CHAPTER XXV.

DOWN AMONG THE DEAD

It was nearly midnight when a man hesitatingly walked up to the iron

gateway of St. Jean’s burying-ground, in Croix Blanche Street.

As midnight boomed, he saw a spectre cross the grounds under the yews

and cypresses, and, approaching the grating, turn a key harshly in the

gatelock to show that, if he were a ghost and had the leave to quit his

grave, he also had that to go beyond the cemetery altogether.

“Do you not recognize me, Captain B.?” queried the jesting voice of

Cagliostro, “or did you forget our appointment?”

“I am glad it is you,” said the man in the French Guards sergeant dress,

breathing as if his heart were relieved of great weight. “These devilish

streets are so dark and deserted that I do not know but it is better to

run up against any body than not to meet a soul.”

“Pshaw,” returned the magician, “the idea of your fearing any thing at

any hour of the day or night! You will never make me believe that of a

man like you who would go anywhere with a sword by his side. However,

step on this side of the railings, and you will be tranquil, my dear

Captain Beausire, for you will meet no one but me.”

Beausire acted on the invitation, and the key grated again in the lock,

to fasten the gate behind him.

“Keep to this little path,” continued Cagliostro, “and at twenty paces

you will come upon a little broken altar, on the steps of which we can

nicely manage our little business.”

“Where the mischief do you see any path?” he grumbled, after starting

with a good will. “I meet nothing but nettles tearing my ankles and

grass up to my knees.”

“I own that this cemetery is as badly kept as any I know of; but it is

not astonishing, for here are buried only the condemned prisoners

executed in the City, and no one plants flowers for such poor fellows.

Still we have some undeniable celebrities here, my dear Beausire. If it

were daylight I would show you where lies Bouteville Montmorency,

decapitated for having fought a duel; the Knight of Rohan who suffered

the same fate for conspiring against the Government; Count Horn broken

on the wheel for murdering a Jew; Damiens who tried to kill Louis XVI.,

and lots more. Oh, you are wrong to defame St. Jean’s; it is badly kept

but it well keeps its famous ones.”

Beausire followed the guide so closely that he locked steps with him

like a soldier in the second rank with the predecessor so that when the

latter stopped suddenly he ran up against him.

“Ah! this is a fresh one; the grave of your comrade Fleurdepine, one of

the murderers of François the Assemblymen’s baker, who was hanged a week

ago by sentence at the Chatelet; this ought to interest you, as he was,

like you, a corporal, a sergeant by his own promotion, and a crimp--I

mean a recruiter.”

The hearer’s teeth chattered; the thistles he walked among seemed so

many skeleton fingers stretched up to trip him, and make him understand

that this is the place where he would have his everlasting sleep.

“Well, we have arrived,” said the cicerone, stopping at a mound of

ruins.

Sitting down on a stone he pointed out another to his companion, as if

placed for a conversation. It was time, for the ex-soldier’s knees were

knocking together so that he fell rather than sat on the elevation.

“Now that we are comfortable for a chat,” went on the magician, “let us

know what went on under the Royale Place arches. The meeting must have

been interesting?”

“To tell the truth, count, I am so upset that I really believe you will

get a clearer account by questioning me.”

“Be it so, I am easy going, and the shape of news little matters

provided I get it. How many of you met at the arches?”

“Six, including myself.”

“I wonder if they were the persons I conjecture to be there? _Primo_,

you, no doubt.”

Beausire groaned as though he wished there could be doubt on that head.

“You do me much honor in commencing by me, for there were very great

grandees compared with me.”

“My dear boy, I follow the Gospel: ‘The first shall be last.’ If the

first are to be last, why, the last will naturally lead. So I begin with

you, according to Scripture. Then there would be your comrade Tourcaty,

an old recruiting officer who is charged to raise the Brabant Legion?”

“Yes, we had Tourcaty.”

“Then, there would be that sound royalist Marquie, once sergeant in the

French Guards, now sub-lieutenant in a regiment of the centre line.

Favras, of course? the Masked Man? Any particulars to furnish about the

Masked Man?”

The traitor looked at the inquirer so fixedly that his eyes seemed to

kindle in the dark.

“Why, is it not--“ but he stopped as if fearing to commit a sacrilege if

he went farther.

“What’s this? have you a knot in your tongue? Take care of being

tongue-tied. Knots in the tongue lead to knots round the neck, and as

they are slip ones, they are the worst kind.”

“Well, is it not the King’s b-b-brother?” stammered the other.

“Nonsense, my dear Beausire, it is conceivable that Favras, who wants it

believed that he clasps hands with a royal prince in the plot, should

give out that the Mask hides the King’s brother, Provence, but you and

your mate, Tourcaty, recruiting-sergeants, are men used to measure men

by their height in inches and lines, and it is not likely you would be

cheated that way.”

“No, it is not likely,” agreed the soldier.

“The King’s brother is five feet three and seven lines,” pursued the

magician, “while the Masked Man is nearly five feet six.”

“To a T.,” said the traitor, “that occurred to me; but who can it be if

not the King’s brother?”

“Excuse me, I should be proud and happy to teach you something,”

retorted Cagliostro: “but I came here to be taught by you.”

“But if your lordship knows who this man is,” said the ex-corporal,

becoming more at home, “might I ask his name?”

“A name is a serious thing to divulge,” responded the strange man: “and

really I prefer you should guess. Do you know the story of Œdipus and

the Sphinx?”

“I went to see a tragedy of that title and fell asleep, unfortunately,

in the fourth act.”

“Plague take me, but you ought not to call that a misfortune!”

“But I lose by it now.”

“Not to go into details, suffice it that Œdipus, whom I knew as a boy

at one royal court and as a man at another, was predicted to be the

murderer of his father and the husband of his mother. Believing King

Polybius this father, he departed from his realm, but would not take a

hint from me about the road. The result was that he met his own sire on

the road where, as neither would turn out, a fight ensued in which he

slew his father. Some time after he met the Sphinx. It was a monster

with a woman’s head on a lion’s body which I regret never to have seen,

as it was a thousand years after her death that I travelled that road.

She had the habit of putting riddles to the wayfarers and eating those

who could not read them aright. To my friend Œdipus she put the

following:

“'What animal goes upon four legs at morning, two at noon and three at

night?'”

“Œdipus answered off-hand: ‘Man, who in the morning of life as a

child crawls on all fours; as an adult walks upright; as an old man

hobbles with a stick.'”

“That is so,” exclaimed Beausire: “it crossed the sphinx!”

“She threw herself down a precipice and the winner went on to where he

married his father’s widow to accomplish the prophecy.”

“But what analogy between the Sphinx and the Masked Man?”

“A close one. I propose an enigma; only I am not cruel like the Sphinx

and will not devour you if you fail to guess. Listen: Which lord at the

court is grandson of his father, brother of his mother and uncle of his

sisters?”

“The devil!” burst forth Beausire, falling into a reverie. “Can you not

also help me out here, my lord?”

“Let us turn from pagan story to sacred history, then. Do you know the

tale of Lot?”

“Lot and the Pillar of Salt, and his daughters?”

“The same.”

“Of course, I do. Wait a bit, do they not say that old King Louis XIV,

and his daughter the Lady Adeliade----“

“You are getting warm, captain----“

“In that case the Masked Man would be Count Louis Narbonne!”

“Now that we are no longer in doubt about this conspirator, let us

finish with the aim of the plot. The object is to carry off the King?

And take him to Peronne? what means have you?”

“For money we have two millions cash----“

“Lent by a Genoese banker? I know him. Any other funds?”

“I know of none.”

“So much for the money: now for the men.”

“General Lafayette has authorized the raising of a legion to fly to the

help of Brabant revolting against the Empire.”

“Under cover of which you form a royalist legion? I see the hand of

Lafayette in this,” muttered Cagliostro. “But you will want more than a

legion to carry out this plan--an army.”

“Oh, we have the army. Two hundred horsemen are gathered at Versailles

ready to start at the appointed hour: they can arrive in three columns

at Paris by two in the morning. The first gets in to kill General

Lafayette: the second to settle old Necker; the third will do for Mayor

Baily.”

“Good!” exclaimed the listener.

“This done, the cannons are spiked, and all rally on the Champs Elysées,

and march on the Tuileries where our friends will be masters.”

“What about the National Guards there?”

“The Brabant Column attends to them: it joins with it part of the Guards

which has been bought over: four hundred Swiss, three hundred country

friends, and so on. These will have taken possession of all the gates

by help within. We rush in on the King, saying: ‘Sire, the St. Antoine

ward is in insurrection; a carriage is ready--you must be off!’ if he

consents, all right: if he resists, we hustle him out and drive him to

St. Denis.”

“Capital!”

“There we find twenty thousand infantry, with all the country royalists,

well armed, in great force, who conduct the King to Peronne.”

“Better and better. What do you do there?’

“The gathering there brings our whole array up to one hundred and fifty

thousand men.”

“A very pretty figure,” commented the Chief of the Invisibles.

“With the mass we march on Paris, cutting off supplies above and below

on the river. Famished Paris capitulates; the Assembly is kicked to

pieces, and the King enjoys his own again on the throne of his fathers.”

“Amen!” sang Cagliostro. “My dear Beausire,” he went on, rising, “your

conversation is most agreeable; but as they say of the greatest orators,

when they have spoken all that is in them, nothing more is to be got.

You are done?”

“Yes, my lord, for the moment.”

“Then, good-night: when you want another ten louis call for them at my

home, at Bellevue.”

“At the Count of Cagliostro’s?”

“No; they would not know who you meant. Ask for Baron Zannone.”

“But that is the banker who cashed up the two millions on the King’s

brother’s notes!” ejaculated Beausire.

“That is not unlikely; only I do such a large business that I have

confounded it with the others. That is why it was not clear in my mind

but now you remind me, I believe I did something of the kind.”

Beausire went his way, stupefied that a banker could forget a matter of

two millions, and beginning to believe that he was quite right in siding

with the lender rather than with the borrower. He bowed lowly while the

count favored him with a slight nod at the cemetery gateway.