The Parisians — Complete by Baron Edward Bulwer Lytton Lytton (best novels ever txt) 📕

good English, though with French accent, “Would you object, sir, to my lighting my little carriage-lantern? I am in the habit of reading in the night train, and the wretched lamp they give us does not permit that. But if you wish to sleep, and my lantern would prevent you doing so, consider my request unasked.”

“You are most courteous, sir. Pray light your lantern—that will not interfere with my sleep.”

As Graham thus answered, far away from the place and the moment as his thoughts were, it yet faintly struck him that he had heard that voice before.

The man produced a small lantern, which he attached to the window-sill, and drew forth from a small leathern bag sundry newspapers and pamphlets. Graham flung himself back, and in a minute or so again came his sigh.

“Allow me to offer you those evening journals—you may not have had time to read them before starting,” said the fellow-traveller, leaning forward, and extending the newspapers with one hand, while with the other he lifted his lantern. Graham turned, and the faces of the two men were close to each other—Graham with his travelling-cap drawn over his brows, the other with head uncovered.

“Monsieur Lebeau!”

“Bon soir, Mr. Lamb!”

Again silence for a moment or so. Monsieur Lebeau then broke it—

“I think, Mr. Lamb, that in better society than that of the Faubourg Montmartre you are known under another name.” Graham had no heart then for the stage-play of a part, and answered, with quiet haughtiness, “Possibly—and what name?”

“Graham Vane. And, sir,” continued Lebeau, with a haughtiness equally quiet, but somewhat more menacing, “since we two gentlemen find ourselves thus close, do I ask too much if I inquire why you condescend to seek my acquaintance in disguise?”

“Monsieur le Vicomte de Mauleon, when you talk of disguise, is it too much to inquire why my acquaintance was accepted by Monsieur Lebeau?”

“Ha! Then you confess that it was Victor de Mauleon whom you sought when you first visited the cafe Jean Jacques?”

“Frankly I confess it.”

Monsieur Lebeau drew himself back, and seemed to reflect.

“I see! Solely for the purpose of learning whether Victor de Mauleon could give you any information about Louise Duval. Is it so?”

“Monsieur le Vicomte, you say truly.”

Again M. Lebeau paused as if in reflection; and Graham, in that state of mind when a man who may most despise and detest the practice of duelling, may yet feel a thrill of delight if some homicide would be good enough to put him out of his misery, flung aside his cap, lifted his broad frank forehead, and stamped his foot impatiently as if to provoke a quarrel.

M. Lebeau lowered his spectacles, and, with those calm, keen, searching eyes of his, gazed at the Englishman.

“It strikes me,” he said, with a smile, the fascination of which not even those faded whiskers could disguise—“it strikes me that there are two ways in which gentlemen such as you and I are can converse: firstly, with reservation and guard against each other; secondly, with perfect openness. Perhaps of the two I have more need of reservation and wary guard against any stranger than you have. Allow me to propose the alternative—perfect openness. What say you?” and he extended his hand.

“Perfect openness,” answered Graham, softened into sudden liking for this once terrible swordsman, and shaking, as an Englishman shakes, the hand held out to him in peace by the man from whom he had anticipated quarrel.

“Permit me now, before you address any questions to me, to put one to you. How did you learn that Victor de Mauleon was identical with Jean Lebeau?”

“I heard that from an agent of the police.”

“Ah!”

“Whom I consulted as to the means of ascertaining whether Louise Duval was alive,—if so, where she could be found.”

“I thank you very much for your information. I had no notion that the police of Paris had divined the original alias of poor Monsieur Lebeau, though something occurred at Lyons which made me suspect it. Strange that the Government, knowing through the police that Victor de Mauleon, a writer they had no reason to favour, had been in so humble a position, should never, even in their official journals, have thought it prudent to say so! But, now I think of it, what if they had? They could prove nothing against Jean Lebeau. They could but say, ‘Jean Lebeau is suspected to be too warm a lover of liberty, too earnest a friend of the people, and Jean Lebeau is the editor of La Sens Commun.’ Why, that assertion would have made Victor de Mauleon the hero of the Reds, the last thing a prudent Government could desire. I thank you cordially for your frank reply. Now, what question would you put to me?”

“In one word, all you can tell me about Louise Duval.”

“You shall have it. I had heard vaguely in my young days that a half-sister of mine by my father’s first marriage with Mademoiselle de Beauvilliers had—when in advanced middle life he married a second time—conceived a dislike for her mother-in-law, and, being of age, with an independent fortune of her own, had quitted the house, taken up her residence with an elderly female relative, and there had contracted a marriage with a man who gave her lessons in drawing. After that marriage, which my father in vain tried to prevent, my sister was renounced by her family. That was all I knew till, after I came into my inheritance by the death of both my parents, I learned from my father’s confidential lawyer that the drawing-master, M. Duval, had soon dissipated his wife’s fortune, become a widower with one child—a girl—and fallen into great distress. He came to my father, begging for pecuniary aid. My father, though by no means rich, consented to allow him a yearly pension, on condition that he never revealed to his child her connection with our family. The man agreed to the condition, and called at my father’s lawyer quarterly for his annuity. But the lawyer informed me that this deduction from my income had ceased, that M. Duval had not for a year called or sent for the sum due to him, and that he must therefore be dead. One day my valet informed me that a young lady wished to see me—in those days young ladies very often called on me. I desired her to be shown in. There entered a young creature, almost of my own age, who, to my amazement saluted me as uncle. This was the child of my half-sister. Her father had been dead several months, fulfilling very faithfully the condition on which he had held his pension, and the girl never dreaming of the claims that, if wise, poor child, she ought not to have cared for, viz.,—to that obsolete useless pauper birthright, a branch on the family tree of a French noble. But in pinch of circumstance, and from female curiosity, hunting among the papers her father had left for some clue to the reasons for the pension he had received, she found letters from her mother, letters from my father, which indisputably proved that she was grandchild to the fue Vicomte de Mauleon, and niece to myself. Her story as told to