an important secret, and he decided to carry out his duty at all costs.
So he threw the envelope in his bag, shut it up, and answered:
“No, I can’t, Mr. Mayor. As soon as ever it’s been posted to the judge, I can’t do anything about it.”
Renardet’s heart contracted with a frightful anguish.
“But you know me quite well,” he babbled. “You can recognise my writing itself. I need that letter, I tell you.”
“I can’t do it.”
“Come, Médéric, you know that I’m not the sort of man to deceive you, and I tell you I need it.”
“No, I can’t.”
A sudden anger clouded Renardet’s violent mind.
“You’d better mind what you’re doing, damn you: I mean what I say and well you know it, and I can lose your job for you, my good man, and that before you’re much older, too. Besides, I’m mayor of the district after all, and I order you now to give me that letter.”
The postman answered firmly: “No, I can’t do it, Mr. Mayor.”
Then Renardet lost his head; he seized him by the arm and tried to snatch his bag; but the man shook himself free and, stepping back, lifted his thick holly stick. He was quite unmoved. “Don’t lay a hand on me, Mr. Mayor,” he said deliberately, “or I’ll lay this across you. Be careful. I intend to do my duty.”
Renardet felt that he was lost; suddenly he became humble, soft-voiced, imploring like a tearful child.
“Come, come, my friend, give me that letter, I’ll reward you, I’ll give you some money, wait, wait, I’ll give you a hundred francs—do you hear?—a hundred francs.”
The man swung on his heels and began to walk off.
Renardet followed him, panting, babbling.
“Médéric, Médéric, listen, I’ll give you a thousand francs—do you hear?—a thousand francs.”
The other man held on his way, without a word. Renardet went on: “I’ll make your fortune … do you hear? I’ll give you anything you like. … Fifty thousand francs. … Fifty thousand francs for that letter. … What do you say to that? You don’t want it? Well, a hundred thousand francs … do you understand? … a hundred thousand francs … a hundred thousand francs.”
The postman turned round, his face hard and his glance unrelenting. “And that’ll do, and I’ll take care to repeat to the judge all you’ve just been saying to me.”
Renardet stopped dead. It was all over. He had no hope left. He turned round and rushed towards the house, running like a hunted animal.
And now Médéric himself stood still and regarded his flight in amazement. He saw the mayor re-enter his house, and he went on waiting in the certain expectation of some astonishing happening.
And before long, indeed, the tall figure of Renardet appeared at the summit of Renard’s tower. He ran round the flat parapet like a madman; then he grasped the flagstaff and shook it furiously without managing to break it; then all at once, his hands flung out like a swimmer making a dive, he leaped into space.
Médéric rushed to his help. As he crossed the park, he saw the woodcutters going to work. He hailed them with shouts of the accident; and at the foot of the walls they found a bleeding body with its head crushed on a rock. The Brindille flowed round the rock, and just here, where its waters widened out, clear and calm, they saw, trickling through the water, a long scarlet thread of blood mixed with brains.
The Wreck
It was yesterday, December the thirty-first.
I had just lunched with my old friend, Georges Garin. The servant brought him a letter covered with seals and foreign stamps.
“May I?” Georges asked.
“Certainly.”
And he began to read eight pages written in a large English hand and crossed in all directions. He read it slowly with a grave intentness, and the deep interest we take in the things that lie near our hearts.
Then he placed the letter on a corner of the chimneypiece and said:
“Well, that’s a queer story and one I’ve never told you; a love story too, and it happened to me. A queer New Year’s Day I had, that year. It’s twenty years since. … I was thirty then, and now I’m fifty!
“In those days I was an inspector of the Maritime Insurance Company that today I direct. I had arranged to spend New Year’s Day on holiday in Paris, since it’s usual to keep holiday that day, when I had a letter from the director ordering me to set out immediately for the island of Ré, where a three-master of St. Nazaire, insured by us, had run aground. It was then eight o’clock in the morning. I reached the Company’s offices at ten to receive my orders, and the same evening I took the express, which landed me at La Rochelle the following day, December the thirty-first.
“I had two hours to spare before going aboard the boat belonging to Ré, the Jean-Guiton. I took a walk round the town. La Rochelle really is a fantastic and strangely individual town, with its twisting labyrinthine streets, where the pavements run under endless galleries with covered arcades, like those of the Rue de Rivoli; but these stooping galleries and arcades are low and mysterious and look as if they had been built and left there as a setting for conspirators, the ancient and impressive setting of old wars, heroic, savage wars of religion. It is indeed the old Huguenot city, grave, discreet, not superbly built, and with none of those splendid monuments that make Rouen so magnificent, but remarkable by virtue of its whole air of austerity and a lurking cunning that it wears, this city of hard-fought battles, fated to hatch fantastic causes, this town which saw the rise of the Calvinist faith, and gave birth to the conspiracy of the four sergeants.
“When I had wandered for some time through these odd streets, I went aboard a little steam tug, black and tubby, which was to take me to the island of Ré. She moved out, in an irritated sort
