Volume II Part 50 (1/2)
We will conduct the reader to the house in the Rue du Temple, the day of the suicide of M. d'Harville, about three o'clock in the afternoon.
Pipelet, the porter, alone in the lodge, was occupied in mending a boot. The chaste porter was dejected and melancholy. As a soldier, in the humiliation of his defeat, pa.s.ses his hand sadly over his scars, Pipelet breathed a profound sigh, stopped his work, and moved his trembling finger over the transverse fracture of his huge hat, made by an insolent hand. Then all the chagrin, inquietude, and fears of Alfred Pipelet were awakened in thinking of the inconceivable and incessant pursuits of the author.
Pipelet had not a very extended or elevated mind; his imagination was not the most lively nor the most poetical, but he possessed a very solid, very logical, very common sense.
Cabrion, a painter, formerly a tenant, had seen fit to make the porter a b.u.t.t of the most audacious practical jokes, inundating him with caricatures, laughable labels, and startling appearances before his unexpectant appalled sight. Unfortunately, by a natural consequence of the rect.i.tude of his judgment, not being able to comprehend practical jokes, Pipelet endeavored to find some reasonable motive for the outrageous conduct of Cabrion, and on this subject he posed himself with a thousand insoluble questions. Thus, sometimes, a new Paschal, he felt himself seized with a vertigo in trying to sound the bottomless abyss which the infernal genius of the painter had dug under his feet. How many times, in the overflowings of his imagination, he had been forced to commune within himself thanks to the frenzied skepticism of Madame Pipelet, who, only looking at facts, and disdaining to seek after causes, grossly considered the incomprehensible conduct of Cabrion toward Alfred as simple comicality.
Pipelet, a serious man, could not admit of such an interpretation; he groaned at the blindness of his wife; his dignity as a man revolted at the thought that he could be the plaything of a combination so vulgar as a _lark!_ He was absolutely convinced that the unheard-of conduct of Cabriori concealed some mysterious plot under a frivolous appearance.
It was to solve this fatal problem that the man in the big hat exhausted his powerful logic. ”I would sooner lay my head on the scaffold,” said this austere man, who, as soon as he touched them, increased immensely the importance of any propositions. ”I would sooner lay my head upon the scaffold than admit that, in the mere intention of a stupid pleasantry, Cabrion could be so obstinately exasperated against me; a _farce_ is only played for the gallery.
Now, in his last undertaking, this obnoxious creature had no witness; he acted alone and in obscurity, as always; he clandestinely introduced himself into the solitude of my lodge to deposit on my forehead a hideous kiss! I ask any disinterested person, for what purpose? It was not from bravado--no one saw him; it was not from pleasure--the laws of nature opposed it; it was not from friends.h.i.+p--I have but one enemy in the world--it is he. It must, then, be acknowledged that there is a mystery there which my reason cannot penetrate! Then to what does this diabolical plot, concerted and pursued with a persistence which alarms me, tend? That I cannot comprehend: it is this impossibility to raise the veil, which, by degrees, is undermining and consuming me.”
Such were the painful reflections of Pipelet at the moment when we present him to our readers. The honest porter had just torn open his bleeding wounds, by carry--his hand mechanically to the fracture of his hat, when a piercing voice, coming from one of the upper stories of the house, made these words resound again: ”Mr. Pipelet, quick!
quick! come up! make haste!”
”I do not know that voice,” said Alfred, after a moment of anxious listening, and he let his arm, inclosed in the boot he was mending, fall on his knees.
”Mr. Pipelet! make haste!” repeated the voice, in a pressing tone.
”That voice is completely strange to me. It is masculine; it calls me, that I can affirm. It is not a sufficient reason that I should abandon my lodge. Leave it--desert it in the absence of my wife--never!” cried Alfred, heroically, ”never!”
”Mr. Pipelet,” said the voice, ”come up quick, Mrs. Pipelet is off in a swoon.”
”Anastasia!” cried Alfred, rising from his seat: then be fell back again, saying to himself, ”child that I am--it is impossible; my wife went out an hour ago. Yes, but might she not have returned without my seeing her? This would be rather irregular; but I must declare that it is possible.”
”Mr. Pipelet, come up; I have your wife in my arms!”
”Some one has my wife in their arms!” said Pipelet, rising abruptly.
”I cannot unlace Mrs. Pipelet all alone!” added the voice.
These words produced a magical effect upon Alfred: his face flushed, his chast.i.ty revolted.
”The masculine and unknown voice speaks of unlacing Anastasia!” cried he: ”I oppose it, I forbid it!” and he rushed out of the lodge; but on the threshold he stopped.
Pipelet found himself in one of those horribly critical, and eminently dramatical positions, so often described by poets. On the one hand, duty retained him in his lodge: on the other, his chaste and conjugal susceptibility called him to the upper stories of the house. In the midst of these terrible perplexities, the voice said:
”You don't come, Mr. Pipelet? so much the worse--I cut the strings, and I shut my eyes!”
This threat decided Pipelet.
”Mossieur!” cried he, in a stentorian voice, ”in the name of honor I conjure you to cut nothing--to leave my wife intact! I come!” and Alfred rushed upstairs, leaving, in his alarm, the door of the lodge open. Hardly had he left it, than a man entered quickly, took from the table a hammer, jumped on the bed, at the back part of the obscure alcove, and vanished. This operation was done so quickly, that the porter, remembering almost immediately that he had left the door open, returned precipitately, shut it, and carried off the key, without suspecting that any one could have entered in this interval. After this measure of precaution, Alfred started again to the a.s.sistance of Anastasia, crying, with all his strength, ”Cut nothing--I am coming-- here I am--I place my wife under the safeguard of your delicacy!”
Hardly had he mounted the first flight, before he heard the voice of Anastasia, not from the upper story, but in the alley.
The voice, shriller than ever cried, ”Alfred! here you leave the lodge alone! Where are you, old gadabout?”
At this moment, Pipelet was about placing his right foot on the landing-place of the first story; he remained petrified, his head turned toward the bottom of the stairs, his mouth open, his eyes fixed, his foot raised.
”Alfred!” cried Mrs. Pipelet anew.