Having told Father Bonneville that I should spend two or three days in London, and directed my portmanteau to be sent to a small but comfortable hotel at the end of Brooke street, I rode straight to a livery stable, near Charing Cross, where I was accustomed to put up my horse, and left him there. I then walked on along Pall Mall, meditating my future course, with more calmness and consideration than I had hitherto given to the subject. In regard to one point, my heart was now at rest. Mariette was found—was to be mine, and I had but one great object for thought and endeavor. I had not reached the end of St. James’s street, when I saw before me, a tall, fine, stately figure, which seemed somewhat familiar to me, walking slowly, and deliberately onward, and I turned my head to look at the face as I passed.

“Good morning, Monsieur de Lacy,” said the Earl of N——, in a frank and easy tone. “Whither away so fast, this morning?”

I paused, and took the two fingers he extended to me, saying, “I am going to Brooke street, my lord.”

“Ah, to see Charles,” he answered; “well, I will walk with you part of the way,” and he put his arm through mine, leaning on me somewhat heavily.

I did not wish my thoughts interrupted, and would have gladly got rid of him, had he been any other man; but there were various vague feelings in my bosom, which made that old nobleman’s society not unpleasant to me, even then; and at his slow pace we proceeded. He was silent for a moment, and then, looking round toward me, he said, “Why you are as tall as I am, Monsieur de Lacy.”

“As nearly the same height, I suppose, as possible,” I answered. “I had thought your lordship the taller man, from your carrying yourself so upright, I imagine.”

“And from my white hair, perhaps,” replied the old nobleman. “When we see mountains capped with snow, we are often inclined to think them higher than they are. But how is this, Monsieur de Lacy, Charles tells me you are a Protestant?”

“I am so, my lord,” I replied, “and have been so for some years.”

“Keep to that, keep to that,” rejoined the Earl, with an approving nod of the head. “You will find it better for your temporal and your eternal interests.”

“There is no chance, I believe, of my changing any more, my lord,” I answered, “as my conversion from the church of Rome, was the work of patient examination and sincere conviction, I am not likely to re-tread my steps.”

“I am glad to hear it, I am very glad to hear it,” he answered, and then seemed as if he were about to say something more, but stopped short, and turned the conversation to other subjects.

“Have you heard,” he asked, “that your king, Louis the Eighteenth, is now in England? Our wise governors have refused to recognize him under that title. They wish to leave themselves a loop-hole for recognizing the usurper, and so make him call himself the Count de Lille. They will soon find the folly of such feeble and wavering policy. It is my maxim, when I draw the sword, to throw away the scabbard; but, heaven help us, we are sadly ruled.”

I inquired where the king had taken up his residence, and then said, that I should certainly go down and pay my respects to him.

“Indeed!” exclaimed the earl, with some signs of surprise. “Are you sure of a good reception? Consult Charles—you had better consult Charles. He is a very good counsellor in all such circumstances. Withdrawing as much as I can from public life, I am not the best authority in matters of this kind—and now I must leave you—good bye. Tell Charles to let me know how he is.”

Thus saying, he turned into one of the club houses in St. James’s street, and I walked on.

When I had reached the end of Brook street, and was approaching the door of the hotel, I saw two persons coming toward me, who attracted my attention by the loudness and vivacity with which they were talking French. One was a tall, thin, elderly man, dressed in black, with black silk stockings, and knee breeches. He was very well dressed: but had more the air of a dancing-master than a gentleman.

The other was a little old woman, brisk and active in all her movements, and jabbering away to her companion in her native tongue, with vast volubility. The face was very peculiar, and had it been possible for me to conceive, that a silk gown would ever cover the back, or a velvet bonnet ornament the head of my old friend Jeanette, I should have claimed acquaintance with her at once. She recognized me better, notwithstanding all the changes that had come over my personal appearance, since we parted in Switzerland.

“Bon Dieu!” she cried, stopping in the midst of the pavement, somewhat to the surprise and admiration of the passengers. “Is it possible?—yes—it must be. My dear Louis, do you not recollect Jeanette?”

“Very well, indeed, Jeanette,” I replied, taking both her hands; but the good old woman was in a state of ecstasy that defied all restraint. She cried, she laughed, and I verily believe she would have danced, too, in the middle of Brooke street, had I not held her tight by both the hands, while her companion endeavored to soothe her, by repeating a dozen times, “Mais, Jeanette, mais Mademoiselle!” There was something so indescribably ludicrous in her expression of satisfaction, that I believe that I should soon have laughed too, as well as the passengers; and as my only resource, I took her and her companion into the hotel, to which I had written to have rooms prepared for me. When she was safely seated there, and somewhat quieted, she told me in a very mysterious manner, that she had just been talking about me to “somebody,” but somebody had never told her that I was in England. Her words, and more still, her mysterious manner, raised expectations which were not fulfilled. After a good deal of pressing, I obtained from her the fact that this somebody of whom she spoke was no other than Charles Westover; and I found that the man who accompanied her was an old valet de chambre of the Earl of N——. This was not altogether satisfactory to me; but yet it was another link in the evidence, showing—to my mind beyond a doubt—that there was some connection between my own fate and the earl’s family.

I soon sent away the valet de chambre, telling him that I would take care Jeanette should return in safety; and I felt half inclined to go with her, and demand explanations of the earl himself. A very brief reflection, however, determined me to forbear; but I questioned Jeanette closely concerning my own history and that of my family. She was very unwilling to speak, evaded my questions, gave me ambiguous replies, and when pressed very hard, sought woman’s usual refuge with tears, sobbing forth, “I must not break my vow, my dear boy. I must not break my vow.”

I could not bring myself to ask her more; but I turned to another point, saying, “Well, Jeanette, if you are bound by a vow not to speak on those subjects, tell me at least, do you know any thing of the Marquis de Carcassonne?”

The poor woman’s face assumed an expression of horror not easily to be forgotten. “Know him!” she exclaimed, “know that terrible man! Oh, yes, Louis, I know him too well. He ruined as happy a family as ever lived, and destroyed as noble a gentleman as was in all the world.”

Her words seemed to change my blood to fire; but I asked as coolly as I could, “Can you tell me how it was done, Jeanette?”

“Oh no,” she answered. “I was but a poor, ignorant servant, and did not hear any of his ways and arts, at least to understand them. All I know is, what it came to. I can’t tell you any more; but he is a dreadful man. It makes me tremble even to think of him.”

“Then I will go to him, and wring it from his heart,” I answered, fiercely; “for know the whole, and expose the whole, I will.”

“Oh don’t go near him, Louis; don’t go near him,” she cried, almost in a scream; joining her hands together as if she were praying to a saint. “He is the destruction of every one who approaches him, and he will find means to destroy you, too.”

“I have seen him once,” I answered, “since I have been in England, and I will most certainly go to him again, Jeanette, and force him to confess all he has done. I have no fear of him,” I added, almost with a scoff, remembering the miserable object I had seen in Swallow street. “He cannot harm me, Jeanette.”

“Stay, stay, Louis,” she said, eagerly. “Good Father Noailles tells me he is sick, and that he must die—perhaps we could find a way without your going near him. He will be terribly afraid of death when it comes close to him. All the frightful things he has done will rise up before his eyes, when he feels that he is going to answer for them. He has sent for Father Noailles twice already, and the good man says that his mind is in a perilous state—let me try, Louis; let me try. Perhaps I can manage it.”

“Whatever you do, you must do quickly, Jeanette,” I answered; “for I can and will bear this suspense no longer.”

“Well, well, I will go this moment,” she said; “but where can I find you, Louis, to tell you what I have done?”

“Here, for the next three days,” I replied, “and after that at Blackheath. I will give you the address.”

I wrote it down for her, and then ordered a hackney coach to be called; but she did not direct it to drive to the house of the Earl of N——, which was in Berkeley Square, but to a small street in Soho.

After she was gone, I paused again to think for a short time, and I resolved, notwithstanding the hopes she held out, to see the Marquis de Carcassonne myself. There was more than one piece of information to be obtained from him, and I fancied that I could wring out of him the whole of that history which I was so anxious to learn. It would be better in the first place, I thought, to see Westover; and I hurried away to his rooms, which were somewhat farther up the street.

I found him lying on a sofa, reading; and my errand was soon told. “I come to you for advice, Westover,” I said, “advice such as none but a friend—a sincere friend, can give.” I then went on to tell him the state of cruel anxiety and agitation I was in, and expressed my intention of seeing the Marquis de Carcassonne myself. I mentioned my meeting with Jeanette, too, and that I found she had been talking with him of me and mine.

He heard the first part of what I said, gravely, and somewhat gloomily, but smiled when I mentioned Jeanette, and replied frankly, “I sent for her for the very purpose, De Lacy. It would not do for me, you know, to hold long conferences with pretty young maid-servants in my grandfather’s house, and so I thought it better to have her here. So she told you nothing?”

“Nothing,” I replied; “she asserted that she was under a vow of secrecy.”

“That is very likely,” he said; “but as to this Marquis de Carcassonne, I think you had better trust him to her. I see very well what she intends to do. She will go to the old priest Noailles, and get him to work upon the scoundrel’s mind, under the fear of death and judgment. Such men almost always become cowards at the brink of the grave; and old Noailles is his confessor, I suppose. If he confesses all, Noailles, well prompted, may, perhaps, refuse him absolution, unless he does justice, however tardy, and thus we may get at the truth at length. It is no bad scheme of the old lady.”

“Then do you not know the truth, yourself?” I asked in some surprise.

He shook his head, answering, “I have moral conviction, De Lacy, but no proof, and therefore cannot say I know the truth.”

“I will go to him myself,” I said, after thinking for a minute or two.

“Well, I do not see that it can do any harm,” replied Westover, thoughtfully; “but you had better go to him after dark, or probably you will not see him. Men suspect that both he and his apothecary carry on the lucrative occupation of spies, or at least that of conveying information and gold to France, where both are somewhat scarce just now. Then there is another thing, De Lacy. I ask you as a personal favor, if you can contrive to make this obdurate man speak, to let me know all that he has said before you communicate it to any one else—I bind you by no other engagement. Will you promise me this?”

“Willingly,” I answered; “as soon as I know the truth, I shall be glad that all the world knows it also.”

“That as we shall judge hereafter,” said Westover, with a significant smile, “and now will you stay and dine with me. We have time for a ride, or a walk, before the dinner hour.”

I declined, however, for I felt myself in no state of mind to enjoy society, and returning to the hotel, I sat there in uneasy pondering, till the sky began to turn gray. I then walked out and passed down Swallow street; but it was not yet dark enough for my purpose. I proceeded therefore to the end of the street, took a turn through those long forgotten alleys which led to St. James’s market, and walked back again, while a dingy man, with a red-flaming and stench-emitting link, ran up and down a ladder at every lamp-post before me, lighting the dim lamps, which were the only illumination of London before the modern improvement of gas. Just as I approached the door of the apothecary, I saw that worthy gentleman issue forth, with coat tightly buttoned up, and hat pressed down upon his brows, and not wishing to call him back to his shop, I passed by a few steps and then returned. When I entered I found no one but a small servant boy or apprentice at the counter, and simply saying, I wished to speak to Monsieur de Carcassonne, I approached the foot of the stairs by which I had mounted before. The boy seemed to hesitate as to whether he should try to stop me or not; but at length when I had the door leading to the staircase in my hand, he said, “You’d better take a light,” and handed me a lamp. As I mounted the steps, in a foul, close atmosphere, which below, had the odor of drugs, and above, that of confined and deteriorated air, I heard a frequent, rattling cough, sounding from the upper rooms, and I judged by the peculiar noise it made, that the life of the cougher was not worth many day’s purchase. I knocked at the door of the Marquis de Carcassonne, as a mere matter of ceremony, but without waiting, opened it and went in. I found him seated in nearly the same position as when I previously saw him, before the fire of his little stove grate; but though the room smelt of food there was no cooking going on.

He was greatly altered. His face was white and blue, and become exceedingly thin and meagre: His whole person shrunk, and his eyes full of a vivacious anxiety which I have often since remarked in the last stages of organic diseases. He had got a newspaper in his hand, which in the true French spirit he was reading eagerly, by the light of a single, sweaty, tallow candle, that required incessant snuffing; but he instantly raised his eyes above the edge of the paper, looking toward the door, with a somewhat perturbed expression of countenance. At first he gazed at me without the slightest trace of recognition on his face, but I was not in a frame of mind to be abashed or daunted by the look of any man. There was a stern, earnest determination in my heart, which could meet a sneer, or an insult, or a threat, with equal indifference.

He rose up from his chair, with habitual politeness, went through the customary bow with the customary grace, and then sank down again into his seat, unable to stand long upon his feet. I walked calmly and deliberately up to the side of the table, and without being invited, seated myself exactly before him.

I must not stay to scrutinize my feelings at that moment. It is enough to say that they were sufficiently fiendish. There he sat, the murderer of my father, the persecutor of my race—a worm—a snake—which wanted but one crush of my heel, as it seemed to me, to lie a mass of rotting corruption before me. Pity! I could feel no pity at that moment. All human charities seemed extinguished within me, and although I would not have injured the frail body for the world, yet I felt if I could have got at his spirit I would have torn it to pieces.

He looked at me in surprise and dismay, as in dull silence I drew a chair to the table and sat down, gazing fixedly at him, as if I would have looked into his very soul. He said not a word, and after a pause, I asked, “Do you know me, Marquis de Carcassonne?”

“No,” he said, in the shrill treble of age, and with a look of fear and agitation, shrinking back in his chair as far as he could. “No. The dead do not come back here below—That is a superstition—No, I do not know you, though you are like—very like.”

“I am Louis De Lacy,” I said, sternly.

“Ah!” he cried “ah!” and he put out his hand as if to push me off from him.

I could see him shiver and quake, and I went on repeating the same words: “I am Louis De Lacy, the son of him you murdered. He is before you in my person. He speaks to you by my voice. He demands that you do justice to his memory, even now, when you are trembling on the brink of that grave beyond which you will soon meet face to face. Answer me, Marquis de Carcassonne. Will you at length tell the truth? Will you do justice to the dead? Will you make the only atonement you can make to the murdered, before God puts his seal upon your obduracy, and you go to judgment for your crimes unconfessed and unrepented of?”

The old man quivered in every limb and his face was as pale as death; but he answered not a word, and I went on with a hardness of heart for which I have hardly forgiven myself yet. “You were once wealthy,” I said, “and you are now poor. You were once the inhabitant of gilded halls, and soft, luxurious apartments: You are now in a miserable garret, wretched, and dark, and gloomy. Your crimes have led not to greater wealth and opulence; not to comfort and indulgence; not to the objects of ambition and desire; but to penury, distress, and want. There is a further step before you—a deep abyss, into which you seem inclined to plunge. The grave is a colder dwelling than this, the tribunal of an all-seeing God more terrible than any you can appeal to here, the hell which you have dug for yourself, more agonizing than even your conscience at this moment.”

The very vehemence with which I spoke seemed to frustrate my own purpose, and to rouse in his decaying frame, and sinking mind, a spirit of resistance which had formerly been strong within him. He grasped the arm of his chair. He sat upright. He moved his jaw almost convulsively, and then said, with serpent bitterness, “So, so—son of a traitor. You would have me lie, would you, to recover for you your father’s estates, to clear your name from the infamy that hangs upon it, and shall hang upon it to all eternity. You would have me unsay all I have said, recant all I have sworn? But mark me, boy, I will put upon record before I die the confirmation of every charge against your treacherous father. I will leave it more deeply branded on his name than ever, that he deceived his king, betrayed his country, renounced his honor, falsified his word, and sold himself to the enemy, and his name shall stand in the annals of the world, as the blackest of traitors, and the basest of men—Ha, ha! What are your threats now, fool?”

I started up, and it was with great pain I kept my hands from him; but I mastered my first rash impulse, and I said, “Then I summon you to meet him whom you have belied and murdered, whom you still, unrepenting, and unatoning, calumniate and accuse, before the throne of Almighty God, and to answer, where falsehood is vain and cunning is of no resource, where the truth is written on tables of light, and falsehood is blotted out in everlasting darkness, where hell and eternal damnation await remorseless crime, for every word you have uttered this night! As your heart judges you, so feel, and so act. Die in peace and calm assurance, or in horror, and terror, and despair.”

He shrank back, and back, and back, into his chair, and at the last words, he pressed his trembling hands upon his eyes, as if he would have shut out the fearful images I had presented to him. His face grew livid, and his whole frame heaved, as if the torture of the eternal flame had already seized upon him.

I know not whether I should have said more or not; but a moment after I had ceased speaking, and while I still stood gazing at him, writhing before me, the door opened and a venerable looking old man, dressed in black, entered the room. He gazed an instant in surprise, at the pale and trembling wretch, and at me; and then he asked in a stern and solemn tone, “Who are you?—What have you done, young man?”

“I am Louis de Lacy,” I answered coldly. “That is the Marquis de Carcassonne, the murderer of my father. What I have done is what, if you are a priest, you should do—made a dark criminal tremble, before the way to atonement, and the gates of mercy are shut against him forever;” and without waiting for any further question, I hurried away from the room, down the dark staircase, and out into the crowded street.

——