'Then read this,' said Rodin, drawing from his pocket a letter, which he handed to M. Hardy.
Casting now for the first time a glance at M. de Blessac, the manufacturer drew back a step, terrified at the death-like paleness of this man, who, struck dumb with shame, could not find a word to justify himself; for he was far from possessing the audacious effrontery necessary to carry him through his treachery.
'Marcel!' cried M. Hardy, in alarm, and deeply agitated by this unexpected blow. 'Marcel! how pale you are! you do not answer!'
'Marcel! this, then, is M. de Blessac?' cried Rodin, feigning the most painful surprise. 'Oh, sir, if I had known —'
'But don't you hear this man, Marcel?' cried M. Hardy. 'He says that you have betrayed me infamously.' He seized the hand of M. de Blessac. That hand was cold as ice. 'Oh, God! Oh God!' said M. Hardy, drawing back in horror: 'he makes no answer!'
'Since I am in presence of M. de Blessac,' resumed Rodin, 'I am forced to ask him, if he can deny having addressed many letters to the Rue du Milieu des Ursins, at Paris under cover of M. Rodin.'
M. de Blessac remained dumb. M. Hardy, still unwilling to believe what he saw and heard, convulsively tore open the letter, which Rodin had just delivered to him, and read the first few lines—interrupting the perusal with exclamations of grief and amazement. He did not require to finish the letter, to convince himself of the black treachery of M. de Blessac. He staggered; for a moment his senses seemed to abandon him. The horrible discovery made him giddy, and his head swam on his first look down into that abyss of infamy. The loathsome letter dropped from his trembling hands. But soon indignation, rage, and scorn succeeded this moment of despair, and rushing, pale and terrible, upon M. de Blessac: 'Wretch!' he exclaimed, with a threatening gesture. But, pausing as in the act to strike: 'No!' he added, with fearful calmness. 'It would be to soil my hands.'
He turned towards Rodin, who had approached hastily, as if to interpose. 'It is not worth while chastising a wretch,' said M. Hardy; 'But I will press your honest hand, sir—for you have had the courage to unmask a traitor and a coward.'
'Sir!' cried M. de Blessac, overcome with shame; 'I am at your orders—and—'
He could not finish. The sound of voices was heard behind the door, which opened violently, and an aged woman entered, in spite of the efforts of the servant, exclaiming in an agitated voice: 'I tell you, I must speak instantly to your master.'
On hearing this voice, and at sight of the pale, weeping woman, M. Hardy, forgetting M. de Blessac, Rodin, the infamous treachery, and all, fell back a step, and exclaimed: 'Madame Duparc! you here! What is the matter?'
'Oh, sir! a great misfortune—'
'Margaret!' cried M. Hardy, in a tone of despair.
'She is gone, sir!'
'Gone!' repeated M. Hardy, as horror-struck as if a thunderbolt had fallen at his feet. 'Margaret gone!'
'All is discovered. Her mother took her away—three days ago!' said the unhappy woman, in a failing voice.
'Gone! Margaret! It is not true. You deceive me,' cried M. Hardy. Refusing to hear more, wild, despairing, he rushed out of the house, threw himself into his carriage, to which the post-horses were still harnessed, waiting for M. de Blessac, and said to the postilion: 'To Paris! as fast as you can go!'
As the carriage, rapid as lightning, started upon the road to Paris, the wind brought nearer the distant sound of the war-song of the Wolves, who were rushing towards the factory. In this impending destruction, see Rodin's subtle hand, administering his fatal blows to clear his way up to the chair of St. Peter to which he aspired. His tireless, wily course can hardly be darker shadowed by aught save that dread coming horror the Cholera, whose aid he evoked, and whose health the Bacchanal Queen wildly drank.
That once gay girl, and her poor famished sister; the fair patrician and her Oriental lover; Agricola, the workman, and his veteran father; the smiling Rose-Pompon, and the prematurely withered Jacques Rennepont; Father d'Aigrigny, the mock priest; and Gabriel, the true disciple; with the rest that have been named and others yet to be pictured, in the blaze of the bolts of their life's paths, will be seen in the third and concluding part of this romance entitled,
'THE WANDERING JEW: REDEMPTION.'
BOOK VIII.
PART THIRD.—THE REDEMPTION.
I. The Wandering Jew's Chastisement II. The Descendants of
the Wandering Jew III. The Attack IV. The Wolves and the
Devourers V. The Return VI. The Go-Between VII. Another
Secret VIII. The Confession IX. Love X. The Execution XI.
The Champs-Elysees XII. Behind the Scenes XIII. Up with the
Curtain XIV. Death
CHAPTER I. THE WANDERING JEW'S CHASTISEMENT.
'Tis night—the moon is brightly shining, the brilliant stars are sparkling in a sky of melancholy calmness, the shrill whistlings of a northerly wind—cold, bleak, and evil-bearing—are increasing: winding about, and bursting into violent blasts, with their harsh and hissing gusts, they are sweeping the heights of Montmartre. A man is standing on the very summit of the hill; his lengthened shadow, thrown out by the moon's pale beams, darkens the rocky ground in the distance. The traveller is surveying the huge city lying at his feet—the City of Paris—from whose profundities are cast up its towers, cupolas, domes, and steeples, in the bluish moisture of the horizon; while from the very centre of this sea of stones is rising a luminous vapor, reddening the starry azure of the sky above. It is the distant light of a myriad lamps which at night, the season for pleasure, is illuminating the noisy capital.
'No!' said the traveller, 'it will not be. The Lord surely will not suffer it. Twice is quite enough. Five centuries ago, the avenging hand of the Almighty drove me hither from the depths of Asia. A solitary wanderer, I left in my track more mourning, despair, disaster, and death, than the innumerable armies of a hundred devastating conquerors could have produced. I then entered this city, and it was decimated. Two centuries ago that inexorable hand which led me through the world again conducted me here; and on that occasion, as on the previous one, that scourge, which at intervals the Almighty binds to my footsteps, ravaged this city, attacking first my brethren, already wearied by wretchedness and toil. My brethren! through me—the laborer of Jerusalem, cursed by the Lord, who in my person cursed the race of laborers—a race always suffering, always disinherited, always slaves, who like me, go on, on, on, without rest or intermission, without recompense, or hope; until at length, women, men, children, and old men, die under their iron yoke of self-murder, that others in their turn then take up, borne from age to age on their willing but aching shoulders. And here again, for the third time, in the course of five centuries, I have arrived at the summit of one of the hills which overlooks the city; and perhaps I bring again with me terror, desolation, and death. And this unhappy city, intoxicated in a whirl of joys, and nocturnal revelries, knows nothing about it—oh! it knows not that I am at its very gate. But no! no! my presence will not be a source of fresh calamity to it. The Lord, in His unsearchable wisdom, has brought me hither across France, making me avoid on my route all but the humblest villages, so that no increase of the funeral knell has, marked my journey. And then, moreover, the spectre has left me—that spectre, livid and green, with its deep bloodshot eyes. When I touched the soil of France, its moist and icy hand abandoned mine—it disappeared. And yet I feel the atmosphere of death surrounding me still. There is no cessation; the biting gusts of this sinister wind, which envelop me in their breath, seem by their envenomed breath to propagate the scourge. Doubtless the anger of the Lord is appeased. Maybe, my presence here is meant only as a threat, intending to bring those to their senses whom it ought to intimidate. It must be so; for were it otherwise, it would, on the contrary, strike a loud-sounding blow of greater terror, casting at once dread
