The Confessions of Arsène Lupin, Maurice Leblanc [top 10 novels of all time txt] 📗

those points which were trivial and absurd for him, but which were serious for her, and he repeated several times:

“This is terrible⁠ ⁠… this is terrible.⁠ ⁠… I should have anticipated.⁠ ⁠…”

And, suddenly, seized with an idea, he clapped his hands and cried:

“There, I have it! I’m hand in glove with one of the chief figures at the Vatican. The Pope never refuses me anything. I shall obtain an audience and I have no doubt that the Holy Father, moved by my entreaties.⁠ ⁠…”

His plan was so humorous and his delight so artless that Angélique could not help smiling; and she said:

“I am your wife in the eyes of God.”

She gave him a look that showed neither scorn nor animosity, nor even anger; and he realized that she omitted to see in him the outlaw and the evildoer and remembered only the man who was her husband and to whom the priest had bound her until the hour of death.

He took a step toward her and observed her more attentively. She did not lower her eyes at first. But she blushed. And never had he seen so pathetic a face, marked with such modesty and such dignity. He said to her, as on that first evening in Paris:

“Oh, your eyes⁠ ⁠… the calm and sadness of your eyes⁠ ⁠… the beauty of your eyes!”

She dropped her head and stammered:

“Go away⁠ ⁠… go⁠ ⁠…”

In the presence of her confusion, he received a quick intuition of the deeper feelings that stirred her, unknown to herself. To that spinster soul, of which he recognized the romantic power of imagination, the unsatisfied yearnings, the poring over old-world books, he suddenly represented, in that exceptional moment and in consequence of the unconventional circumstances of their meetings, somebody special, a Byronic hero, a chivalrous brigand of romance. One evening, in spite of all obstacles, he, the world-famed adventurer, already ennobled in song and story and exalted by his own audacity, had come to her and slipped the magic ring upon her finger: a mystic and passionate betrothal, as in the days of the Corsair and Hernani.⁠ ⁠… Greatly moved and touched, he was on the verge of giving way to an enthusiastic impulse and exclaiming:

“Let us go away together!⁠ ⁠… Let us fly!⁠ ⁠… You are my bride⁠ ⁠… my wife.⁠ ⁠… Share my dangers, my sorrows and my joys.⁠ ⁠… It will be a strange and vigorous, a proud and magnificent life.⁠ ⁠…”

But Angélique’s eyes were raised to his again; and they were so pure and so noble that he blushed in his turn. This was not the woman to whom such words could be addressed.

He whispered:

“Forgive me.⁠ ⁠… I am a contemptible wretch.⁠ ⁠… I have wrecked your life.⁠ ⁠…”

“No,” she replied, softly. “On the contrary, you have shown me where my real life lies.”

He was about to ask her to explain. But she had opened the door and was pointing the way to him. Nothing more could be spoken between them. He went out without a word, bowing very low as he passed.

A month later, Angélique de Sarzeau-Vendôme, Princesse de Bourbon-Condé, lawful wife of Arsène Lupin, took the veil and, under the name of Sister Marie-Auguste, buried herself within the walls of the Visitation Convent.

On the day of the ceremony, the mother superior of the convent received a heavy sealed envelope containing a letter with the following words:

“For Sister Marie-Auguste’s poor.”

Enclosed with the letter were five hundred banknotes of a thousand francs each.

IX The Invisible Prisoner

One day, at about four o’clock, as evening was drawing in, Farmer Goussot, with his four sons, returned from a day’s shooting. They were stalwart men, all five of them, long of limb, broad-chested, with faces tanned by sun and wind. And all five displayed, planted on an enormous neck and shoulders, the same small head with the low forehead, thin lips, beaked nose and hard and repellent cast of countenance. They were feared and disliked by all around them. They were a money-grubbing, crafty family; and their word was not to be trusted.

On reaching the old barbican-wall that surrounds the Héberville property, the farmer opened a narrow, massive door, putting the big key back in his pocket after his sons had passed in. And he walked behind them, along the path that led through the orchards. Here and there stood great trees, stripped by the autumn winds, and clumps of pines, the last survivors of the ancient park now covered by old Goussot’s farm.

One of the sons said:

“I hope mother has lit a log or two.”

“There’s smoke coming from the chimney,” said the father.

The outhouses and the homestead showed at the end of a lawn; and, above them, the village church, whose steeple seemed to prick the clouds that trailed along the sky.

“All the guns unloaded?” asked old Goussot.

“Mine isn’t,” said the eldest. “I slipped in a bullet to blow a kestrel’s head off.⁠ ⁠…”

He was the one who was proudest of his skill. And he said to his brothers:

“Look at that bough, at the top of the cherry tree. See me snap it off.”

On the bough sat a scarecrow, which had been there since spring and which protected the leafless branches with its idiot arms.

He raised his gun and fired.

The figure came tumbling down with large, comic gestures, and was caught on a big, lower branch, where it remained lying stiff on its stomach, with a great top hat on its head of rags and its hay-stuffed legs swaying from right to left above some water that flowed past the cherry tree through a wooden trough.

They all laughed. The father approved:

“A fine shot, my lad. Besides, the old boy was beginning to annoy me. I couldn’t take my eyes from my plate at meals without catching sight of that oaf.⁠ ⁠…”

They went a few steps farther. They were not more than thirty yards from the house, when the father stopped suddenly and said:

“Hullo! What’s up?”

The sons also had stopped and stood listening. One of them said, under his breath:

“It comes from the house⁠ ⁠… from the linen-room.⁠ ⁠…”

And another