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

is no miracle about it. I am not going to try to persuade you that I was that painter’s model and that I am four hundred years old. No: that is merely the face of the Virgin Mary; and it is a copy of a fragment of the Holy Family of Bernadino Luini, a Milanese painter and a pupil of Leonardo da Vinci.”

Then, with a sudden gravity, and without giving her adversary time to breathe, she said to him: “You understand now what I am driving at, don’t you, Beaumagnan? Between the Virgin of Luini, the young girl of Moscow and myself, there is that elusive, marvellous, and yet undeniable bond, a likeness⁠—an absolute likeness.⁠ ⁠… Three faces in one. Three faces which are not those of three different women, but which are the face of the same woman. Then why do you refuse to admit that the same phenomenon, after all a perfectly natural phenomenon, should not reproduce itself in other circumstances, and that the woman whom you saw in your bedroom was not me, but another woman who resembles me so closely as to deceive you. Another woman who knew and murdered your friends Saint-Hébert and d’Isneauval?”

“I saw.⁠ ⁠… I saw!” protested Beaumagnan, who had come so close to her that he almost touched her, and he drew himself up, pale as death and quivering with indignation. “I saw! I saw with my eyes!”

“Your eyes also see the portrait of twenty-five years ago and the miniature of eighty years ago, and the picture of four hundred years ago. Is that me too?”

She presented to Beaumagnan’s gaze her young face in all its fresh beauty, that perfect row of white teeth, her delicately tinted, rounded cheeks, her clear and limpid child’s eyes.

Weakening, he stammered: “T-T-There are moments, sorceress, when I b-b-believe in this absurdity. With you one never knows! Look: the woman of the miniature has, low down on her bare shoulders, on the white skin of her bosom, a black mark. That mark, it is there, low down on your shoulder.⁠ ⁠… I have seen it there.⁠ ⁠… Come.⁠ ⁠… Show it to the others and let them see it too and be edified!”

He was livid and the sweat was trickling down his forehead. He stretched out his hand towards her high necked bodice. But she thrust it back, and speaking with considerable dignity, she said:

“That’s enough, Beaumagnan. You don’t know what you’re doing and you haven’t known for months. Listening to you just now I was simply amazed, for you spoke of me as having been your mistress, and I haven’t been your mistress at all. It’s all very fine to beat your bosom in public, but it is also necessary that the confession should be the truth. You hadn’t the courage to tell the truth. The demon of pride forbade you to admit the humiliating check you received; and like a coward, you have let them believe in a thing that never happened. During the months you were crawling at my feet you entreated and threatened without your lips having ever once brushed my hand. That’s the secret of your behavior and your hate.

“Failing to move me, you tried to destroy me and for your friends you painted a frightful picture of me as criminal, spy, and sorceress. Yes, as sorceress! A man like you, to use your own words, could not fail; and if you did fail, it could have been brought about by the action of diabolical witchcraft. No, Beaumagnan: you no longer know what you are doing, or what you are saying. You saw me in your bedroom substituting the cachet which was to poison you, did you? Come now, by what right do you invoke the testimony of your eyes? Your eyes? But they were obsessed by my image; and that other woman showed you a face which was not her own, but mine, and you could not help seeing it. Yes, Beaumagnan: I repeat it, the other woman.⁠ ⁠… There is another woman on the path we are all of us following.⁠ ⁠… There’s another woman who has inherited certain documents from Cagliostro and who also uses the names that he assumed. Marquise de Belmonte, Countess de F.⁠ ⁠… look for her, Beaumagnan. For she it was whom you saw; and it is really upon the stupidest hallucination of a deranged brain that you have reared this structure of so many lying accusations against me. In fact all this business is merely a childish farce; and I was quite right to remain unmoved in the midst of you all, as an innocent woman in the first place, and in the second place as a woman who was in no danger. In spite of your airs of judges and torturers and in spite of the enormous personal interest each of you has in success of your common enterprise, you are at bottom honorable men who would never dare to murder me. You would perhaps, Beaumagnan; because you’re a fanatic who lives in terror of me. But you would have to find here executioners capable of obeying you. And there are none here. Then what are you going to do? Imprison me? Shut me up in some out-of-the-way corner. If that amuses you, do so. But you may make up your minds that there is no cell from which I cannot escape as easily as you can leave the room. So go now: judge me and sentence me. For my part, I am not going to say another word.”

She sat down, pushed up her veil, and setting her elbow on the arm of the bench, rested her face on her hand. She had played her part. She had spoken without any vehemence but with a profound conviction, and in a few sentences, of a really irrefutable logic, she had connected the accusation brought against her with this inexplicable legend of longevity which was the keynote of the affair.

In effect she had said: “It all holds together; and you yourselves have