necklace so that your bride may choke!’
And with that, Cardillac would stuff the jewellery into the bridegroom’s breast pocket, grip him by the arm, throw him out of the room and down the stairs, and would then stand at the window laughing at the poor young fellow limping out of the house holding a handkerchief to his bleeding nose.
It was a mystery why, when he had taken on work with enthusiasm, Cardillac would often suddenly beseech the customer, with every indication of deep agitation, with the most affecting protestations, even with sobs and tears and swearing by the Virgin and all the saints, to release him from it. He had thrown himself at the King’s feet and begged not to have to undertake any more work for him. He had refused Madame de Maintenon’s every order, too; with expressions of horror and disgust he had refused her proposal that he should produce a small ring, embellished with emblems of art, which she intended to give to Racine.
