The Last Cavalier: Being the Adventures of Count Sainte-Hermine in the Age of Napoleon. Alexandre DumasЧитать онлайн книгу.

      HECTOR DE SAINTE-HERMINE PAUSED for a moment to let Mademoiselle de Sourdis pull herself together. Then he continued: “As you said, a sad story. And it gets worse. For soon after we received the painful news of Leon’s death, my brother Charles disappeared. He did leave me a rather long letter, though, that said in pretty much these words:

      “‘You don’t need to know, my dear child, where I am or what I’m doing. As you might suspect, I am striving to carry out what I swore I would do: seek vengeance.

      “‘You are now all alone. But you are sixteen years old, and with misfortune as your teacher you will quickly become a man.

      “‘You understand what I mean by becoming a man. A true man is like a solid oak tree with its roots in the past and its branches in the future. It can stand up to anything—to heat, cold, wind, rain, storms, weapons, and gold.

      “‘Keep both your mind and your body active; become skillful in all kinds of physical activities—there is no lack of money or teachers. While you are in the provinces, spend twelve thousand francs a year on horses, guns, weapons, and lessons in riding and fencing. If you go to Paris, spend double that amount, but always with the same purpose of becoming a man.

      “‘Do whatever is necessary always to have at hand ten thousand francs in gold. Be prepared to deliver it to any messenger who comes in Morgan’s name—you will know his signature—and presents you with a letter marked with the sign of a dagger.

      “‘Whenever people speak of Morgan, you alone will know that they are really talking about me.

      “‘Follow to the letter these instructions, but consider them more as advice than orders. And once a month, at least, reread this letter.

      “‘Always be ready to take my place, to avenge me, and to die,’ he charged me, and signed the letter ‘Your brother, Charles.’”

      “So, mademoiselle,” Hector continued, “now that you know that Morgan and Charles de Sainte-Hermine are one and the same person, I no longer need to recount for you my brother’s activities. For like all, you know that as the leader of the Companions of Jehu he soon became famous all over France and even in other countries. From Marseille to Nantua, France was his kingdom for more than two years.

      “Twice more I received letters from him, marked with the seal and signature to which he had alerted me. Each time he asked for the same amount, and each time I sent it to him.

      “The man named Morgan meanwhile became both the terror and the darling of the South of France. The Royalist party deemed the Companions of Jehu to be like knights and avowed their legitimacy. The authorities, on the other hand, tried to sully them by calling them bandits, brigands, and stagecoach robbers, but they were unable to tarnish Jehu’s prestige. All over the South one could openly say he stood with the Companions of Jehu without having anything to fear from the local authorities.

      “As long as the Directory lasted, everything went well. The government was already too weak for foreign wars, so domestic war was unthinkable. But then Bonaparte came back from Egypt.

      “By chance, in Avignon he witnessed one of the many courageous operations typical of the Companions of Jehu, and he witnessed their code of ethics too. For along with money belonging to the government, they had mistakenly carried off a bag containing two hundred louis that belonged to a wine merchant from Bordeaux. While taking a meal at the common table in an inn, the merchant was complaining about the wrong done to him when in broad daylight my brother strode into the dining room, masked and armed to the teeth. He walked over to the table, offered his excuses, and put down in front of the merchant his two hundred louis.

      “Chance had it that General Bonaparte and his aide-de-camp Roland de Montrevel were eating at the same table, so he saw firsthand the kind of men he was dealing with. And he realized that it was not the English but the Companions of Jehu who were providing support to the Chouans. He made the decision to exterminate them and sent Roland south with full authority to do whatever was needed.

      “But Roland could not find a single traitor willing to identify the people Roland had sworn to exterminate. Nor did the caves, forests, or mountains betray the lair of the men who themselves refused to betray their king. It was an unexpected event, produced by a woman’s hand, that brought about the downfall of those whom the weapons of entire regiments had been unable to reach.

      “You know about the terrible political turmoil that, like an earthquake, is now rocking the city of Avignon. Well, imagine one of those riots in which people pitilessly cut each other’s throats, in which they battle an enemy as long as they have one ounce of breath and even after the enemy has breathed his last. And imagine then how a certain Monsieur de Fargas had been not only killed but burned and eaten by cannibals whose actions far outstripped any primitives in the Pacific isles. His assassins were liberals.

      “His two children, though, escaped the carnage and fled. Nature had made a mistake with de Fargas’s son and daughter, for it had given the young man the heart of a girl and the sister the heart that should have been her brother’s. Both of them, Lucien and Diana, with Diana giving her full support to her brother, swore to avenge their father.

      “Lucien joined the Companions of Jehu, but during a raid he was captured. Unable to stand up to the torture of sleep deprivation, he revealed the names of his accomplices. To protect him from the vengeance of the Companions of Jehu, his captors moved him from Avignon to a prison in Nantua, but one night a week later, a band of armed men stormed the prison and carried him off to a monastery in Seillon.

      “Two nights after that, the corpse of Lucien de Fargas was placed in the town square in front of the Préfecture, just across from the hotel Les Grottes de Ceyzériat, where his sister Diana was living. The body was naked, and the well-known dagger of the Companions of Jehu was planted in his heart. Hanging from the dagger was a piece of paper on which Lucien, in his own hand, had written: ‘I shall die because I failed to keep my sacred oath. The dagger found planted in my chest will prove that I die the victim not of a cowardly assassin but of avenging justice.’

      “At daybreak Diana was awakened by a loud noise under her windows. She somehow knew that the noise had something to do with her, and that a new misfortune awaited her. She put on a dressing gown, and without even tying up her hair, which had come loose in her sleep, she opened the window and leaned out over the balcony.

      “Scarcely had she glanced down at the street than she let out a scream, jumped back, and, like a madwoman, pale as a ghost, her hair flowing, hurried down to the square and threw herself on the corpse in the middle of the crowd, crying ‘My brother! My brother!’

      “Now a stranger had been witness to Lucien’s death. He had been sent by Cadoudal, so he knew all sorts of passwords that would open any door. This is the letter that served as his passport; I copied it because it has something to do with me.