Max Pemberton

“ Since the day when a word of his had sent Jacques de Serrefort to the Conciergerie he had forgotten the very fact that his victim lived. Now, however, it were as though a dead man had come out of his grave to demand reckoning. As for Serrefort, the ferocity of a wild beast was upon him. Anger, joy, lust for vengeance, gave incoherency to his words. The sword with which Corinne de Montesson had armed him flashed already at the count's throat. Age, debility, long years of suffering, were powerless to mar that strength of hate and of victory. ”

“ He had not lived in the great prison for fifteen years without hearing many a grim story of the terrible oubliettes below the level of the river Seine, wherein, shut out from God's day and surrounded by horrors unnameable, the more wretched and poorer victims of the bailiff Hubert's greed went all too slowly to their doom. Captivity is apt to obliterate from a man's heart those finer affections which are fed upon freedom. Serrefort was tempted for a moment to bitter thoughts of the daughter who had left him to a fate so horrible. ”

“ And to the strength of hate was added the terror and the confusion and the conscience of Monsieur de Châteauneuf. The count, indeed, had death at his heart from the first. He fought with trembling hand, with quaking limbs. There was ever dinning in his ears the cry—“This is the justice of God.” He knew that he was to die, there in the silence of the garden; knew that the sun would never shine for him again.
Twice round the grove the men fought, Serrefort playing with the other like a beast with its prey. ”

“ Think you, comrade, that the bailiff gives windows and red wine to all who ask them? Saint Denis, you have the best quarters in the prison, and the best food. And why?—why, because your daughter has paid for such things. You don't know that?”
“I swear to heaven that I know nothing,” exclaimed Serrefort. “You say that I have these things through my daughter, and that she pays for them?”
“How else should you have them? Sapristi! a child would not be so simple. She has paid for them since your old protector, the Sieur Buchot, died. And she will pay for them again—when she comes back to Paris. ”

“ He said that the world lay there,—the world where men hoped and loved and worked; the world he would never know again. And then the window was passed, and he found himself descending the winding stairs of the great Bombec Tower, which seemed to rise up from the very river itself. Though his guards held torches high above their heads, the place was so dark that even the garish yellow light could not penetrate the terrible blackness. Serrefort feared almost to set foot upon the ground, lest he should tumble into some horrid pit or go headlong into the waters of the Seine. ”

“ So vast was the place that Serrefort remained at the door silent in awe and wonder; but when he had stood an instant he heard a sweet young voice greeting him, and looking up, he beheld Mademoiselle Corinne herself. She was standing by a great armchair, set up like a throne at the other end of the chamber, a pretty figure superbly dressed, and surrounded by fifteen men and women, whose fine clothes and graceful manners were in keeping with the magnificence of the apartment. ”

“ He indicated the articles one by one as he spoke, the coat of bright blue with the gold facings, the brass helmet, the high boots, the cunningly wrought sword. Serrefort gave a little cry of delight and hesitated no longer. His weary brain, thinking ever of the Bombec, forgot its task for a moment, and carried him back swiftly to the years when there had been no finer horseman, no more dashing trooper in all France, than Jacques de Serrefort. They said afterwards that his hands trembled, that there were tears in his eyes when he stood before the long glass and buckled the sword to his belt. ”

“ The jailor entered the cell as he had entered it every morning during those terrible years. He and Serrefort had grown old together; old in association, almost in captivity. True, Baptiste, as they called the fellow, had a little house out in the cathedral close yonder, and went there at odd hours to gossip with his neighbours; but nine-tenths of his years were spent in the Conciergerie, and he knew every stone in it, nay, almost every crack in its tremendous walls. ”

“ Never, in his day of youth and skill, did the trooper of Condé's legion stand up with such confidence, The ring of triumph was already in his voice; his hand was the hand of a man who knows no mercy.
“Monsieur le Comte de Châteauneuf,” he cried, with terrible deliberation, “God surely has sent you here that I may kill you. Draw, monsieur, for your hour has come.” ”

“ It had been very early in the morning when they carried him to the Bombec Tower and old Baptiste had brought a manchet of bread and a flask of wine to the dungeon, so that Serrefort could not hope to see his jailor again before night fell. For the matter of that, he had nothing to tell him the hour; and he lay, it seemed for days, quite still in his cell, while the rats ran over his arms, and ever and anon some living thing would touch his face and fill him with loathing inexpressible. The patter of these animals was for a long time the only sign of life down there below the river's flood ”

“ It is your daughter Irène who speaks,—she whom you loved in the long ago.”
Serrefort looked at her with a loving regard. Then taking her hand as he used to do in the old days in Brittany, he exclaimed:—
“Little one, you will never leave me more?”
“Oh, never,” she exclaimed, covering his hands and face with kisses. “Dear father, the king, who learnt all to-night, has pardoned you. It is Mademoiselle Corinne's work—she who owns this house and has taken pity upon us. We are to go to Brittany to-morrow, for she has the king's promise. ”

“ The lacquey bowed and bade him, for the second time, to follow. Had it been any other who had thrown off the veteran to ape the young man, the fellow would have laughed aloud; but there was a light in Serrefort's eyes, a boldness in his carriage, before which many a man would have quailed. ”

“ She is to have him in her house until the clock strikes twelve. If then he confesses himself content to go back to his cell, Corinne wins the wager. Oh, it is a pretty question—yet, I make sure, she has lost it already. For who ever saw a fellow so gloomy? Saint Denis, the man is at death's door now.”
The count, who was then one of the most powerful men in Paris, did not usually concern himself much about the sufferings of rogues in the Conciergerie; but something in the face of Jacques de Serrefort appealed to his pity ”

“ He could not forget that there had been prisoners who had spent long years in this very cell, who had become raving madmen and yet had lived on; sport for their jailors, but not food for death. Serrefort swore that no such fate should be his j he would find another way; he would cast himself upon the mercy of heaven and end the terror before reason robbed him of the power. ”

“ I knew many in the old days at Brittany, many whom I would well speak of, though, heaven knows, I shall never see them again.”
“I understand that, Monsieur de Serrefort,” cried Bénôit, “but the man in whom we are interested should even now be in this garden. ”