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“A cry of terror broke from me, as I saw in the midst of this wild
whirlwind of fire a huge black goat, loaded with glowing red chains.
The howlings grew more fearful, the flames burst into frightful
intensity, and a troop of hideous demons, also loaded with chains,
began to dance round the goat, waving their torches, and uttering
furious shouts and yells. The goat reared on to his hind legs, butted
with his horns, and appeared to be the very genius of the infernal
scene.
“‘Ah! pardieu!’ cried de Lude, ‘the comedy is well played, I own;
but I am curious to see the coulisses, and to examine the costumes
of the actors closer.’
“He grasped his pistols, and made as if he was going to step over
the circle; but at a sign from the magician, all the flames were
extinguished, the goat and the demons disappeared. We were
plunged once more into profound darkness. At the same moment
strong arms seized us, we were dragged hurriedly along the
passages, and flung outside the cavern.
“I was only too glad of this unlooked-for ending up, and did not ask
to go back and get my philtre, and I willingly left the magician in
possession of my five louis.
“The count was not at all of the same mind. He insisted on
penetrating to the solving of the enigma. We had been the victims of
a hateful and odious charlatanism. I did not feel so convinced of that
as he was, and the abominable spectacle would not quit my
imagination. For the rest of that day, and the following night, I saw
nothing but devils dancing and howling amid the flames.”
And then it was just before break of dawn, between her sleeping
and waking, came once again the Man in Black. He smilingly
asserted himself to Ninon, to be, beyond all doubt and juggling
hocus-pocus, his Satanic Majesty, the real “Simon Pure.” In calm,
grave tones he offered her the choice of the three great gifts this
world has to bestow—riches, grandeur, beauty—enduring beauty till
all-destroying Death should claim her, and with only a momentary
hesitation, Ninon chose beauty. Then in two crystal phials, like the
one the charlatans had yesterday cheated her out of in the Gentilly
cavern, he handed her the wondrous liquid—limpid, delicately rose-
tinted; enough to last the longest lifetime, since one drop only in a
wine-glass of water, to be taken after her morning bath, was all that
was needed. First, however, he produced his tablets, and writing a
few words on one of the pages, he bade her set her signature
beneath. “Very good,” he said, when she had done this. As he
placed the phials in her hands, “Now you are mine,” and he added,
as he laid his hand on her shoulder, that her health would remain
almost unbroken through all the coming years, troops of friends and
love would be ever with her, and after death the memory of her
would be unfading. Once more she would see him—years hence.
“Then beware and tremble; you will not have three more days to
live.”
And so he disappeared.[2]
In the course of their brief conversation, the Man in Black
disclosed to Ninon the manner in which his impudent imitator
produced his Mumbo-Jumbo terrors. Like the Comte de Lude, he did
not deny them effect; but he held them so essentially vulgar, that it
seemed marvellous to him how the fellow succeeded in imposing on
refined and educated clients. Moreover, they had not even the
recommendation of novelty. Perditor had, he explained, contrived
merely to get knowledge and possession of the tricks and traps of
the long since strangled César, who during his incarceration in the
Bastille had entertained his gaolers with an account of the way he
played his tricks, performed apparently at Gentilly also at that time
and therefore rendering the way the easier to his successor, since
the old quarry he had utilised and patterned about with ditches still
remained. Perditor’s ceremonial was identically the same with
César’s. The frightful cries he uttered were the signal for six men
hideously masked and garbed, he kept concealed in the cavern, to
spring forward, flinging out flashes of flame, and waving torches of
burning resin. Amid the flames was to be seen the monstrous goat,
loaded with thick iron chains painted vermilion, to give the
appearance of being red-hot. On each side, in the obscurity of the
cavern, were placed two huge mastiffs, their heads fastened into
wooden cases, wide at one end, and narrow at the other. Two men
goaded and prodded these two poor animals, which caused them to
utter the most dismal howling, filling the cavern with the appalling
noise, while the goat, a most intelligent beast, and thoroughly
understanding his part, played it to admiration, rattling his chains and
butting his huge horns.
The devil having thus shown himself, two of the men now rush
upon the unfortunate individual, and belabour him black and blue
with long bags of cloth filled full of sand, and then fling him, half-
dead, outside the cavern. “Then the parting advice is given him not
to wish to see the devil again, and he never does, concluded César.”
CHAPTER VI
Some few miles from Tours, along the banks of the Loire, at one of
its most beautiful parts above Saumur, stands the little town of St
Médard, better known as Cinq-Mars. A ruined castle crowns the
heights above. It was the ancestral home of the d’Effiats, a noble
family of long lineage; and before their coming, tradition told of its
being the dwelling of Mélusine the fée, the beautiful snake-woman,
who was the wife of Raymond, Count de Lusignan, placed under the
terrible spell of transformation into a snake, from the waist
downwards, every seventh night, for having immured her father in a
rock-bound cavern, for cruelty to her mother. Disobeying Mélusine’s
command, never to intrude upon her on those fatal Saturday nights,
Raymond discovered the appalling reason for it, and in his rage cast
her forth. The despairing cry that broke from her then, is still to be
heard of stormy nights above the river; and it may be, mingles with
the lamentations of the mourners over the deed of blood which was
enacted in after centuries when Louis the Just was king.
The young lord of the castle then, was the son of the Maréchal
Cinq-Mars. He was scarcely more than a youth; for he was but
nineteen when Richelieu introduced him at Court, loading him with
favours, causing him to be made the royal master of the horse, and
otherwise specially recommending him to the notice of Louis, who
conceived so vast a liking for him, that it was even touched with
some real warmth; and Cinq-Mars, handsome, gallant, distinguished,
brave, and not a little spoiled by the splendour of his existence, but
amiable and generous-hearted, beloved by his friends—of whom a
dear one was de Thou, the son of the great historian—basked in all
the full sunshine of his young life. The pale, stern cardinal,
attenuated by bodily suffering, and more than ever soured by care,
was hardly likely to win much love from a gay butterfly of a creature
like the young marquis, and before long Cinq-Mars came to know
from Louis’s own lips, that he privately hated Richelieu, a hate
nourished by his deadly fear of him.
Meanwhile, Cinq-Mars had cast amorous eyes upon Marion
Delorme, the cardinal’s protégée. Marion, still beautiful, though no
longer young—being in fact double the age of this her latest admirer
—returned his passionate affection, and, dazzled by the prospect of
being his wife—for his infatuation impelled him to seek her as such—
she braved the consequences of her protector’s wrath, and the two
were secretly married. Richelieu, from whom nothing could long be
hidden, was furious; he had planned a brilliant alliance for the king’s
young favourite, who had shortly before leagued himself with the
queen’s party; Gaston d’Orléans, the Duc de Bouillon—burning to
supplant the cardinal-minister—and others—and they entered into
correspondence with Olivarez, the Spanish prime-minister, which
resulted in a treaty of alliance between him and the conspiring
enemies of the cardinal. Louis had for some time past treated
Richelieu with coldness; and Richelieu, suspecting the cause of it,
left Paris, and went to Tarascon, to lie in wait till his spies were able
to place him in full possession of every detail of the plot, and of a
copy of the treaty. Then, disabled by illness and infirmity, he desired
to see the king, who travelled for the interview from Perpignan,
where he was then staying, and all the thunder of the cardinal’s
reproaches and wrath was flung upon him. Apparently with justice,
Louis succeeded in justifying himself, on the plea of ignorance, and
the king departed again, enjoining everybody to obedience to
Richelieu as if he were himself.
After their marriage, Marion and Cinq-Mars went to the castle on
the Loire, where they spent a brief period of delight. Only the
servants of the household were there, and Cinq-Mars was their lord.
They showed willing, even delighted, obedience to all his behests;
but the marquise his mother returned home somewhat unexpectedly,
and her anger at the stolen marriage equalled in its way that of
Richelieu himself. Doubtless this fomented the affair to a yet
speedier issue, and Cinq-Mars was arrested, and along with him, his
friend de Thou, who was entirely innocent of complicity in the plot.
The two were taken into the presence of Richelieu at Tarascon (a
place old stories tell named after one Tarasque, “a fearful dragon
who infested the borders of the Rhone, preying upon human flesh, to
the universal terror and disturbance”), and hence his dying
Eminence—for death was very near—commanded them to be
placed, tied and bound, in a boat fastened behind his own, in which
he was returning to Paris by the waterway of the Rhone, as far as
Lyons. There, being disembarked, the two young victims were led
immediately to a hastily-erected scaffold, and there bravely they met
their fate by the headsman’s axe—de Thou guilty of refusing to
betray his friend, and Cinq-Mars’ crime not proved, suffering mainly
from the cowardly depositions laid against him by the Duke of
Orléans. Then Richelieu continued his triumphal way to Paris, where
in his magnificent palace he died; and during his last agonies, the
king was seen to smile at what he called “Death’s master-stroke of
policy.”
There was a letter, written three days before the cardinal’s death,
found among his papers. It was dated from the Bastille, and it
consisted of one bitter reproach of his injustice to the writer, in
keeping him immured in the terrible place for eleven years. It was a
letter of some length, and an eloquently written appeal for release.
“There is a time, my lord,” it began, “when man ceases to be
barbarous and unjust; it is when his approaching dissolution compels
him to descend into the gloom of his conscience, and to deplore the
cares, griefs, pains and misfortunes which he has caused to his
fellow-creatures. Had I,” the unhappy man, whose name was
Dessault, goes on to say, “performed your order, it would have
condemned my soul to eternal torment, and made me pass into