Werewolf of Paris (28 page)

What ignorance was abroad that a coffer of bones was not recognized as a reliquary with the remains of a saint in it? One man, bolder than the rest, sent the police a marked copy of Dulaure's
History of Paris
. The buildings on rue de Piepus were constructed over a former cemetery part of this cemetery was still in use,
*
the rest was built on or converted into garden space. The Reign of Terror of 1793 had buried here 1,306 guillotined aristocrats in a big ditch. Perhaps the police couldn't read.

Ancient pupils of the convent did indeed appear to declare that the instruments of torture, the beds of Procrustes for racking victims at the “branch house of the Inquisition,” were only orthopedic devices, employed in the treatment of crippled children who were taken care of by the nuns. The three crazy women, it was shown, were old sisters who had lost their reason and were most kindly treated by the convent. But this evidence was not spread abroad in the papers.

Dr Piorry, professor at the Academy of Medicine, was commissioned by the Commune to draw up a medico-legal report. He delayed sending in the results of his observations until the Commune was a matter of the past, and a free opinion was safe. Then he published his paper. The eighteen corpses were all of old women, not of young girls. They had been buried long ago. How long, the doctor could not say, but certainly a great number of years. There was no evidence of any recent crime.

But when this article appeared, the comedy of Piepus had long reached its seemingly predestined tragic finale. Raoul Rigault, chesty little fellow, strutting in his bright uniform, always ready to offer his snuff to his friends, appeared on the scene one day and ordered wholesale arrests. Rigault was a genius, a born detective, who from his earliest days had determined some time in his life to be chief of police. He had achieved this, but his insatiable ambition and his evil disposition were also his ruin.

Rigault wanted important churchmen as hostages, for the Versailles government was holding the aged revolutionary, Blanqui, and the chief of police thought it might be possible to effect an exchange of prisoners.

A long line of monks and nuns were led off to the ex-prefecture. Here, too, a number of other clerics had been brought, in particular Monseigneur Darboy, Archbishop of Paris, Lagarde, his grand vicar, and a host of lesser priests.

Rigault examined them personally.

“What is your profession?” he asked a Jesuit.

“Servant of God.”

“God? What is your master's address?”

“He is everywhere.”

“Write,” said Rigault to one of his secretaries. “So-and-so, styling himself servant of God. Citizen God, a vagabond without fixed address.” He caressed his luxurious growth of beard and mustache.

The archbishop sought to make an appeal. “My children—” he began, spreading his arms.

Rigault interrupted him: “There are no children here. Only citizens.”

The archbishop halted and then wished to pursue.

Again Rigault interrupted him. The police had enough information, he said, to show that the priests were plotting with the government of Versailles, that the priests were responsible for recent skirmishes in which the National Guard had been worsted by the Versailles troops. There were traitors, that was certain. Information was leaking out. At last they had the guilty ones and meant to hold them.

And as the prelate wished to reply: “Enough,” said Rigault dryly. “You fellows have been getting away with it for eighteen centuries. Since you refuse to confess your conspiracy, the matter will be investigated. In the meanwhile, I shall hold you.”

He picked up a sheet of paper and wrote: “The director of the Dépôt will hold incommunicado the two calling themselves Darboy and Lagarde.” On the walls of the vacant churches, signs were placed: “Stable for rent.”
*
The religious houses were turned over as meeting places for the political clubs.

The police were right in one respect: there was treachery, there was conspiracy. No government was ever more conspired against, no government ever so riddled with treachery, as the Commune, but in looking for the infection in the priesthood and in religious organizations, the police missed the real nest of vipers, the Café de Suède, from which the net spread out over the whole Commune.

Paris was full of men to whom the revolt was purely an opportunity for speculation. The Thiers government at Versailles knew the prices to be paid and was ready with its money. Men occupying high posts in the Commune came to the Café de Suede and received the gold. Captain Barral de Montfort, on the staff of the 7th legion, an honored officer of the Commune's military forces, sat there at his little table and conversed casually under a heavy cloud of cigar smoke. To all appearances it was only apéritif time, and a moment for sprightly repartee.

But from all over agents came to see him there. He received them as friends, talked of indifferent matters, slipped them a few bills on the Banque de France. The price was agreed on: For opening a gate, five thousand francs, to be debited to the prefect of police at Versailles; ten thousand francs for a battalion, to be charged to the Ministry of War; three thousand francs for a man—the Home Office paid for that. This was the activity that went on while the police exhausted themselves hunting for an underground communication with Versailles, dozens of possible tunnels being suspected, but none found. This was the activity that went on while the police pursued nonexistent murderers of cadavers dead a hundred years.

When the business meeting at the Café de Suède was over, the glasses empty, the trays full of silvery cigar ashes, then Captain Barral de Montfort arose and, before returning to his military duties, took a cab or else walked to the canteen where the 204th battalion congregated.

An astonishing dark-haired beauty looked up at his entry.

“Well, what is new today, Sophie?” he said casually.

She looked around to make sure that she was not observed and then whispered:

“I hear that troops are being taken away from the redoubt at Hautes Bruyères and the advance post of Cachan.”

“Hm! That's a stupid move.”

“Any good to you?”

“Might be. If they're weak there, then that's the place for us to attack.”

She smiled slightly: “Let me know how it turns out. And if I've done my work well, if I've paid, you do your share.”

“You can rely on me,” he declared solemnly. Then they spoke of indifferent matters. She took off the apron that protected her fine dress and they went strolling out hand in hand.

“You still love him?” he questioned. There was a bitter expression around his mouth.

“Why, of course,” she said carelessly.

“You're a liar, he replied. He stopped at a lonely corner and took hold of her shoulders. “Why do you lie!” He shook her and raised his voice: “Tell me why you lie?” He wouldhave screamed if he had dared.

“Don't be a fool,” she said, annoyed.

“Huh! Do you think I haven't any eyes to see? Your face is getting paler every day. More and more like a lacquered mask.”

“Why must you always be annoying?”

His face distorted as if he were going to cry. “You don't know that I love you?” he asked sadly, quietly.

“You're a good boy, Barral. I wish I loved you too. But it's too late, now.”

“Don't say that,” he exclaimed. “Why is it too late? Come, we'll leave this terrible city. I can get out any time I want to.” And as she made no answer but only looked away into the distance as if she yearned for something beyond the possibility of reach, he continued hastily, “Come, we'll go together to the country, to my little place at Vallauris.”

She cut him short. “Let's take a cab. I must hurry; he'll be waiting for me. He's doing guard duty at the Piepus and he will be relieved about this time.”

He muttered something under his breath. She did not catch his words, but she gathered their import. “Don't you dare touch a hair on his head! Mind you, if anything should happen to him, I'll kill you, whether you did it or not.”

“I promised I would do nothing to him,” he said, “and I'll keep my promise.—Look, will you give me your address?”

“What for?” she asked suspiciously.

He wouldn't answer for a moment. But later, seated in the cab, he repeated his request.

“I don't see what you can be wanting my address for. I suppose you want to tell Aunt Louise where I've run off to.”

“No,” he said soberly. “It's something else. I want to write to you. You know how long I've been in the habit of writing to you every night. Well, I can't stop. And as for handing you my letters personally, that's not the same thing. There was so much pleasure attached to that act, of going out late at night to post a letter to you.”

“That's sweet of you, Barral. You are always very sweet.”

A lump rose in his throat. He pursued his advantage. “And of course, once you left Mme Hertzog's, it wouldn't do to send the letters there, because I know you'd want her to think that we were together.”

“You're really very sweet, Barral,” she repeated, deeply touched. And she put her hand on his. “You're far too good for me. Oh, you haven't any conception of how rotten I am. Of the terrible things I do. Oh, Barral, you should be thankful that I'm going out of your life.” As she said this, she was conscious of something more than sympathy for Barral. She was conscious of a touch of pride. She felt superior to the “sweet” Barral. She was so very, very bad.

*
I should say rather the delegate to the ex-Prefecture of Police, since the odious prefecture of police of Imperial days had been abolished. The ex-prefecture continued, however, to function under its new name, with Raoul Rigault delegated to take charge.

*
Journal Officiel
, May 21, 1871.

*
One of the three crazy women was brought to the barracks at Reuilly. The woman at the canteen charged a ten-centime admission. If the Commune thought to improve her lot…

*
The Piepus cemetery is still open to visitors to Paris and is worthy of a trip.

*
“Since jesus Christ was born in a stable,” wrote Rochefort, the witty journalist, “it can be no offense to the most religious-minded to see their churches turned into stables.”

Chapter Fifteen

T
he writer apologizes for the confusion of the last chapters. His excuses are that the chronology in the script is none too clear, and further that the elucidation of the events in the story was none too easy.

Aymar, so we have said, first came face to face with Bertrand during the Piepus affair, and though in our elaboration of the Galliez script we went off the track in the last chapter, we intend to come back to our duty in this one.

Aymar was vaguely acquainted with Commissaire de Police Clavier, who was in charge at Piepus, and one day stood for a moment talking to him outside the buildings which were being investigated, when a soldier came running up to inform the commissaire of the discovery of cadavers in the crypt. Clavier hastened inside and Aymar followed. Some workmen, aided by soldiers of the National Guard, were bringing the coffins up to the light as fast as they could be dug out of the ground of the crypt below.

At the sight of one of the soldiers a cold shiver ran down Aymar's back. It was not only the recognition of Bertrand, his face red and perspired, laboring under the heavy load of a coffin that made Aymar shudder. It was something else.

A few months ago he had been walking along a street of the Bastille section, and as it happened was thinking of Bertrand, which was only natural, and was wondering if he were not completely mistaken and Bertrand was not in Paris at all, never had been perhaps, and it was so thinking that Aymar suddenly noticed a large red sign over a shop. White letters proclaimed: “Guerre à outrance!” (“War to the bitter end!”) It was a cat, dog and rat butcher shop, a chain of which existed in the city.

As he passed the door, he peered in. A group of housewives wrapped in shawls were waiting to make their purchases. The butcher's wife was wrapping the meat in old paper. The butcher was swinging the heavy cleaver which was rouged with blood. His great jowly face was tensed and red, in sympathy with the effort of his swinging arm.

Aymar walked on, but the vision of that face remained with him, lying like a picture on transparent paper over the tenor of his thoughts. Three blocks later he exclaimed, “Why, that was Father Pitamont!” He hastened back to assure himself, but when he looked in again, the butcher did indeed look like Father Pitamont, but Aymar was no longer so certain it was he. After all, it was many years now since he had seen the priest. Alternately, as he looked, Aymar felt certain and uncertain. It might be Father Pitamont, and then again…Disconcerted, he walked off.

And now as he looked at Bertrand straining under the weight of a heavy coffin, he had that same strange alternating sensation: It might be Father Pitamont, and then again…But it was only Bertrand grown a little older and heavier. Aymar's blood was pounding. Here was the moment he had been waiting for. What should he do? Yell? Leap on Bertrand? Rouse the vaulted chapel with curses hurled at the monster? Instead of anathemas, only ironic words came to his mind.

He stood in the crowd about the cofim, while the lid was being pried off. Bertrand was directly in front of him. He touched the young soldier on the arm, and when Bertrand turned around, Aymar said quietly: “Appropriate work.”

Bertrand, startled, breathed, “Uncle…”

“This is your peculiar talent, eh?”

“Uncle…”

“I say, your specialty, isn't it?”

Bertrand pushed himself out of the crowd, which was glad to flow into the space he left. He went over to a bench and Aymar followed.

“I knew I'd find you here,” Aymar pursued.

Bertrand looked up with an innocent expression in his brown eyes. His clean-shaven face, seen from close, was still youthful, attractive, so Aymar thought. But when Bertrand opened his mouth to ask, “How did you know that?” then the sight of his white teeth, with the large interlocking canines, made Aymar conscious of what lurked below the handsome exterior.