'My dear Madame Lepas,if there is anything in your story of a nature to compromise me,'I said,interrupting the flow of her words,'I would not hear it for all the world.'
'You need have no fears,'said she;'you will see.'
Her eagerness made me suspect that I was not the only person to whom my worthy landlady had communicated the secret of which I was to be the sole possessor,but I listened.
'Monsieur,'said she,'when the Emperor sent the Spaniards here,prisoners of war and others,I was required to lodge at the charge of the Government a young Spaniard sent to Vendome on parole.
Notwithstanding his parole,he had to show himself every day to the sub-prefect.He was a Spanish grandee--neither more nor less.He had a name in /os/and /dia/,something like Bagos de Feredia.I wrote his name down in my books,and you may see it if you like.Ah!he was a handsome young fellow for a Spaniard,who are all ugly they say.He was not more than five feet two or three in height,but so well made;and he had little hands that he kept so beautifully!Ah!you should have seen them.He had as many brushes for his hands as a woman has for her toilet.He had thick,black hair,a flame in his eye,a somewhat coppery complexion,but which I admired all the same.He wore the finest linen I have ever seen,though I have had princesses to lodge here,and,among others,General Bertrand,the Duc and Duchesse d'Abrantes,Monsieur Descazes,and the King of Spain.He did not eat much,but he had such polite and amiable ways that it was impossible to owe him a grudge for that.Oh!I was very fond of him,though he did not say four words to me in a day,and it was impossible to have the least bit of talk with him;if he was spoken to,he did not answer;it is a way,a mania they all have,it would seem.
'He read his breviary like a priest,and went to mass and all the services quite regularly.And where did he post himself?--we found this out later.--Within two yards of Madame de Merret's chapel.As he took that place the very first time he entered the church,no one imagined that there was any purpose in it.Besides,he never raised his nose above his book,poor young man!And then,monsieur,of an evening he went for a walk on the hill among the ruins of the old castle.It was his only amusement,poor man;it reminded him of his native land.They say that Spain is all hills!
'One evening,a few days after he was sent here,he was out very late.I was rather uneasy when he did not come in till just on the stroke of midnight;but we all got used to his whims;he took the key of the door,and we never sat up for him.He lived in a house belonging to us in the Rue des Casernes.Well,then,one of our stable-boys told us one evening that,going down to wash the horses in the river,he fancied he had seen the Spanish Grandee swimming some little way off,just like a fish.When he came in,I told him to be careful of the weeds,and he seemed put out at having been seen in the water.
'At last,monsieur,one day,or rather one morning,we did not find him in his room;he had not come back.By hunting through his things,I found a written paper in the drawer of his table,with fifty pieces of Spanish gold of the kind they call doubloons,worth about five thousand francs;and in a little sealed box ten thousand francs worth of diamonds.The paper said that in case he should not return,he left us this money and these diamonds in trust to found masses to thank God for his escape and for his salvation.
'At that time I still had my husband,who ran off in search of him.
And this is the queer part of the story:he brought back the Spaniard's clothes,which he had found under a big stone on a sort of breakwater along the river bank,nearly opposite la Grande Breteche.
My husband went so early that no one saw him.After reading the letter,he burnt the clothes,and,in obedience to Count Feredia's wish,we announced that he had escaped.
'The sub-prefect set all the constabulary at his heels;but,pshaw!
he was never caught.Lepas believed that the Spaniard had drowned himself.I,sir,have never thought so;I believe,on the contrary,that he had something to do with the business about Madame de Merret,seeing that Rosalie told me that the crucifix her mistress was so fond of that she had it buried with her,was made of ebony and silver;now in the early days of his stay here,Monsieur Feredia had one of ebony and silver which I never saw later.--And now,monsieur,do not you say that I need have no remorse about the Spaniard's fifteen thousand francs?Are they not really and truly mine?'
'Certainly.--But have you never tried to question Rosalie?'said I.
'Oh,to be sure I have,sir.But what is to be done?That girl is like a wall.She knows something,but it is impossible to make her talk.'
After chatting with me for a few minutes,my hostess left me a prey to vague and sinister thoughts,to romantic curiosity,and a religious dread,not unlike the deep emotion which comes upon us when we go into a dark church at night and discern a feeble light glimmering under a lofty vault--a dim figure glides across--the sweep of a gown or of a priest's cassock is audible--and we shiver!La Grande Breteche,with its rank grasses,its shuttered windows,its rusty iron-work,its locked doors,its deserted rooms,suddenly rose before me in fantastic vividness.I tried to get into the mysterious dwelling to search out the heart of this solemn story,this drama which had killed three persons.