Memoirs of Arsène Lupin, Maurice Leblanc [librera reader txt] 📗

the very second at which I left her, that night, at the door of her house, I ought to have fled to the end of the world. It was already too late. There was no longer in me either courage, or will, or foresight, nothing but the insane desire to see her again. It is true that I disguised this desire in fine phrases: I was accomplishing a duty.⁠ ⁠… It was necessary to know the enemy’s game, to bring home her crimes to her and punish her for them, and so forth.⁠ ⁠… Mere pretexts! In reality at the first assault I had fallen a victim to her fascination; at the first assault I was convinced of her innocence. A smile such as that was clear evidence of a soul of crystal purity.

“Neither the sacred memory of Saint-Hébert, nor that of my poor d’Isneauval cleared my vision. I would not see. I lived for some months in obscurity, tasting the most infamous joys, without even a blush at being an object of reproach and scandal, at renouncing my vows and denying my faith.

“Inconceivable sins in a man like me, I swear it, friends. Nevertheless I committed another which per haps surpasses them all. I was a traitor to our cause. I broke that vow of silence which we took when we formed our union for that common end. This woman knows as much of the great secret as we know ourselves.”

At these words a murmur of indignation ran round the room. Beaumagnan bent his head.

Now Ralph understood better the drama which was unfolding before him; and the characters who were playing their parts in it assumed their right proportion. Country squires, rustics, bumpkins? Yes⁠—without a doubt. But Beaumagnan was there⁠—Beaumagnan who inspired them with his own spirit and filled them with his exaltation. In the middle of these vulgar lives and these absurd figures he stood forth the prophet and the seer. He had forced on them as a duty some conspirator’s task to which he had devoted himself body and soul, as in the old days one devoted oneself to God, and left one’s castle to go on a crusade.

Mystic passions of this kind transform those in whom they burn into heroes or executioners. In Beaumagnan there was a veritable inquisitor. In the fifteenth century he would have persecuted and mangled to tear from the impious the confession of faith.

He had the instinct of domination and the bearing of a man for whom no obstacle exists. Did a woman rise between him and his end? Let her die. If he loved this woman, a public confession absolved him. And those who listened to him succumbed to the ascendancy of this hard master all the more easily because his hardness appeared to be directed quite as much against himself.

Humiliated by the confession of his fall, he was no longer angry; and he continued in a dull voice:

“Why did I fail? I do not know. A man like me ought not to fail. I have not even the excuse of being able to say that she questioned me. She did not. She often talked about the four enigmas mentioned by Cagliostro; and one day almost without knowing what I was doing, I spoke the irreparable words⁠ ⁠… like a wretched weakling⁠ ⁠… just to make myself agreeable⁠ ⁠… just to seem important to her eyes⁠ ⁠… that her smile might grow more tender. I said to myself: ‘She shall be our ally⁠ ⁠… She shall help us with her counsel, with her clearsightedness, refined and heightened by years of practice of divination. I was mad. The intoxication of sin had set my reason tottering.

“The awakening was terrible. About three weeks ago I had to go to Spain on a mission. I said goodbye to her in the morning. In the afternoon, towards three o’clock, having an appointment in the center of Paris I left the set of rooms in which I was living in the Luxembourg. Then it chanced that, having forgotten to give some orders to my man, I returned to my rooms through the courtyard and up the servants’ staircase. My man had gone out and left the kitchen door open. As I came through it, I heard a noise. I went forward quietly. There was someone in my bedroom. It was this woman. I had a good view of her in the looking glass. What was she doing, bending over my trunk? I watched. She opened a small cardboard box which contained the cachets which I take when I’m traveling, to cure my insomnia. She took out one of these cachets and in its place she put another, a cachet which she took from her purse.

“My emotion was so great that I never even dreamt of seizing her. When I grew composed enough to enter the room, she had gone. I could not overtake her.

“I hurried to a chemist and had the cachets analyzed. One of them contained poison enough to destroy me.

“So I had the irrefutable proof. Having been so imprudent as to tell her everything I knew about the secret, I had been condemned. It was just as well, was it not, to clear out of her path a useless witness and an associate who might one day or other take his share of the spoils, or, it might be, reveal the truth, attack the enemy, and vanquish her. Death then. Death⁠—as for Denis Saint-Hébert and George d’Isneauval. A stupid murder for no sufficient reason.

“I wrote from Spain to one of my friends. Some days afterwards certain newspapers announced the death of a Frenchman named Beaumagnan at Madrid.

“From that time I lived in the shadow and followed her step by step. She betook herself first to Rouen, then to Le Havre, then to Dieppe, that is to say to the very places which bound the scene of our researches. From what I had told her she knew that we were on the point of ransacking an ancient Priory in the neighborhood of