`What do they stand for?'asked this demon Barlow.And when the patriotic Tommy hesitated for an answer,the preceptor exclaimed with ineffable contempt,`Race de fous'!It is no wonder,then,that this foe of his fatherland feared to receive a letter openly addressed;rather he would slink out under cover of night and seek his correspondence at the poste restante,like a guilty lover or a British tourist.
The Ch<a^>teau de Presles was built for his reception.It was haunted by a secret,which none dare murmur in the remotest garret.There was no more than a whisper of murder in the air,but the Marquis shuddered when his wife's eye frowned upon him.
True,the miserable Menaldo had disappeared from his seminary ten years since,but threats of disclosure were uttered continually,and respectability might only be purchased by a profound silence.Here was the Abb<e'>'s most splendid opportunity,and he seized it with all the eagerness of a greedy temperament.The Marquise,a wealthy peasant,who was rather at home on the wild hillside than in her stately castle,became an instant prey to his devilish intrigue.The governess,an antic old maid of fiftyseven,whose conversation was designed to bring a blush to the cheek of the most hardened dragoon,was immediately on terms of so frank an intimacy that she flung bread pellets at him across the table,and joyously proposed,if we may believe the priest on his oath,to set up housekeeping with him,that they might save expense.Two highspirited boys were always at hand to encourage his taste for flogging,and had it not been for the Marquis,the Abb<e'>'s cup would have been full to overflowing.
But the Marquis loved not the lean,ogling instructor of his sons,and presently began to assail him with all the abuse of which he was master.He charged the Abb<e'>with unspeakable villainy;salop and saligaud were the terms in which he would habitually refer to him.He knew the rascal for a spy,and no modesty restrained him from proclaiming his knowledge.But whatever insults were thrown at the Abb<e'>he received with a grin complacent as Shylock's,for was he not conscious that when he liked the pound of flesh was his own!
With a fiend's duplicity he laid his plans of ruin and death.
The Marquise,swayed to his will,received him secretly in the blue room (whose very colour suggests a guilty intrigue),though never,upon the oath of an Abb<e'>,when the key was turned in the lock.A journey to Switzerland had freed him from the haunting suspicion of the Marquis,and at last he might compel the wife to denounce her husband as a murderer.The terrified woman drew the indictment at the Abb<e'>'s dictation,and when her husband returned to St.Amand he was instantly thrust into prison.Nothing remained but to cajole the sons into an expressed hatred of their father,and the last enormity was committed by a masterpiece of cunning.`Your father's one chance of escape,'argued this villain in a cassock,`is to be proved an inhuman ruffian.Swear that he beat you unmercifully and you will save him from the guillotine.'All the dupes learned their lesson with a certainty which reflects infinite credit upon the Abb<e'>'s method of instruction.
For once in his life the Abb<e'>had been moved by greed as well as by villainy.His early exploits had no worse motive than the satisfaction of an inhuman lust for cruelty and destruction.But the Marquise was rich,and when once her husband's head were off,might not the Abb<e'>reap his share of the gathered harvest?
The stakes were high,but the game was worth the playing,and Rosselot played it with spirit and energy unto the last card.
His appearance in court is ever memorable,and as his ferret eyes glinted through glass at the President,he seemed the villain of some Middle Age Romance.His head,poised upon a lean,bony frame,was embellished with a nose thin and sharp as the blade of a knife;his tightly compressed lips were an indication of the rascal's determination.`Long as a day in Lent'that is how a spectator described him;and if ever a sinister nature glared through a sinister figure,the Abb<e'>'s character was revealed before he parted his lips in speech.
Unmoved he stood and immovable;he treated the imprecations of the Marquis with a cold disdain;as the burden of proof grew heavy on his back,he shrugged his shoulders in weary indifference.He told his monstrous story with a cynical contempt,which has scarce its equal in the history of crime;and priest,as he was,he proved that he did not yield to the Marquis himself in the Rabelaisian amplitude of his vocabulary.He brought charges against the weird world of Presles with an insouciance and brutality which defeated their own aim.He described the vices of his master and the sins of the servants in a slang which would sit more gracefully upon an idle roysterer than upon a pious Abb<e'>.And,his story ended,he leered at the Court with the satisfaction of one who had discharged a fearsome duty.
But his rascality overshot its mark;the Marquise,obedient to his priestly casuistry,displayed too fierce a zeal in the execution of his commands.And he took to flight,hoping to lose in the larger world of Paris the notoriety which his prowess won him among the poor despised Berrichons.He left behind for our consolation a snatch of philosophy which helps to explain his last and greatest achievement.`Those who have money exist only to be fleeced.'Thus he spake with a reckless revelation of self.Yet the mystery of his being is still unpierced.He is traitor,schemer,spy;but is he an Abb<e'>?Perhaps not.At any rate,he once attended the `Messe des Morts,'and was heard to mumble a `Credo,'which,as every good Catholic remembers,has no place in that solemn service.
Printed by T.and A.CONSTABLE,Printers to His Majesty at the Edinburgh University Press End
